Boys top of forced school ‘breaks’

YOUNG boys are seven times more likely than girls to be suspended from school.

NSW Education Department data from the first semester of 2021 shows 976 boys in kindergarten to Year 2 were suspended, compared with 135 girls.

The over-representation of boys continues right through to Year 12 and education experts now want more information about why boys are suspended at higher rates.

Newcastle University education expert Dr David Roy has repeatedly called for more details of the behaviour behind suspensions.

“They won’t tell us why these kids are suspended,” Dr Roy said. “These are kindy kids, how terrible is the behaviour of a kindy child?”

The same data reveals that 80 per cent of students suspended have autism or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

“We’ve known for years and years that positive behaviour reinforcement actually works; you reward the good behaviour, you recognise bad behaviour but you don’t make it a badge of honour,” Dr Roy said.

“If you want to push kids to the prison system, start suspending them in kindergarten.”

Professor Linda Graham, from the Centre for Inclusive Education at the University of Technology, has conducted independent reports on suspensions across the country.

“With ADHD and ASD (autism spectrum disorder) there is differences not in prevalence but how they present in boys versus girls,” she said.

“Girls can be missed, they are less externalising in their behaviour. Suspensions do not work, especially with kids with a disability. It is the worst thing you can do with kids with any kind of executive function differences which affects the central cockpit of your brain and affects impulse control.

“For these kids to be suspended after the fact doesn’t teach them anything.”

The NSW government recruited 32 new behaviour specialists this year, joining 2000 others recruited in 2021 to help curb suspensions in 2022.