300 primary pupils a week suspended for assaulting staff
ALMOST 300 young children a week in term-time are suspended from school for assaulting an adult – with the number of cases on the rise.
Pupils aged five to 11 at primary school were suspended 11,420 times for attacking teachers, parents and staff in 2013-14 – up 25 per cent from 9,080 a year earlier.
Total suspensions at primary, secondary and special schools for such assaults hit 18,970, an increase of 10 per cent on the 17,190 in 2012-13.
Overall, primary schools suspensions went up by 19 per cent, from 37,870 to 45,010, a rise described as ‘considerable’ by government statisticians.
The suspension rate for pupils aged five to 11 is the highest since 2008.
Teaching unions said the rise in suspensions for violent behaviour by such young children was ‘extremely worrying’, and could
‘Teachers face the trauma of violence’
reflect the increasing stresses on family life. But the Department for Education said the rise was down to recently introduced rules that gave schools more powers to crack down on problem behaviour.
The official figures, released yesterday by the DfE, also showed primary school suspensions for assaulting fellow pupils increased year on year from 8,740 in 2012-13 to 10,300 in 2013-14. Suspensions for persistent disruptive behaviour went from 9,920 to 11,990.
Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union, said: ‘The increase in suspensions shows that, quite rightly, schools are not accepting violence against staff.
‘ However, there needs to be deeper analysis of why levels of violence are increasing.
‘There is no good news story here. Teachers and other staff are facing the trauma of serious disruption and violence. Children and young people are losing their place in mainstream schools.’ Russell Hobby, general secretary of school leaders’ union the NAHT, said cuts to public services could be partly to blame, adding: ‘It’s a challenging time for families who use and need public services facing cuts.
‘This sometimes manifests as behaviour problems at younger ages than we might expect.’
In 2012, teachers won the right to search pupils and issue no-notice detentions, while schools were put back in charge of exclusion appeals.
The number of permanent exclu- sions across all schools has fallen since the mid-Nineties. In 1996-97, there were 12,670, compared with 4,950 in 2013-14 – although this was up slightly on the year before.
The decrease could be down to schools offering more help to problem pupils who might previously been expelled, to avoid a negative reputation.
Boys are over three times more likely to receive a permanent exclusion than girls and nearly three times more likely to be suspended. Schools Minister Nick Gibb said: ‘We have given head teachers more powers to tackle poor behaviour and have ensured they have the confidence to exclude pupils when this is necessary.
‘ Today’s figures show a slight increase in the number of fixed-period and permanent exclusions, although overall they are lower than in 2010. The new freedoms and greater clarity over exclusions is having a positive impact on behaviour.’
Last month, former Soho night- club bouncer Tom Bennett became the Government’s new ‘behaviour tsar’, appointed to stamp out classroom disruption caused by children playing on their mobile phones and swinging on chairs.
He will be asked to advise schools on how best to deal with such ‘low level’ behavioural problems, after an Ofsted study found children could be losing up to an hour of learning a day because of low-level disruption – the equivalent of missing 38 days of school a year.