ABSTRACT
Local education authorities can play a leading role in helping put girls’ needs back on the agenda. They also have a potentially influential role in enabling greater co-operation between various professional groups working with young women and in enabling more effective inter-agency working. For example, our research suggests that the development of multi-disciplinary teams attached to schools may be a useful step in meeting the needs of vulnerable young people. Local authorities and government departments can play a key role in helping schools to monitor and interpret their exclusion and truancy statistics. The importance of this monitoring and feedback role is increasingly recognised. As an official document from New Zealand notes:
[W]e are giving schools much more information about their stand-down and suspension numbers and how they compare with other schools. This information helps principals and boards to recognise when they need to take action.
