The Independent Effects of Permanent Exclusion from School on the Offending Careers of Young People

Abstract

RDS is part of the Home Office. The Home Office's purpose is to build a safe, just and tolerant society in which the rights and responsibilities of individuals, families and communities are properly balanced and the protection and security of the public are maintained.RDS is also a part of the Government Statistical Service (GSS). One of the GSS aims is to inform Parliament and the citizen about the state of the nation and provide a window on the work and performance of government, allowing the impact of government policies and actions to he assessed. Therefore -Research Development and Statistics Directorate exists to improve policy making, decision taking and practice in support of the Home Office purpose and aims, to provide the public and Parliament with information necessary for informed debate and to publish information for future use. AcknowledgementsThis has been a complex research study and many people have provided us with valuable assistance.We are especially grateful to Include (formerly Cities in Schools) which provided us with access to a sample of young people permanently excluded from school. Martin Stephenson, Chief Executive of Include, Rachel Pope, Kath Pinnock and past and present project managers at Include co-operated with us and supported the project throughout. The police services, local authority youth justice sections and education departments who work with Include were also extremely helpful. Further support in accessing offending data was provided by the Home Office Research and Statistics Department.In Luton, we are grateful to the Luton Youth Offending Team and Luton Education Department for their input to the research study, and to Mark Radley of Social Software for his advice and help with youth offending databases. Thanks as well to colleagues at the University of Luton, Ian Toon and Dani Agbewu-Lokku who helped with fieldwork and data processing.Accessing offending data proved to be an extremely challenging task, and we are grateful to Dr Carol Hayden and Tim Martin for providing us with information regarding their work on offending careers and school exclusion. Although it has not proved possible to use this in the final report, their time and the quality of their work were extremely helpful in enabling us to develop our analysis.Throughout the study we have appreciated the support and advice forthcoming from the Home Office, and especially that provided -at different times -by John Graham, Julie Vennard, Diane Caddle, Claire Flood-Page and Vicki Harrington.Finally, we would like to thank the 28 young people and the parents we interviewed, who gave their time and shared their experiences in the hope that this research would have a positive influence on the experiences of other young people excluded from school.Any errors are, of course, the responsibility of the authors.ii achieved higher-level qualifications felt that they were having to work harder in order to compensate for their past. vii viii the young person's life, in regard to family circumstances, educational experience...

Young People, Crime and School Exclusion: A Case of Some Surprises

“…9 This compares with Berridge et al (2001) who found that of 178 excluded school children who had committed crime that had been recorded, 61 had committed their first offence prior to their exclusion; 13 within the same month as their exclusion and 104 subsequent to their exclusion.…”

“…What it does point to is that exclusion is probably one amongst a number of variables present in a young offenders life (see for example Farrington, 1994Farrington, ,1996Hayden and Martin, 1998;Sampson & Laub, 1993;Audit Commission, 1996; Social Exclusion Unit 1998; Berridge, et al 2001).…”

“…Information provided on the home circumstances for a number of respondents appeared similar to findings reported by Ofsted (1996:10) who presented the excluded pupil's home situation as being "a grim catalogue of misery", indeed thirty six young people stated that they were living with a relative/parental partner who had been arrested, nine (16.1%) of the sample had experience of living in care (5) and a large proportion of the young people (70%) stated that they had had some form of contact with social services (see similar findings by for example Parsons, 1996;Brodie and Berridge, 1996;Brodie 2000). As with other exclusion research (see for example Berridge et al, 2001;Harris et al, 2000;McManus, 1987) there seemed to be a high incidence of familial poverty amongst the young people in the sample with 65% of the young people who were located via educational establishments (school, PRU or college) being eligible for free school meals.…”

“…Yet the basis of the generalisation that exclusion and crime are inextricably linked ignores the complexity of both issues. As a consequence, the results of any attempts to construct a causal -rather than declaratory -chain between the two can appear weak and vulnerable to criticism (Pomeroy, 2000:3;Berridge et al, 2001:47…”

‘The world is out to get me, bruv’: life after school ‘exclusion’

“…Many schools were labelled as failing and large numbers of young people were excluded (Osler and Starkey, 2005). Despite recent legislative changes to clarify school exclusion procedures (Berridge et al, 2001), there remain some grey areas; in particular to the use of 'unofficial' exclusions (Stirling, 1992;Social Exclusion Unit, 1998;Brodie, 1999) whereby schools discourage students from returning to a school or encourage parents to remove their children. Official guidance states that this practice is unacceptable, but it continues to take place with damaging long-term consequences for pupils and their families (Brodie, 1999).…”