ABSTRACT
Education may be viewed as functioning to support societal enterprises or to nurture individual development or to facilitate some mix of the two. Whichever interpretation applies, the act of exclusion of children from formal mainstream schooling is a paradox. There is confusion over whether the child, when excluded from school, has lost a right or received a punishment. In the last years of the twentieth century we witness an unusual degree of individualisation of blame and what Newburn (1996) terms ‘authoritarian popularism’. It has resulted in unprecedented numbers of children being excluded from school, the rate being far in excess of that in any other western European country. This book attempts to explain why, with so little questioning until recently, the legally sanctioned exclusion of children from schools and its relatively high rate of use has become established in the UK, most particularly England and Wales. The Labour government’s plans, and new urgency directed at the problem (Social Exclusion Unit, 1998; DfEE, 1998b), mark a distinctive, broad and multi-agency response. The Social Exclusion Unit report commits the government to targets for the reduction of exclusion and truancy by one-third by 2002, and to the provision of full-time education by that date for those outside school. This allies well with the Education and Employment Committee report, Disaffected Children (House of Commons, 1998a, 1998b) and the government’s response (House of Commons, 1998c).
