Meg Shakesheff, 17, is head girl of Wolverhampton grammar, an independent school “This is something I have little experience of but it’s great that the teachers in this case study were not willing to give up on such a young child and that, in the end, they made him feel he was making choices about where he wanted to be.
“My school has a no-nonsense policy on things such as bullying and drugs.
If normal discipline, such as detention, isn’t working, pupils get a red card and they know that the next step is suspension, the one after that expulsion.
“It is important that pupils know they are not going to get away with anything. Not along ago a couple of our boys coming back from a football fixture had a fall-out and one ended up hitting the other. He was suspended immediately; made an example of. I didn’t think it was entirely his fault but I agreed with the severity of the punishment. If schools let violence slide, it must be so much harder to deal with.”
