Taejon has been to four schools in half as many years. Aged 13, he was facing personal upheaval: he had to move out of home; he lived with his grandmother who had had a cancer diagnosis; he was having to manage his home routine solo. And he was really struggling.
His schools knew little of this. Suspecting him of smoking cannabis he was ‘manage moved’ across different boroughs.
In the next school, he was “failing” the manage move “trial” because he was struggling to get himself in on time. His new school started at 8.30am when the previous one began at 9am.
In yet another school, he was asked to leave because he had associated with another child suspected of committing a crime outside of school. All the while, life was getting harder.
For every one visible move like a permanent exclusion, there are 10 invisible moves like the ones Taejon experienced.
That’s 86,000 movements that the Department for Education can’t see.
Overwhelmingly, these young people are facing the hardest times in their lives – crises like family bereavement, going into care and a worrying decline in their mental health.
When Kiran was advising the Timpson Review on school exclusion, she heard many leaders doing the best by their students, hoping for a “fresh start” that a managed move can provide.
Since then, data has shown that, on average, outcomes aren’t as good as we might hope. We now know 60 per cent of children who experience a managed move don’t even get a grade 1 in their English and maths GCSEs, let alone a good pass they can use to get into work.
So what does happen to these young people? Not at school and without trusted adults, these children are particularly vulnerable to criminal exploitation, online conspiracy theories or the serious mental health problems that come from social isolation.
There is a cost to our economy and society too. We know every permanently excluded child goes on to cost the state £170,000 because they struggle to access work, have to rely on welfare paymentsand are vulnerable to crime.
One in three moved children disappear, never to be seen on a school roll again
But we don’t even know the figures on these invisible moves because many of them can’t be tracked. One in three moved children disappear entirely, never to be seen on a school roll again.
The Who’s Losing Learning Coalition, IPPR and The Difference’s partner charities and their council of school leaders are calling for every child moving school to count equally in school accountability. These moves must no longer be ‘invisible’ to the Department for Education.
We need to celebrate schools who successfully take young people in for a second chance, and to offer transparency and challenge where movements aren’t in the best interests of the children who need the stability of school the most.
As well as accountability, schools and teachers need support. The Difference is working today with 200 school leaders working towards the challenge of helping young people stay in school.
They’re experimenting with internal alternative provision, different ways of engaging families and behaviour policies which steer away from sanction only. They are creating interventions and providing support for those impacted by crime that reduce repeat-offending, and looking behind worrying behaviours like substance misuse to address upstream drivers like decline in adult oversight and mental health.
With the publication of the IPPR report today, we are calling for every school to have leaders with inclusion expertise to set a culture that sees lost learning fall.
To fund this professional development and the building of vital trusted-adult relationships, we must tilt funding from the reactive high-needs budget to early identification and intervention. Too much happens after things have reached crisis point.
Taejon has benefitted from exactly this support. Since moving to Haringey Learning Partnership, he has built a bike from scratch, entered writing competitions and spoken to hundreds of teachers at ASCL and Haringey conferences.
AP Taskforce funding (due to run out next year) has allowed Taejon to access the therapeutic support he needed without waiting for lengthy referrals. Grief counselling helped him process the pain of losing his grandma.
The care and high expectations of teachers have helped him get back into learning, and he’s on track to achieve his core GCSEs. Haringey council are confident they can support him to be reintegrated successfully into a new school where his headteacher Gerry says they’d be very lucky to have him.
“I just want to make my nan proud,” Taejon says.
Analysis in our report today suggests that £850 million invested in children with mental health challenges or other early-stage special needs would pay for itself over the parliament as fewer children would need acute-level provision such as Education Health and Care Plans.
If this helps children like Taejon weather the storms of adolescence to reach adulthood happy, healthy and able to work, then further savings can be counted upon – but the true value is priceless.
Read the full report, ‘Who is losing learning? Finding solutions to the school engagement crisis’ here
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