Growing numbers of vulnerable children are being pushed out of education as schools try to “game the system to improve their exam results”, the children’s commissioner is set to warn today.
Anne Longfield wants the government to consider fining schools found to have excluded pupils for this reason - a practice known as “off-rolling”.
Speaking today at the National Association of Virtual School Heads’ conference in London, she is due to say: “We need to understand much better why a school system set up to welcome children in care through the front door, ends up seeing so many of them leave through the back.”
The Department for Education recently announced it is to carry out a review into exclusions.
‘Bold solutions’
Ms Longfield will say today: “As part of that review, I’ll be making the case for the government to look at bold solutions, including whether there should be financial penalties for schools who are ‘off-rolling’ to improve their results.”
Ms Longfield will also say she has heard first-hand how a “particularly vulnerable child” who was placed in a new local authority area, has had to wait over a year for a school place.”
Her comments follow a Tes investigation revealing that looked-after children were missing out on full-time education for months at a time, often because their applications to schools were being rejected.
She will tell virtual school heads: “This child is trapped in an almost Kafkaesque situation - told that his Education and Health Care Plan needs to be updated to be accepted into a school by one authority on the one hand, while being told that his plan can only be updated once he is in school by the other,” she will add.
Tes understands that she will continue: “No child should be denied a school place for a year. He wants to be in school and is being let down by the system.
“It’s not just the fact he’s missing out on learning, but he’s also missing out on the support that the school environment can give to a child in care. If a school knows about the crises they are dealing with at home and if they have a designated teacher to look out for them it makes a huge difference to their lives.”
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