Archived decisions

BEHAVIOUR SUPPORT

1. The Executive Member has considered and endorsed a comprehensive paper setting out the strategies which the County Council will use to help schools, particularly secondary schools, to increase their ability to met the behavioural needs and challenges of their pupils and to provide them with improved levels of support. The background is the increasing number of children who are permanently excluded from schools in Hampshire, a trend which is likely to continue unless radical solutions are attempted.

2. It is now generally accepted, especially by secondary schools, that pupils in danger of exclusion from school are a responsibility shared between the Education Department and the schools. There needs to be a clearer focus on measures which will prevent exclusion from happening in the first place, and provide effective reintegration where exclusion has been inevitable. To this end there needs to be a clearer alignment and integration between the various services active in this area - Education other than at School Service, Education Centres (formerly known as pupil referral units), behaviour support teams, the Education Welfare Service, Education Psychology Service, Youth Service, Connexions and perhaps also the Health and Social Services. The approach will be consistent with the proposals in the Green Paper "Every Child Matters" and the proposals for coordinated children's services emerging from the Children Bill.

3. There have been several notable successes, for example the behaviour support teams established initially in trial areas and now in place throughout the County. There is growing dialogue between the Local Education Authority and schools on ways of devising innovative solutions which will obviate the need for exclusion, whether fixed term or permanent. To this end earlier intervention and integrated support are vital to success in reducing the number of permanent exclusions and to improving behaviour in schools. These will be some of the main aspects on which the current best value review of the Education Other than at School Service will focus. It is hoped that the initiatives now under way will not only have an immediate impact in reducing numbers of permanent exclusions, but also a longer term effect in breaking the cycle of deprivation, failure and social exclusion which can have profound long term costs, not just to the young people excluded but to society more widely and into the future.