Cllr Jasmine Ali has hit back at the government education advisor who said Southwark’s exclusion policy could “ruin children’s life chances”.
Approved by cabinet on Tuesday, July 19, the Southwark Inclusion Charter pledges to avoid excluding children except when “unavoidable to safeguard children”.
In an exchange with Cllr Ali on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Tom Bennett had said: “What the charter clearly states is that for any behaviour short of the most extreme behaviour, like knife crime and so on, schools should probably consider not excluding.
“Now that sounds fine in principle but there’s lots of misbehaviour short of criminal which absolutely harrow and ruin the life chances of children in schools…”
But in an article published in the Local Government Chronicle, Cllr Jasmine Ali said she was “shocked” that Mr Bennett “could get the charter so wrong”.
The Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Education wrote: “My live interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme pitched me into a debate with Tom Bennett, the government behaviour adviser. I was shocked someone with that level of influence could get the charter so wrong.
“He didn’t like us launching it in the first place, because he said Southwark doesn’t have a lot of exclusions anyway. For him exclusions are about ‘bad behaviour’. I was astonished to hear this from the so-called behaviour tsar.
“It’s troubling that someone with so much influence is missing the point here. As I put it to Tom, a child at risk of exclusion has an unmet need.”
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The charter states that disproportionate exclusions of children with “particular characteristics… exposes inequalities”.
The charter states that disproportionate exclusions of children with “particular characteristics… exposes inequalities”.
By striving for a policy of “100 per cent inclusion” the charter aims “to confront and tackle inequalities”.
Cllr Ali also wrote that the”media frenzy” which followed the Southwark Inclusion Charter would not stop the council pressing ahead with the policy.
She argued that some had misunderstood the policy, believing it meant Southwark Council was “banning” exclusions.
“Because, of course, we have never dreamt of banning schools from excluding students. But we do insist that where exclusion takes place that is not and can never be the end of the matter”, she wrote.
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