This post is my response to Parker et al.’s 2016 article1 about parental perspectives to their child’s exclusion published in the journal Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties.
Their article discusses open ended interviews conducted (between Sept 2011 and July 2013) with the parents of 37 excluded children. Parents were asked about their child and school, why they thought their child had struggled with school, what support their child had and what they would like to have been done differently.
The interviews were coded and the common themes of a continuum of coping, the complex journey of exclusion and wider impacts of exclusions were identified. Hearing the stories told from a parent’s perspective highlighted the complex nature of exclusion. There were examples of informal exclusion being being sold to parents as being in the best interests their child and there were examples of fixed term exclusions being used by schools to build a case against the child. Other times, parents reported that exclusion had been the gatekeeper to accessing the support that their child needed. Support that was only available following exclusion.
Parents reported that their views were dismissed, they were talked down to and often felt that they were being blamed for their child’s behaviour. My reaction to this is one of frustration. The parents in the study described similar risk factors within both the child and family that often appear in other studies on exclusion (DFE, 2018 2 ;Paget et al. 20183; Tejarina et al, 2020 4). They did not shy away from them. However, they also include a much longer list of risk (and protective) factors associated with the school than is present in other studies. My frustration is born out of the lack of insight that those in education have to the impact that they themselves have on pupil behaviour and associated exclusions.
It is not enough for schools to talk down to parents and lay the blame solely with them and their children. They need to examine themselves more closely and ask why a child may be presenting with extreme behaviour with them when they may not in another school. Parents talk about school ethos and their children fitting with some schools and not with others. Of course, there may or may not be a host of things within the domains of the child and family that need to be addressed but those providing education are working with the child in the moment. They are responsible for the situation that the child is finding themselves in during the school day. Moment to moment. If they put a child in a situation that is too much for them to cope with, that is down to them. Simply, blaming the child and family lacks professional insight.
I have two points to make about research into pupil resilience in schools. The first is that when it comes to factors associated with schools, the research is often framed in the positive. It looks at children and asks what are the protective factors that enable one child to cope in a situation when another does not. The risk factors in the domain of the school are often just a re-framing of those found in the domains of the child and family. Those associated with school policy are largely absent. I believe that this is because schools see their role as mitigating for the risk factors the child may be experiencing in their family life. They completely miss out a reverse perspective where the family have to mitigate for the risk factors associated with schools. Parents cite their ability to advocate for their child as being an important protective factor in their child’s life.
The second point is that resilience research often looks at the effectiveness of an intervention programme on a child’s ability to cope in school. It does not stop to ask what the child is being asked to cope with and whether it is their best interests. There are a host of interventions aimed at enabling children to manage when it may be that it is the situation itself that needs to be changed. Policy makers may argue that is in every child’s interests to experience high levels of academic pressure and that all children simply need to be able to cope with it. I believe that this is so deeply embedded in the discourse of English education that it is not questioned. I want to challenge that discourse. My belief is that for some children at some points in their lives, the academic standards agenda driving day to day life in mainstream schools is not in their best interests. Currently the only way to lift children out of this academically charged environment is for them to be placed in special education or alternative provision and the only way to get them there in many cases is via a damaging exclusion process.
Their article concludes that there is a need to look behind a child’s behaviour and that the insight of parents into their child’s needs should be valued. I believe that schools should widen their view and look not only at how they may mitigate for a child’s needs and family life but also how they themselves may be contributing to the challenging situation the child is in. I am asking how we have ended up in a situation where some children are required by law to spend their days in an environment which is potentially damaging for them. What educational policy has led us there? I would like to see such educational policy much more widely recognised as a dominant risk factor in the lives of many children at risk of exclusion.
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You can find Parker et al.’s article in the journal Emotional and behaviour Difficulties here.
- Parker, C., Paget, A., Ford, T. and Gwernan-Jones, R. (2016)’‘.he was excluded for the kind of behaviour that we thought he needed support with…’ A qualitative analysis of the experiences and perspectives of parents whose children have been excluded from school.’ Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties 21 pp.133-151.
- Department for Education. (2018) Mental health and behaviour in schools.
- Paget, A., Parker, C., Heron, J., Logan, S., Henley, W., Emon, A., and Ford, T.(2018) ‘Which children and young people are excluded from school? Findings from a large British birth cohort study, the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC).’ Child Care Health Development, 44 (2) pp. 285– 296.
- Tejerina-Arreal, M. Parker, C., Paget, A., Henley, W., Loga, S., Emond, A. and Ford, T. (2020) ‘Child and adolescent mental health trajectories in relation to exclusion from school from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children.’ Child and Adolescent Mental Health 25(4) pp. 217-223
