19,000 children excluded just before GCSEs so schools can ‘game’ results

SCHOOLS are ‘gaming the system’ by kicking out their most difficult pupils to boost their overall exam results, the head of Ofsted has warned.

The schools watchdog found 19,000 pupils were removed from the roll just before taking their gCSEs last year.

Many ended up in pupil referral units, which have become a recruiting ground for gangs. Others have dropped out of organised education altogether as they were categorised as ‘home schooled’.

Amanda Spielman, chief inspector of schools, warned that thousands simply disappear from the system.

‘It’s almost certainly to help the school because the most disruptive, hardest-toteach children are likely to be the ones who will have the worst progress scores, so by losing them you are likely to be bringing up your school results,’ she said.

Adding that schools ‘are gaming the system’, she told The Times: ‘They’ve lost sight of what they’re there for.’

Robert Halfon, Tory chairman of the Commons education select committee, which is inquiring into exclusions, said it was a ‘national scandal’ that so many pupils were being taken out of the mainstream system and described them as the ‘forgotten children’.

The Department for Education said 6,685

‘Figures are tip of the iceberg’

pupils were permanently excluded from schools in England in 2015-16 – a 40 per cent rise over the previous three years.

Analysis by Ofsted suggests the official figures are the tip of the iceberg, with many more pupils ‘managed’ out of the system informally as schools come under pressure to boost league table rankings.

Ofsted tracked all pupils in state-funded secondary schools from year 10 to year 11 last year and found 19,000 were no longer registered at the end of that period, meaning an average of five pupils were dropping off the roll in each school.

Although some will have moved abroad or gone to private schools, inspectors believe many were encouraged to leave to improve the school’s grade average.

Mr Halfon said: ‘The schools are using exclusion to make sure [of their league table ranking] because they know these are failing pupils who would have an effect on their results.’