Schools that illegally exclude children should face heavy fines: Commissioner

Schools that illegally exclude children should face heavy financial penalties and disciplinary action against headteachers.

That call has come from Maggie Atkinson, the Children’s Commissioner for England, who said illegal exclusions attracted no meaningful penalty unless a case went to court with costs awarded against the school.

She said in a report, Always Someone Else’s Problem, that finding concrete evidence of illegal exclusions had “proved extremely elusive”.

Her staff had investigated and now believed that illegal exclusions affected “a small, but we believe a significant minority of schools” involving thousands of children every year.

Atkinson called this: “A source of shame to the entire education system.”

She called for reforms under which where a child has been illegally excluded for a period of one month “the school should have a financial penalty imposed equal to the amount of funding it receives for that child annually”.

Illegal exclusions should immediately be reported to Ofsted, the school’s governing body and to local authorities in the case of maintained schools, she said.

Evidence concerning these should form part of the headteacher’s annual performance review and “be dealt with as a disciplinary matter for the head teacher”.

Where a school is found to have falsified registers to hide an illegal exclusion, “this is a criminal offence and should be dealt with accordingly”, with headteachers concerned referred to the National College for Teaching and Leadership for professional misconduct.

The Association of School and College Leaders' general secretary Brian Lightman said: “Where students’ education is being compromised by illegal exclusions, this is wrong and should be addressed swiftly, but it needs to be looked at as part of a bigger picture.

“As the report states, the vast majority of schools act within the law.

“If schools are penalised financially, the ones who lose out are the students still enrolled at the school. Falsifying registers is already illegal and heads risk losing their jobs for it or even ending up in prison. The law is quite clear about this.”