(UK) Half of pupils excluded from school have "recognized mental health needs"

Aug 22, 2017, UK Guardian: New ‘Teach First’ to train teachers as mental health specialists https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/aug/22/teach-first-children-excluded-school-mental-health The government’s data suggests the rate of exclusions is rising to almost 7,000 a year in England, the equivalent of more than 35 permanent exclusions every school day. Analysis of those figures suggests half of excluded pupils have a recognised mental health need. Hope (not her real name) may be only one of thousands of pupils each year whose mental health concerns can lead to them exiting mainstream education, either legally through the statutory exclusions procedure, or illegally through schools finding other methods of “off-rolling” pupils. A new charity, The Difference, founded by Gill with support from the IPPR, is using Hope’s story to try to tackle this problem, at a time when mental health is rising up the policy agenda. One in 10 children now suffer from a diagnosable mental health condition…. Researchers have interviewed students, teachers and heads in the past six months, and analysed data about the numbers of children missing from school but not officially excluded.... “Incredibly the government doesn’t even have good enough data about how many children are being pushed out of school unofficially. ... Key to the programme is the role of alternative provision (AP) [pdf]. This can be short-term education, off the school site, for challenging pupils; permanently excluded pupils can be educated full-time in pupil referral units. Several recent reports from Ofsted and the Department for Education [pdf] have flagged up concerns with the quality of alternative provision and the extent to which mainstream schools monitor the provision they use. Some local authorities have no good or outstanding pupil referral units and around 1% of pupils leave alternative provision with five good GCSEs. … Gill agrees that more integrated services outside school are also essential but says: “Children spend most of their time in school so we need to upskill the profession. We are starting from a very low point at a time when mental health challenges are growing among young people for whom family dysfunction, abuse, addiction and learning disabilities can intersect. Every school has a Send [special educational needs and disabilities] co-ordinator but not a mental health specialist.” The charity aims to start recruiting next year and meanwhile Gill is calling for people from all the affected sectors – schools, prisons, mental health provision and social work – to contact her via the IPPR and help develop the project. “These are voiceless children who can become invisible if they are pushed out of the mainstream system, which means we are brewing trouble for later,” she says. “We need to change that.”