School pioneers: why exclusion is not the answer

The 'inclusion unit' for problem pupils at Beacon High, one of eight funded by the Standard, has achieved incredible results. David Cohen says the DfE should be learning a lesson

- David Cohen

HERE is a statistic to focus the minds of the top mandarins in the Department for Education. Since prior to the pandemic, while suspensions of students in England have soared by almost a third, at Beacon High in Islington, they have plummeted by 90 per cent. How Beacon High has gone from one of the highest excluding schools in London to one of the lowest at a time when exclusions are rocketing nationwide is a story that should have resonance for the entire education sector - if only the DfE were listening.

The narrative begins three years ago when Beacon High, supported by the Evening Standard's Excluded campaign, adopted an entirely new exclusion strategy. Until then, its policy was to fight fire with fire and suspend or expel problem students, with more than 500 suspensions over three years. But in September 2020, Beacon High opted to trial a different approach. It hired a student mentor, Mark Cullen, to run a discrete on-site "inclusion unit" called "Pathways" in which he would give problematic students one-to-one attention with the aim of returning them to mainstream classes when ready.

Beacon High picked six of the most verbally abusive and disruptive students in the GCSE year who were on track to expulsion and Mr Cullen began to work with them intensively. He adopted the "trauma-informed approach" which, as he put it, "treats negative behaviour as communication that points to a deeper problem", rather than an end in itself.

The result? All six students ended the year back in mainstream classes, all six wrote their GCSEs and all went on to college. It was, in short, a resounding 100 per cent success. Their Pathways programme has since evolved to support scores of students a year, and with it suspensions have plunged by 85 per cent from 170 a year to around 25 a year.