Why I'm cycling hundreds of miles for excluded kids

Schools are failing too many, says Lawrence Dallaglio. He tells Robbie Griffiths about his campaign and his ES rugby podcast

-  Robbie Griffiths

THE education system is a busted flush, it's broken," says Lawrence Dallaglio who thinks the Government isn't doing enough for excluded children falling through the cracks. The ex-England rugby captain, who played in the 2003 World Cup-winning team, is now a pundit: he hosts the Evening Standard rugby podcast.

He is also waging war on behalf of Britain's excluded kids with his charity RugbyWorks. This week he set off on a marathon cycle ride around Europe to raise money, travelling more than 1,000km.

"The number of exclusions aren't going down, they're going up and up," Dallaglio says. "The Government is ignoring the problem, because it's easy to... we've got ourselves into a cycle that is pretty damning, and it's not going to change unless we break it."

Dallaglio's RugbyWorks helps children aged 14 to 17 who have been excluded around the country, with London centres in Southwark and Wandsworth. "We ensure long term that they're not excluded from society," he explains.

To do this the charity's coaches work directly with young people in schools. They use sport, principally rugby, to increase engagement, communication skills, and discipline, and get participants into full-time employment or education. Currently, they have an 85 per cent success rate.

On average, 160 young people are excluded each week from school. Once excluded, only four percent get any kind of qualifications, as opposed to 64 percent if they stay in education, Dallaglio tells me.