Telford & Wrekin Council Watch

Pupils Caught In Sutherland School Crackdown

The tail of the Sutherland Business and Enterprise College shows no sign of calming down.

After being classed as “Inadequate” by OFSTED, the school then went on to exclude pupils from the school, the reason, “For Smoking”.

Until the OFSTED Inspection took place, the school had always tolerated smoking and staff had, on occasions smoked on the premises in the bike sheds whilst along side or in full view of pupils.

Whilst schools have to promote a healthy life style amongst its pupils, it is not correct to suddenly change rules in a knee jerk reaction to an inspection and exclude pupils without informing them or parents that anyone caught smoking will be excluded.

As a direct result of the schools clamp down, the Head Teacher admitted to the Shropshire Star 16/12/09 that over 33 pupils had been excluded from school, in a Freedom Of Information request received on the 8^th January 2010, the figures are significantly higher,

From 1/10/2009 – 30/11/2009 which is the 4 weeks after the OFSTED Inspection, the school excluded 108 pupils – these exclusions break down into the following groups

Disruptive        4

other                58

Physical Adult  4

Physical Pupil   11

Sexual              3

Verbal Adult      25

Verbal Adult      3

Total                  108  

Whilst we have to accept that in some cases, there is no alternative but exclude a pupil, the school also has to accept there will and is occasions when a child has been excluded because of inappropriate action by staff with some who are employing strong arm tactics or being over zealous with their actions.

One of these exclusions under other was a child with SEN, who had been allowed to leave a lesson by her teacher to use a toilet  and given a note, because the toilets are locked, the child had to go to the main office, because the child did not have a “toilet pass”, the child was excluded, despite being given written permission from her teacher. The member of staff left the school a few days later.

Pupils are no arranging a petition because coursework has been lost and remains unmarked. This coursework has been completed over the course of the year, but because the pupils  only received lessons from stand in teachers the work was never marked and the class that children with SEN were left often to their own devices receiving sub standard education as mentioned in the OFSTED report.

An official complaint will be made to the local Authority about standards in the school, constant loss of coursework, ineffective communication with parents and the fact that the school excludes students in a manner that is in contravention to its own policies.

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Telford Council Watch