ABSTRACT
PRIMARY SCHOOL EXCLUSIONS: A QUALITATIVELY DIFFERENT ISSUE? With the exception of Parsons et al. (1994) and Parsons in this volume most exclusions research, if it mentions primary school children at all, does not analyse whether exclusion in this phase of schooling is of any more significance than later on in a child’s school career. There has, however, been an expression of concern for some time from teachers who report that a minority of children are presenting with more difficult behaviour and at an earlier age (Coxon, 1988; Lawrence and Steed, 1986; TES, 1991). This concern was reflected, for example, in the Elton Report on Discipline in Schools (DES, 1989). Bennathan (1992) has written of educational psychologists and education welfare officers not being competent to deal with the growing incidence of what is often referred to as ‘challenging behaviour’. Other professionals, such as Rutter, are of the opinion that there is a real increase in child psychiatric disorder and his research is providing evidence of this (Rutter and Smith, 1995). Rutter (1991) has previously considered a whole range of possible contributory factors in explaining this increase, such as greater relative poverty, unemployment and family breakdown, all of which affect more children in the 1990s than in earlier decades.
