Exclusions drop despite escalating numbers at St Anne's Park

The number of children being excluded in Bristol schools has significantly reduced according to new council figures.

For the academic year 2007/8, fixed term exclusion dropped my more than a third, from 4310 to 2710. permanent exclusions dropped from 40 to 30.

Currently, no Bristol school holds an Ofsted ‘unsatisfactory’ category for behaviour, though earlier this year in June, St Anne’s Park Primary School found the poor behaviour of some students was noted in its Ofsted report: ‘Behaviour out of lessons is not always acceptable. Where there are incidents the school has lately taken a much tougher line. Exclusions briefly escalated this year but are now diminishing.’

Bristol City Council’s Strategic Director for Children, Young People and Skills Annie Hudson said: “We’ve implemented very robust monitoring of schools so we can pick up on where exclusions might be happening and work with them to look at various strategies for dealing with difficult behaviour.

“Exclusion from school is always a last resort.  We are working hard to ensure that schools are well equipped to deal with challenging behaviour such as coaching, one to one mentoring with vulnerable children and discussions in circle time.”