Transcript

Good evening, everyone. Slight change of venue. I'd like to welcome everyone to the Children and Young People Scrutiny Commission this evening. I want to remind everyone present that this is a formal meeting of Hackney Council and all constitutional requirements for council meetings apply. Please can I ask everyone to remember, whether you're in the chamber or connecting virtually, that this meeting is being held in public and is being broadcast live via the internet. The rights of the press and public to record and film this meeting apply and everyone present should note that media representatives may be in attendance or viewing the live stream. Thank you to everyone attending this evening, especially to our external guests who are assisting with the Commission's review of behaviour management and inclusion in schools. It's very much appreciated that you're attending this evening. So launching into item one, apologies for absence. Any? No apologies for absence. And we've got a couple of our councillor members who are joining us virtually this evening. We've got no urgent items, so the order of business is as published on the agenda. Item three is declarations of interest. Do members have any declarations of interest? No, Chair. No? Councillor Sizer? Okay. Thank you, Councillor Sizer? No, Councillor Sizer. Send champion for the borough and send parents. Thank you very much, Councillor Sizer. So now moving on to our main item for this evening, which is item four, which is behaviour management and school inclusion. So we've got until nine o'clock for this item. So we're going to spend a sizable amount of time on this item. So as many of you will be aware, we've chosen we've chosen as a commission to do an in-depth review looking at behavior management and school inclusion this has been something that's been on our radar as a commission for um a number of years now and has sort of emerged through various different pieces of work that we've done where we've there's a curiosity that we have and a desire for us to um look at behavior management and school inclusion um to give a bit of context where this has come up for us previously has been work that we've done around children who um emotional based um school non-attendance um around um school the work that we've done around school exclusions also um work we've done around children with special educational needs um and disabilities um we recognize the value of a good education for all children in our borough and having access to a good education how valuable that is for children and young people not just in terms of being able to achieve their academic potential and we know the value that that has particularly for children living in a borough that has such high poverty levels it's it's often has the potential to have transformational um change to the lives of children changing the trajectory of the um lives potentially so we we know the value of a really good education but in order to receive that we need to have inclusive education that enables children to experience the full um benefits of what education can offer throughout so we recognize that there are instances and many of which i've just referenced where children are sit outside of of being able to receive um what we know helps to support the the academic progression the emotional well-being and development of children and this is why we're wanting to have a look as a commission at um school behavior management and school inclusions drawing on each of those pieces of work that we've that i've just referenced that we've been involved in um so yes this has been a long time in the making for us and this is our first um meeting where we are sort of officially scoping um this item it's um we will engage and seek evidence through a wide range of sources both local and national the first evidence gathering session for this review will focus on the national and local policy framework for behavior management and school inclusion um and the commission is very grateful for the time and support of our guests from ofsted and the children and young people's coalition for mental health and education policy institute um who are attending um on the live stream this evening the commission will of course also engage with local stakeholders and undertake more in-depth qualitative work with them including of course um children and young people who you know the work of the commission is is all about and and parents and and whoever will will engage with this process who has a connection um and a perspective and an experience of of what we're hoping to look at here um the focus of the scrutiny function is of course strategic and the work um and the outcomes of the commission are are focused on policies and strategies of the council it's worth holding that in mind um and it's partners in their approach to behavior management in school inclusion so we will have to have that in the back of our minds when we're doing this work and thinking about the recommendations that we're able to put forward that are able to to to bring about some sort of meaningful change in this area um so and we also recognize that children's needs are also supported by network of local services that's education health and social care and we will make sure that this review of behavior management is viewed through this wider lens and focus will therefore be on how education and partnership with local services can better support children inclusion and and children um being in school and and managing to thrive in school and to to remain in school um in order to get the full benefits of of what we know an education can can offer um as the focus of commission is strategic i just want to remind members and anyone present to avoid naming any individual or educational uh establishment as part of this work and all contributions to the commission are given freely and voluntarily and from um a unified position of us wanting to approve the support for children young people it's worth sort of recognizing here that you know this is a a topical issue for us as a as a borough at the moment um and there are going to be competing views um and it's i just want us to to approach this as a as a commission with a real open mind um and willing and wanting to hear from um the full breadth of people who want to contribute towards this item um and from all stakeholders so um with that said i think we're going to launch now into hearing from our um contributors for this evening um we're going to have about 10 to 15 minutes to hear from each of you and then that we followed up by about 10 minutes of q a from the commission and then we will have a q a after um each of our three contributors have have spoken um so starting if we may with um john kennedy who's the ofsted inspector and assistant regional director from london thank you for joining us john over to you i hope you can hear me okay can i check can you hear me fine a bit quiet from our end so we might see if we can turn you up is that better yeah okay um good evening and thank you for the invitation i'm pleased to be here um i've been working in ofsted since 2006 so it's quite a while and i've been through a number of different uh frameworks um in that time and what i'd like to share today in the 10 or 15 minutes i have is some of the findings from our research and inspections that have taken place over the last couple of years there's some key findings because i think they may be helpful and i'd like to draw attention to a couple of key documents that i think are helpful for you to look at in a bit more detail than i have today um first of all our consultation on improving the way ofsted inspects education there is a section in the toolkit on behavior and attitudes and um i i would encourage you to contribute to the consultation as well as taking a look at that because obviously it's a consultation so the findings of the consultation aren't out yet so i can't comment on to what degree we'll implement some of what's in the toolkit but i think there's some key points in it uh the second is we did a webinar and it's it's in the public domain in 2023 on how ofsted inspects behavior and um i can certainly provide the link to martin if if you're struggling to get the link to that because that's a very useful um webinar it's about 50 minutes in in length um we've done some research on behavior and attitudes in 2019 so i'm going to make reference to some of those findings the school inspection handbook which is the current handbook has a section on behavior and attitudes and we have another document called positive environments where children can flourish which is a very helpful document for colleagues to access so they are some of the key documents that i'm drawing on for these few minutes um i think i'd like to start with an important point schools cannot be everything to everyone um and a key question for inspectors as with all the judgment areas including behavior is to what extent have leaders done all that they can reasonably be expected to do in the time available and in the circumstances in which they work i think that's the fundamental point underpinning anything i'm going to say the context of each school is key for some schools there have been increased challenges since the pandemic and that's had an impact not just on behavior on pupils anxiety on mental health and the link to attendance so all of those are interlinked to some degree and i think that's an important point um it's clear that there is a considerable low level disruption which is a system wide wide issue it's broader than just what the schools can deal with and um what i'd like to say about pupils behavior is it's obviously going to have an impact on their learning and on the behavior of others but has a significant impact on staff well-being as well and i think that's quite an important point some of the key findings that we um pulled together from our research and inspections some just some key messages from me one is having high expectations of all pupils is a must and i'm stressing here the all not just those who behave well but it includes those who need additional support those who might need reasonable adjustments um schools with good behavior set out expectations for all pupils clearly and precisely the second point is the importance of processes systems and structure it's about the communication that um schools have with parents and pupils that it's consistent and that it's frequent systems um for dealing with poor behavior need to be simple and consistently applied by staff they should be easy to follow there should be a certainty about what will happen if there are issues around behavior pupils should know that it's not personal it's linked to the system that the school has in place and generally what we found is that pupils in those schools where behavior is good tend to perceive that the behavior system is fair behavior won't necessarily improve on its own there has to be a deliberate step taken by the school in terms of its policy and practice it's not it's not a good school that manages behavior well has to take a proactive view it's not one where staff wait for misbehavior and then address it it's it's about and this is something that some schools don't focus enough on it's about ensuring that children learn practice and rehearse good behavior it doesn't come by accident leaders and staff need to teach pupils about expected behaviors and reiterate that frequently with the rationale and especially they need to look at transition times for example from early years to um primary and from primary to secondary in speaking of early years a key finding for us is the importance of the early phases of education the origins of good behavior start in the early years and that's critical the building blocks that happen in the early years to the personal social and emotional development curriculum are fundamental to children learning behavior habits very early on as they trans and and go through transition into primary and secondary it's about building stuff over time it's not about something that can happen just overnight calm and order are essential for pupils to feel safe to learn when pupils feel safe and can learn their behavior and attendance will also benefit substantially there is clearly a link between poor behavior stress and anxiety and pupils mental health and and there's clear correlation when there are issues around those three there will also be issues around attendance for example for example some pupils with mental health issues at age 7 or 11 are three times more likely to have high absence overall rates several years later another point that we have found from our research and inspection evidence is the importance of training for staff staff should should be supported to understand the policies and approaches that exist and how to teach and monitor impact over time training in the school's approach to behavior is key for staff just watching an experienced college or colleague manage managing behavior isn't enough they need training because it is carefully crafted practice and like any field of expertise particularly for example in teaching any curriculum subject behavior management is similar it needs proper training it needs proper support and it needs proper guidance the early um career framework is is an example of that fundamental building block that all staff should be aware of and teachers it's not just about the training that teachers have it's about how they model good behavior themselves the standards that they expect of pupils they need to follow as well and that's set out quite clearly in the teaching standards so there is a clear relationship between what teachers themselves do in terms of modeling behavior and what they expect of pupils i just want to say something now about how we approach behavior and attitudes in our inspections because obviously it will some of the this will change from september but currently there's a couple of stages that we follow and it might be helpful just to briefly summarize these in terms of preparation inspectors will have access to what's on the school's website and that could include their behavior policy and the range of initiatives that they have in place to manage good behavior they will also have information about historic attendance and exclusion and suspension information some of this is quite out of date because it's based on published data which often comes after the event but it will give inspectors some questions to ask when they inspect a school for example if there's a historic issue of low attendance or high exclusion or suspension rates they may have changed but inspectors will be able to ask those questions when they're on site and during the initial telephone call before the inspection actually starts inspectors have a chance to talk to the headteacher about the context of the school i'm going back to what i said earlier the context is really important it's important for the headteacher to be able to set out what are the challenges that the school faces where are its strengths and where are the areas it continues to work at and there may be particular issues that need to be picked up during the inspection and at the moment we have two types of inspections graded and ungraded inspections that will change depending on the outcome of the consultation but currently on an ungraded inspection behavior can and almost always is a focus area and that could include the issues around attendance or issues around aspects of behavior such as bullying on ungraded inspections the two-day inspection focuses very much on the first day on the curriculum and but during those meetings with staff and lesson observations and talking to pupils inspectors do explore pupils views about behavior they can observe what behavior is like in lessons and around the school in corridors and at lunch breaks and after school and before school activity talking to pupils is a key element in what inspectors can pull together from their inspection activity we we on all of our inspections we ask pupils about behavior about the behavior of others in the schools and we do look carefully at their views however an important point is that sometimes that's limited evidence and we need to be really careful if talking to one or two pupils raises questions about behavior which aren't actually systemic or systematic in terms of what's happening on a day-to-day basis so inspectors inspectors need to be proportionate in how much weight they give to the evidence of one or two pupils but it is important that we hear the voice of pupils we also hear the voice of parents through the parent questionnaire and through three text responses that they make and once again we need to be proportionate in terms of the weight that we give to individual comments from some parents we also talk to staff and some of the survey questions that we ask of staff are about their views about behavior how well it's managed and the support that they get in managing behavior and a couple of other things that we look at really carefully and it's important to stress some of these is we do look at what's happening during the two days of the inspection are there any pupils for example who should be in school who are not in school in other words are they in alternative provision are they normally at school but for some reason during the inspection they're not present so we do look carefully at what's the normal and typical pattern of a school in terms of behavior and attendance and i think one of the things that we will ask schools in relation to behavior and attendance is just some key questions and some examples are the following is behavior and attendance a priority do you analyze the issues around behavior and do you understand the causes do you have an effective strategy for managing the issues and are these resulting in sustained improvements over time and we won't just go on the answers that leaders will give us we will look for ourselves to see how how those answers bear out in practice and there will be there will be some instances where there will be challenges for some schools in relation to um pupils so we look carefully at the use of suspensions the use of exclusions and we look carefully at the rationale for that because head teachers do have the right to exclude pupils where there are legitimate reasons to do so and when it's used correctly exclusion is a vital measure however however we do want to know about the systems in place to reintegrate pupils to reintegrate pupils to make sure that they are remain engaged in learning and a rationale for um suspensions and extensions and there will be some cases where there are pupils with particular needs and we would want to look carefully at the challenges that schools face in relation to pupils with scnd we look really carefully at inclusion we look carefully at the support that's in place for particular pupils who need that extra bit of support because of their challenging behavior or their home circumstances and we would want to make sure that schools use reasonable adjustments when they are in the interest of the pupil ultimately what we focus on ensuring that pupils remain in learning and if there are questions about suspensions and exclusions we would want to know that it's always in the best interest of the pupil rather than the school itself and finally i just want to say something about the toolkit that i mentioned in terms of the consultation there are some really important points in the toolkit and i direct you or would suggest that you look at the toolkit around behavior and there's three there's three sections in it one is the leadership of behavior and it covers some of the points i've made about high expectations about communicating the expectations clearly about enforcing them fairly and consistently it's about teaching pupils the importance of respect and modeling respect as well working closely with parents as a key dimension and with other agencies and dealing quickly with issues that arise such as bullying and so on and the accurate recording and analysis of cases we we we don't focus on the records just that a school has we're interested in the analysis that they undertake because that should point to the steps they're taking to make changes the second area in the toolkit is about developing positive attitudes to learning so we look really carefully at to what degree staff are systemic systematic in teaching pupils about good practice in terms of learning and in less in lessons and the last one is about developing um leaders and staffs understanding of each pupil's context and the importance of um what we call an inclusive approach to behavior so that sanctions are used proportionately and effectively but importantly targeted interventions support pupils who need additional help the impact is carefully evaluated to allow if further adoptions are needed so there's a very strong emphasis throughout the toolkits on inclusion that is a 10-minute whistle tour i know i haven't covered the ground in a lot of detail but 10 or 15 minutes doesn't do justice to um i suppose where we are in in this whole area but i can just finish by saying it's going to be a very strong focus in our future inspections as well as the current ones and the key change actually from september is attendance is going to be looked at separately even though there are links with behavior there will be separate judgments made or evaluations made on inspections thank you so much for that um john and if if you're happy we'll have um about 10 minutes of questions from the commission interestingly as you were talking i had something that kept ringing in my mind i was thinking about when we're talking about behavior management in schools the new labor slogan of tough on crime tough on causes came to mind for me in thinking that if we're tough on behavior because we know that children in order to to be educated and to thrive they need to be in an environment where they are behaving well and where their peers are behaving well but we also recognize that in order to be tough on poor behavior we need to be tough on the causes of poor behavior and i i wanted to ask a question i suppose around something that you touched on which was around um schools assessing the impact of their approaches to behavior management to ensure that it doesn't you know have a disproportionate impact on particular groups of pupils and i i recognize what you were saying about the role that ofsted and the inspectors play in in looking at inclusion in schools but i i just wonder looking at the data and particularly unfortunately for us in hackney we can see significant disproportionality in so far as um which i i'm i'm sure is echoed across other parts of the country um so are we being tough on the causes of poor behavior um going back to that slogan that i'm thinking about there if we're seeing the same children are the ones that are transgressing and and being excluded and um on the wrong side of the behavior management um if i can do that one with you yeah and i'll try and answer that from a couple a couple of angles one is it's quite interesting looking at the london picture because it varies actually from local authority to local authority and sometimes that is about the context of each local authority but one of the things that i stressed earlier and i want to go back to again is the importance of analysis and the impact of analysis on what the school does because some schools might be very good at and putting together the recording of incidents so in other words they'll say there are x number of incidents they do a breakdown by possibly by ethnic group or whatever but actually they haven't analyzed what are the issues underpinning that and what are the steps they're taking to bring about change because what i'm interested in if i'm inspecting a school is what's the difference that you're making when there are issues about particular groups in in terms of for example suspension rates or high absence rates and and it goes back to another point i made schools don't work in isolation and and they are very linked to what's happening in the local area as well and i think it's really important that we look carefully at what support the schools can access in in some of what they're trying to do as well because some of the stuff around mental health needs for example isn't just within the gift of the school to do something about that it's very much about how they work with local services and the role of parents is critical here because to some degree the values of parents have an impact on the behavior of pupils in schools so it is about the steps they're taking to work with a whole range of potential issues that can contribute to poor behavior it's not just about what the school does in isolation i hope that partly answers your question if not fully thank you very much john i've got a few hands up here from my colleagues um councillor terbert deloft first please thank you thank you so much for your thorough presentation uh john kennedy um i'm just going to refer very quickly to what you said earlier about the inspection which was that um it's about having high expectations on all the students that is a must it has to be consistent clear to follow people should know it's not personal and that behavior is fair for all but plural is that this is not an experience for all and a large number of young people and their families and whilst i'm hearing personally the depth of this analysis of inspection the number of exclusions and suspensions continue to grow year and year we've had seven hundred eighty six thousand nine hundred sixty one suspension in in twenty two and twenty three academic year and nine thousand three hundred and seventy six exclusions so you know it's roughly four thousand suspensions per school day that we continue to have despite this very full inspection so i just and also just to say that 45 percent of juvenile prisons are young people who have been excluded from the school so my question is are these inspections serving those young people and how how else what else can it be done for them so then that we don't continue to have these rising numbers across england thank you and i mean it's difficult to answer that in um in general terms what i can say is that we do focus when we're on individual inspections on the pattern of suspension because it's not just about the number of suspensions it's about the use of repeated suspensions i would be more concerned um with a school where there are repeated suspensions of the same pupils because that to some degree is indicating that there may be an issue here which whatever the school is doing isn't addressing um because suspension for a single day or for two days for a pupil because of something they've done wrong which is it um goes against the school's code of conduct may be a reasonable approach to take but what i'm i'm saying is if there are repeated suspensions for the same issues you do call into question then what's happening at the school in relation to that particular pupil or to the issues that those pupils are kind of manifesting um so i i think we need to look really carefully at um the issues around the pattern of suspensions and it is the case in all local authorities including in hackney i would say that there is a difference between some schools in relation to the rates of exclusion and suspension so there's something about what are some schools doing that's more effective than other schools in the same local authority and and there is a difference and there is a difference in every local authority and when we do meet i don't know if you're aware of this we meet once a year with each local authority i meet for example with colleagues in hackney and one of the questions we do explore is what why is it that some schools are doing better in the whole area of behavior management and suspension than others so it is about learning some of the stuff that some schools are doing particularly well actually and john sorry just briefly on that on that point i know that it's the case potentially not just for hackney but for other places also where some of the schools that have some of the highest exclusion rates are also some of the schools that are ofsted outstanding so it's it's i'm wanting to understand how we reconcile that if there is a recognition or an acknowledgement that persistent use of suspensions um is an indication that behavior management perhaps isn't being approached in a way that that we think is conducive of of you know promoting the the well-being and the inclusion of children at school how do we reconcile that um a couple of comments and it hopefully it doesn't sound too defensive is we don't have um an overall effectiveness grade anymore and we haven't had since september but before this meeting i did a look at the um the outcomes from inspections since september nationally um and it's it's quite interesting actually looking at the national picture i didn't have the data for hackney in terms of inspections since september because we haven't published those but we have published the national data um 14 of secondary schools were judged to be require improvement for behavior and attitudes um now the vast majority of schools were judged to be good or outstanding for behavior attitudes but 14 is quite quite a number of schools so i i would like to think and i hope it is the case and i look carefully at the the hackney um inspections as with all london inspections i'd like to think that we would call it out if if a school isn't doing what it should do around behavior and we we find the evidence says that it requires improvement we should be able to say that and we should be able to say that judgment but it there isn't an overall effectiveness judgment so you might have a school that's actually very strong in terms of quality of education so it might be outstanding in that space but actually it could require improvement when it comes to and behavior and attitudes and we have had some schools nationally where there is a mismatch between the quality of education judgment the personal development judgment and the leadership management judgment and behavior and attitudes they aren't all the same grade and there can be a difference between those grades thank you john sorry i've got loads of hands up if i can it was that a follow-up question or i just just on what you mentioned thank you john just what you mentioned just now um so how do we follow up with those the schools that have persistent how how how are they follow up and monitored with those persistent uh data um in terms of ofsted are you asking about offset yeah in in terms of if a school requires improvement the current position and this this may change with the consultation because there are proposals in the consultation that we would monitor schools more frequently and you may have a view about that it certainly is is um i think important that we've put that in the consultation because schools that aren't yet good in any of the four judgment areas and we will have different evaluation areas post september but we we are proposing that we would monitor those schools who fall short of what we call secure the secure judgment which is the new proposal for um for inspection that we would monitor those more frequently and it is the case currently that if a school requires improvement and we have concerns about behavior management or we have complaints from parents about behavior management that are quite substantial that we can actually and do what we call a monitoring visit of those schools and we have done some of those monitoring visits over the last 12 months thank you um john i've got questions from four commission members we have to be very brief because i know that we've said that we're going to let you all go by um 8 45 so and i'm conscious that we haven't heard from the other contributors so if we can be brief with both questions and answers please so that we can get through them so councillor gordon then councillor charlton councillor sissa runga and then councillor binnie lubbock please um thanks john um my question is about um behavior management and um inclusion um does have offset have a role um in assessing um how um behavior management um contributes to inclusion i'm thinking particularly of children who are neurodiverse um or you know children from different cultural backgrounds and if you do have a role in that can you give us an idea of how you sort of um you know evaluate that and follow it up thank you yeah i mean in our current handbook and i'll be brief in our current handbook we do put a lot of stress on pupils for example who've got special education needs in the consultation which i'd encourage you to respond to there's a strong emphasis throughout all the toolkits on inclusion um hmci her majesty chief inspector has made it really clear that inclusion is going to be a top feet focus for us post september not that we we don't we we do look at it now but it's clearly writ large that inclusion in all aspects will be a focus um from september and and i stressed at the very beginning behavior management is about setting expectations for all pupils and not assuming that some pupils it doesn't apply to it applies to all pupils students thank you council of charlton please um thank you mr kennedy um you've mentioned the importance of consistency and modeling um and i wondered what the what austeg thought the key components of effective staff training ought to be well we we don't we we don't set out what the content of training i did refer to the early careers framework i think that's essential part of training the dfe guidance on behavior in schools which was updated in 2024 that sets out really clearly what should be part of training and procedures for staff so my view is those two documents in particular should set the kind of boundaries for what um what school should teach staff i think it's fair to say that in some schools there isn't enough focus on training staff to manage behavior there is a lot of focus on subject areas but not enough on training for behavior management because you don't pick it up by accident right thank you thank you very much can sister so will that please thank you thank you john you made some really important points about early years when you were talking at the beginning um so i wanted to ask about primary and secondary settings in respect of frameworks for assessing behavior in primary and secondary settings and then really the importance of getting it right at primary level yeah i mean you know i can't stress enough um i i've got grandchildren they're quite young and you can see straight away that what they learn at a very very young age is going to stand for them later and part of a significant part of the early years framework is is around the psc ed which i referred to earlier but it's it's important that that then um i suppose that as pupils get a bit older that those same messages are reinforced so in some schools the link between early years and key stage one and key stage two isn't as strong as it should be and and what's happening is the the important messages in the early years aren't actually then modeled and followed through into primary key stage one and two and then when children move to secondary there is a mismatch between what they've learned in terms of modeling in year six for example and what they learn in a new school in year seven there needs to be a strong focus on the transition between year six and seven years early years and year one as well okay thank you councillor benny lubbock please uh thank you for this um uh i'm just wondering how much you sort of recognize or acknowledge the context of this inquiry itself i think yes you know you've made the case that things will never be perfect and they'll be um you know what can the uh school leaders do with within the restraints that they have but i think my sense from what councillor conway set out at the start of this meeting was the predominantly the issues that we're looking at our issues uh not so much with the behavior of of the young people but with the issues with the policies themselves not um working for uh for the young people and i'm talking as a whole and you know what doesn't work for one um as well uh you know the policies have to work across as you said um uh just to reflect back on what uh councillor suzeronga um uh mentioned you were talking about early years and uh the issues around that hackney's particular context is that our early years exclusions are very low and our secondary exclusions are are a lot higher um so i'm wondering if you have any reflection on that because that sort of doesn't follow from the logic that you've um outlined um and also talking about the the sort of the wider context of um looking at the context being appropriate for each school uh process is very important but also a personalized approach i mean i think most people in this committee believe personalized approaches are also uh important and the context whereas academies have policies that go across multi-academy trusts um and therefore not tailored to the particular context of the schools that are there in so there's a few different issues there but the the main one is is about uh the the hackney context could you could you speak to that for us please yeah i mean um what i can say and i'm conscious about the need to be brief what i can say is that it goes back to one of the points i made about the importance of analysis um i can't comment on the degree to which you've analyzed carefully the relationship between pupils um leaving primary and those same pupils going to secondary you you referred to a higher exclusion rate in secondary and much much higher than primary so there's a question for me there in terms of what is happening in the transition from are these pupils that have trend transitioned from primary to secondary or are there a significant number of pupils that have come into hackney in secondary that weren't in hackney in primary so there's something here about the analysis that you want to take around the relationship between primary and secondary because i think that's quite fundamental because you would expect that pupils who behave well in year six would also behave well in year seven that that's a certain assumption that you would make there must be other factors coming into play that would indicate why the behavior changes in secondary and and to what degree you've analyzed that i think is quite an important point you make an important point about multi-academy trusts and there are different philosophies in some multi-academy trusts and i think it's important to look carefully at those trusts in in you know in terms of what that's telling you sorry i i hit that by accident i was just talking about um multi-academy trusts i think again there's a difference between the suspension rates in some trusts and in others and it's about understanding what is the rationale behind that approach that's taken in some but not in in others so there is something here about the analysis that you want to take as part of the work of this commission around what that's telling you about primary and secondary as well as maths i hope that makes sense thank you very much for that um john um also just another point that comes to my mind this this isn't going to be a question but just a point that counselor terbert loft referenced about 50 of the prison population knowing that their experiences are of exclusion another important of school exclusion but another important point is actually the over-representation of children with special education people with special educational needs and it's it you can't help but think about the connection between those two things and potentially unmet needs and it's also really important to think about this in a much broader context bringing it also outside of the school context and thinking about the wider support that's offered to children in need because you know unfortunately i remember somebody saying to me before you can look at children in nursery and point to the ones who are likely to end up with poor outcomes we know the trajectory that people are on from a very young age and if that's the case and these are the same people that are coming up and being suspended um again and again and are the persistent rule breaking that we know accounts for most of the school exclusions or other sort of sanctions you can't help but feel that there is something more that that that can be done um whilst also being mindful of the points that you've raised about the importance of ensuring that schools are are safe and happy and healthy places for for all children to to be educated to learn and sort of thriving um i'm gonna have to move on i'm sorry just to we've got some more general questions q a afterwards but i'm gonna have to move on to charlotte rayner please um so over to you for 10 to 15 minutes presentation and then some q a from us please thank you so much um hi everyone thank you for having me um join the meeting this evening i mean my name is charlotte rayner and i manage something called the children and young people's mental health coalition um i just want to share some some slides um i'm hopefully it will work um if i can get them working but if not i can just talk okay yeah sorry i can't i haven't shared on chrome before so i'm not too sure how to share my slides so i'll just talk for our findings if that's okay and can share slides um after so just to tell you a little bit about who we are so the children and young people's mental health coalition we bring together over 360 organizations to campaign and influence policy um on behalf of children and young people so we've been um established for the past 15 years and we try and kind of take what our members are saying and doing and feed that into decision conversations with national decision makers um we have a diverse range of members um we have schools we have youth organizations mental health charities youth organizations are concerned individuals um so we really hope that um we kind of we represent a broad range of views a few back in 2021 we launched an inquiry on behavior and mental health in schools and the inquiry really came from our members um saying to us that they were concerned about the way behavior was being approached in schools and the impact that this was having on children and young people with mental health problems they're particularly concerned about punitive um punitive behavior management approaches and that potentially exacerbating young people's needs so we decided to launch an inquiry to look at this further and we felt that there wasn't really kind of much out there that kind of really demonstrated the link between behavior and mental health but also try and really come up with some recommendations about what can we do to both support mental health and behavior in schools and kind of lead to positive change so our inquiry was a year-long inquiry and it had four key aims the first was as i said to gather evidence on the links between behavior and mental health secondly to understand how the current approaches to behavior management in schools are impacting young people and also families as well i know john spoke a lot about parents and carers we're really keen to understand the parent parent carer perspective within this and we're finally we're keen to understand like what more can schools do to kind of uh promote a positive learning environment that better supports both mental health and behavior and along this journey we were really keen to highlight examples of best practice so we wanted to speak and look at schools where they supported mental health um and kind of had like focused on kind of relational approaches to support we to support the inquiry we set up a youth advisory group and a parent carer advisory group to make sure that their voices kind of run throughout the project we had a big call for evidence so we had three surveys we had one for young people one for parents and one for professionals and we received over 840 responses across all surveys and we also held a series of virtual evidence sessions with a range of different stakeholders just to really make sure that we gathered a wide range of views and insights from those we listened to and before i share the findings i think john kind of touched on this in his evidence but i just think it's really important that we think about the current context for schools at the moment we know there is rising mental health needs so one in five children and young people have a mental health problem that's an increase from one in nine in 2017 so we kind of have seen that sharp rise in prevalence over the past few years we also know there's an increase in the number of children and young people special educational needs and disabilities and we have seen some suggestions in the past few years that we've kind of got this national problem with behavior in schools and then all of this is happening at the same time that school budgets are shrinking and schools are kind of really having to support children and young people with increasing need with very kind of little resource or capacity to be able to do so so you're having schools kind of holding this real high level of need and yeah not having the resources to be able to support young people the first thing we did is we tried to look at like how is behavior defined in schools and like really simply behavior can really relate to any action that children take within schools it's such a broad definition but what we found for our conversations that in a school environment definitions of behavior are predominantly negative so they kind of focus on the behaviors that schools don't want to see so don't run in the hallway don't do this don't do that and it's really important to recognize that a wide range of factors can really influence any a young person's behavior but actually all of our behaviors kind of sitting in the room this evening we can have things happening individually within ourselves that kind of might impact how we act there can be things happening within the family environment and there might be things also that are happening outside the home as well so they're kind of all these factors that sometimes we can't really account for they might impact and influence how we feel and behave what we heard consistently though throughout all of our evidence gathering was a behavior must be seen as a form of communication and a persistent poor behavior in the classroom might be an indication that a child has unmet or undiagnosed need or is kind of struggling to communicate or regulate themselves i think our evidence kind of really showed that we need to take persistent poor behavior as a sign that there might be something going on for that child and there's a really lovely quote i had on the slides from one of our evidence sessions but someone said that children's behavior is a manifestation of that internal world and we're seeing getting ever increasing numbers which i think just kind of sums up the point really perfectly um as i said one of the key aims of the inquiry was to really look at the links between behavior and mental health so in the surveys that we did we asked young people parents and professionals if they believe young people's behavior is linked to their mental health and there was overwhelming consensus for this so 47 of young people strongly agreed and 32 agreed that young behavior and mental health is linked and we saw an even higher percentage of parents and carers um kind of agreeing that behavior mental health are linked and professionals really shared their views on what they believe to be the underlying drivers of behavior including experiences of trauma adverse childhood experiences and growing levels of unmet need we asked the same question about the link between behavior and special educational needs and disabilities throughout our conversations send kept coming up and we realized it was something we really needed to look at more um as i should have said at the start but a lot of the parents who sat on our parent care advisory group had children with special educational needs who had some really bad horrific experiences of the education system and a lot of them struggling with behavior management um policies but also their children just not unable to attend school because their needs not being met so we asked young people and parents professionals again in the survey if behaviors linked to special educational needs and disabilities and again we kind of got overwhelming consensus and agreement and professionals described behaviorism this manifestation of unmet need and described how kind of the lack of support and timely assessment is really driving um arising behavior problems in school as well we try to look at the different behavior management approaches that are being taken in schools and we found it's really challenging to kind of identify that one single approach uh government guidance to schools on behavior is quite flexible so it's really determined by a local school um the leader the local context as to what behavior management systems are put in place um the government kind of aren't they provide some set of guidelines but really leave it down to the schools to decide what's best for them in their context but we got this sense from our evidence that more emphasis is placed on approaches that really center on the use of sanctions and we also heard how behavior policies in schools can really take that one size fits all approach meaning that individual needs aren't always really recognized in responses to behavior and the majority of young people and parents and carers we spoke to told us that schools are not responsive to mental health needs or special educational needs and disabilities when dealing with behavioral issues and 61 of young people said they don't actually feel listened to when their behavior is being discussed at school we were also keen to understand um what behavior techniques would seem to be particularly harmful to children and young people so we looked at the government behavior guidance at kind of all the sanctions that schools can use and we asked in our survey for respondents to kind of rate those um lists of sanctions on a scale of not harmful to and harmful to mental health and we found that the use of removal rooms or otherwise known as isolation rooms were seen to be the most harmful technique deployed by schools um from the perspective of young people and parents and then use of fines and penalties for non-attendance permanent exclusions and suspensions as well as whole class punishment or also seen to be harmful to mental health as well and i know um a lot of conversations already been had tonight on use of exclusion and suspensions overall young people told us that experiencing punitive behavior management techniques did impact their mental health they said that made them feel worthless isolated invisible and for some young people it made them feel really disappointed in themselves as well and parents and carers reported that for their children and young people who had existing needs experiencing punitive behavior management and techniques really exacerbated existing mental health problems and we had a few quotes from parents where they said their child who was placed in the isolation room by themselves exacerbated their suicidal thoughts because they were sat in a room by themselves with kind of no support um there's this we've also briefly mentioned this tonight as well but something else we were we highlighted in our findings um was actually some groups of children and young people are more disproportionately impacted by punitive behavior policy policies and this included young people from racialized communities including black gypsy roma and traveler communities young people from low income backgrounds and also young people with special educational needs and disabilities and i've previously mentioned this but concerns were really raised about this one-size-fits-all approach to behavior and whether schools really understand their duties under the equality act particularly right relating to um disabilities one pushback we kept hearing when we were doing the inquiry and i think it always is quite prevalent um when talking about behavior in schools is what about the other 29 children in the classroom and where there is a child just being disruptive um how is that impacting on the rest of the class and yes we really recognize that misbehavior in the classroom it can cause learning to stop it can make children feel less safe and it can also impact on the relationships within that classroom but young people told us that seeing others being punished can sometimes make them feel a bit embarrassed and it can just make them feel a bit uncomfortable especially if they deem the punishment not to be fair and responding to behavior can be really seen as a zero sum zero sum game whereby if we give attention to the more disrupt disruptive pupils that will be at the expense of others in the classroom but what we found is that we need to have supportive school environments that where all children feel safe um and behavior expectations really recognize diversity i think it's really important to know that if we set out really clear behavior kind of expectations and guidance allowing for flexibility to know that for some young people that's not going to be possible for them to meet those expectations so what adjustments are we making for them to get the support they need to be able to flourish and thrive in school um and then finally one of the things we look the final things we looked at was effectiveness of behavior management um techniques um we wanted to actually see if punitive approaches to behavior were actually creating the change that they wanted to see in schools um and professionals told us how it's really important to have behavior management techniques in place of schools as part of school behavior policies so having something that schools can really use and deploy where there are incidences of bad behavior but young people and parents and carers took a slightly different view so whilst they said there was some short-term benefit in behavior management techniques particularly in getting that behavior to stop in the short term they found that um really punitive approaches weren't actually effective in improving behavior in the long term because they didn't address that underlying needs they didn't really explore what's causing the behavior and nothing's really done to kind of address that so finally i just want to cover what needs to change um and again i just kind of want to reiterate the message that um kind of john said and we've kind of had in the discussions but we understand and recognize the importance of having really clear expectations and boundaries in place around school behavior and we understand it's important to kind of communicate these expectations whilst also providing that supportive environment but what we found is that there needs to be this culture shift in how behavior is viewed in schools so rather than kind of having a young person misbehave sanctions put in place that's it we actually need to think about if this persistent poor behavior are we using that as an opportunity to identify need and intervene at an earlier stage and actually using that behavior to have a much more proactive approach to supporting young people and then some of the things that we've been been calling for um more a national level but firstly um is having this more coordinated approach to school policy so we've found that like behavior and attendance sits in one area we've got special educational needs and disabilities in another area and a mental health in another and actually how can we make sure that those three things are aligned and are working together so how are we making sure the work on behavior and attendance the mental health and special educational needs and disabilities are kind of recognized and throughout that i think we've started to see a shift towards that but um much more work can be done secondly we're calling for full implementation of whole educational approaches to mental health so looking at how we can create school cultures that really center and promote mental health and well-being in all that they do thirdly increasing the availability of mental health support in schools and we really want to see the full national rollout of mental health support teams and then finally um this is a really important point that john made that i just want to re-emphasize but schools cannot do this alone and we simply cannot blame schools for what is going on because they are having to contend with really tricky circumstances at the moment but also rely massively on systems of support that sit outside of schools so mental health services and we often hear about schools who refer out to cams but because of the cams waiting list or high thresholds referrals get rejected schools are left holding these kind of really complex and high-risk cases so actually by if we want to improve behavior in schools we also need to address some of the challenges that we're seeing in a wider system and i'd particularly emphasize the challenges that we're seeing in mental health services so that when schools identify need identify need in young people they are able to access really timely support but that's it from me um and yeah happy to take any questions thank you so much um Charlotte it was really really helpful i've got a very brief question and then i'll bring other panel uh other um commission members in it was just very briefly because you did touch on this but just about i know that you're calling for an end to sort of zero tolerance whole school and behavior approaches but were there any examples from the research that you did of what you considered to be really good practice in terms of promoting the sort of mental health and well-being of children and young people and you know could you see a difference in terms of you know where a more restorative or trauma-informed approach was taken and the you know feedback or perspectives that were shared with you from those um young people and their families yeah so we did speak to some schools as part of the inquiry and i would say the examples of best practice that we saw were those that really centered relationships at the heart of everything they do and really so promoting relational approaches um so i mentioned this to martin when we met but and there's a school in leeds a secondary school and they just put relationships at the heart of everything that they do um so they have these things called coaching circles um and every single staff member in the school has a coaching circle of students that they're responsible for so even people behind the reception uh dinner staff just to make sure that everyone's building those relationships with um with pupils and these coaching circles meet three times a week at the start of the week they can check in with the pupils see how their weekend was they have a midweek session which allows them to kind of address things like um financial education uh pshe kind of other kind of things that we might not have time to talk about in the school curriculum and then at the end of the week they have a check out with pupils before they go um away for the weekend and the school said to me that by having those circles and having really strong relationships between pupils and staff it enabled staff to know when something was not right with the pupils so the people came in on a monday and something was a bit off because they know their students really really well it enabled them to kind of act early and speak to that young person and provide the support rather than let it kind of escalate into misbehavior and kind of really punitive approaches um so i'd say relationships being at the heart of everything and i think it's really easy to do that in primary school maybe not as easy in secondary school thank you very much for that i've got councillor sizer others just so that i document who okay councillor sizer please um thank you so much for this i'm sort of grinning from ear to ear because there's so much good in the work that you've done so thank you um just wanting to ask a little bit about um send um especially as the direction of travel really does seem to be around inclusion so um just wondering what again looking at best practice what examples you've seen of reasonable adjustments that you think have really really helped with inclusion for send pupils so i will be upfront and honest with you that send isn't was an art area of expertise it was something that kept coming up in the inquiry and it meant that we kind of looked at it more so i haven't got any examples of kind of best practice that i can share now but what i can do is go away and speak to some colleagues um we're really well connected with something called the special educational needs consortium and the council for disabled children and i can share some information after the session if that would be helpful on um best practice schools yeah fantastic thank you but thank you for all your work thank you for that um councillor binny lovick please just a very quick one it was a really interesting to read all of the recommendations and the what you were saying about culture shift was especially interesting and about how behavior is viewed in schools i'm wondering how do we as a council and as individuals facilitate and promote that kind of shift and what are the the key blockages that you've encountered i think i'll start with the blockages i think the biggest thing that we found even just doing this work is attitudes um particularly around behavior we found that it's quite a toxic space and we got a lot of pushback for promoting the messages that we need to have this culture shift um and we found there's a real debate between like real strict behavior behaviorists and then also kind of people who want to take a different approach um so i think part of the journey will be changing attitudes of people and letting them know that you can still have really strong expectations around behavior and really good boundaries in place but at the same time we can be create these really supportive environments um and be really kind um to young people who you're in the school system so that's the biggest thing that um we found was changing attitudes and taking schools on that journey with you um there is in brighton and i think it's gloucestershire a couple of councils have started this journey and i have connected martin with them but um for example brighton council um their send in their inclusion service issued a relationships policy to the all their schools um to look at you know kind of change the approach to behavior and promote relational approaches so things like that that can be done um is like looking at the policies to schools and then uh in for example in gloucestershire they set up a restorative uh practice network where they bring schools together uh they provided training on trauma aces and try to encourage schools to kind of um use more restorative approaches to behavior and giving schools the resources to be able to do that thank you councillor vorden please yeah thank you so much for your um presentation um so um just really briefly um you've made a number of recommendations to national government i just um yeah and i've said i just wonder what whether you've what your response so far has been to that and what sort of ongoing dialogue you're having and then um you've touched on this a little bit i mean obviously the the focus of this inquiry is in relation to the role of the local partly relation to the role of the local authority and we have um a you know limited direct role in some of our schools i mean i just wonder whether you've thought of making any recommendations in terms of local authorities and if so what what would they be um you know what what recommendations might you think about making making to us so the ongoing dialogue with government um i'm just trying to think about how to phrase this because um but we engaged when we first published the inquiry with the previous in government and we met with the then schools minister nick gibb um we took a young person alongside along with us to meet with him um who i think was receptive to the findings of the inquiry and at the time the kind of policy was warm was warm strict that was what they wanted to see schools to be uh but i'd say we kind of had limited engagement with the new government um we haven't engaged as such on this issue with them just yet but we are seeing some positive indications so we've seen the education secretary talk a lot more about thriving and belonging in school so we are hopeful um that we will kind of see that translate into a shift on behavior um we did some recommendations i think i'd have to look back but our ones for kind of local systems were targeted more icbs and that was around um commissioning and the funding of mental health services within the local area i mean our main recommendations for local authorities mainly for national government just to give local authorities more funding to be able to do the work and to do it really well and to be able to deliver support for young people i think having like really effective send provision having youth services um effective children's services i think first local authorities just need to be get to give it be to be given the resource and investment to be able to do to provide all of that support to young people and families because i think that is part of this issue that we're seeing around behavior thank you very much we've got final two questions um councillor turvitt lost sorry did you have your hand up and not because of councilor turvitt you off no okay and then we've got councillor ross okay so final three very very briefly if we can because we've still got whitney to come in thank you so thank you chet thank you so much um it really is i'm a mental health therapist for children young people as well and it's really as councillor size i say it's music to my ears to hear about your report it's really wonderful especially when you say that behavior is a way of communication including no communication i will say and and and i will also add that behavior is the mirror of our mental health so this is really good that we're looking into in that direction it would be great to see as well there is a humanistic approach uh that is also implemented within the recommendations as well my colleagues have asked the question i had about the recommendations um so i'm just wanted to check about your thoughts on a universal framework perhaps that we could have at schools because i am worried that the reason um the recommendations hopefully they will be accepted and we'll see what national government does but it's open for interpretation um we have heard things like for example the fear healthy fear uh sort of techniques implemented in schools and some schools say well actually that's positive or some some schools say it's negative so it will be good to have a universal framework that is applied as a foundation in all schools that has the minimum that we expect on how kids should be treated young people should be treated how they should be communicated and parents how they should be supported with mental health at the core of that foundation meaning that we have a humanistic approach a person-centered approach to all the all the way in which we handle the behavior in young people in in those schools but i would like to hear what your thoughts are on the universal framework thank you yeah i love that idea um i think having something that really sets the direction for schools of what you want them to be delivering i think would be really useful um i'm not sure if you're aware but the london um violence reduction unit i think it was last year or the year before they um published a charter for inclusive schools and i think that might be a really helpful starting point um would be to encourage schools in your borough to sign up to that um it was co-produced with young people and it's a really brilliant charter so i think using that as your starting point and then maybe building the framework around around that but it might be worth chatting to the vru if you haven't already had conversations with them to find out about how they've gone about trying to create a framework for um all of london we yes thank you we if we have this actually and that's a really good point to to bring up because we brought the invitation to to the council about no solutions in the schools and we were working with them so thank you for pointing out i think you should i mean i'll share it with the commission thank you thank you very much um councillor ross and then cancer sister runga please thanks sure um thank you again for your presentation and all the work you're doing um you touched earlier as well on um transgressions of school behavior codes um and i just wondered to what extent your research uncovered if schools analyzed if their school behavior policies um and how they impacted children and if they assessed if they were underlying needs that were not being met um i just double check the question um just so it was just checking where there's transgressions of school behavior policies whether that had an impact on um young people's mental health well it was more random when there's repeat transgressions um repeat transgressions of behavior codes at schools did your research find that schools themselves were actually picking up on that basically were schools analyzing that there are unmet needs and were those schools addressing them so we didn't look at that at that specifically um so i would probably be able to say kind of based on our research um and i think my my hunch would be that it'd probably be on a school by school basis as to whether kind of schools would look at that repeat repeat transgressions and the impact it's having on pupils but that's not something we looked at um in this research um so yeah sorry that i can't um kind of help more with that question yeah 20 minutes thank you chair um i think counselor covered my point about communication which is behavior being about communication not necessarily something that's a problem to be something that's a problem to be managed so my my question is really can we be assured is there a timetable is there any form structure for schools um reviewing their co-production practices um we don't have a timetable as search for this but i think any review that is done i think needs to have young people at the center and parents and carers as well um i think that's something that would be really important so i don't know if i've answered that question um uh obviously you haven't got any details but what my thing about is there is an assurance that there is a wheel to go forward that way do you mean from schools or from um well schools co-production processes yes in respect we're saying behavior is communication it isn't necessarily a problem to be managed it is what young people are telling us and what the children are telling us uh it's communication so i'm i'm saying basically is there you can't tell me a timetable but is there a will to go forward and to really press for co-production practices obviously if you can't answer that that's fine i respect that thank you yeah i i think again that's dependent on schools uh some schools that we spoke to do that co-production listen to young people are you getting that feeling from them that feedback from the limited small number of schools that we spoke to um but i wouldn't my again my guess would be i don't think that's universal across the country and i think just because it's it's probably quite timely for schools it's it's probably quite hard to know and how do you do it in a way that's kind of not tokenistic so no i wouldn't be able to answer but my hunch would be that i don't think there is that will from across schools to be able to do that work thank you thank you so much i think we're going to have to move on um to whitney now please i'm just conscious that we have said to our um external contributors that they can leave at 8 45 and i know that we're going to have as many questions for whitney as we've all been we've had for the others so over to you please whitney great thank you so much good evening everyone uh i also have some slides to share but i hopefully there are now instructions in the chat but i'm still struggling um i could i could probably share it if you want to you've sent them to me haven't you yeah that might be helpful thanks martin okay thanks so i'm going to be speaking primarily about exclusionary practice that kind of part of the picture from the perspective of kind of data and research because i'm a researcher um and kind of what what we know from the research and what we don't uh can we go to the next slide please so i'm going to start at the kind of national level um which i think is uh important when we're talking about kind of culture and and the kind of the messaging from the top so i'm going to start with kind of what national government guidance has to say about the use of exclusion behavior management um i'm going to then move on to kind of national data what we know about uh the different types of exclusion um and what has sort of changed uh through the kind of pandemic and some of the drivers of of those changes that we see in the data i'm then going to focus in on local variation and speculate a bit about what might be driving some of the kind of different rates and exclusion that we see in hackney compared to other inner london boroughs i'm then going to briefly touch on the evidence around school approaches to reducing exclusion and then i'm just going to finish up with some findings from a piece of research we published recently looking at all pupils in england who experience exclusion and suspension and kind of some of their outcomes what happened to them post 16 and in early adulthood next slide please so i think it's first really important to highlight um that we talk a lot about permanent exclusion and suspension but these are not the only types of exclusionary practice these are the ones that we know most about because there is data that is published on them um but there's you know a whole kind of long list of different types of exclusionary practice that involve you know removing pupils from school rules involve removing them from the classroom or from the school site um that are kind of less transparent and i think it's also important to recognize especially when we're talking about you know preventing exclusion that often these experiences exist on us on a spectrum they're it's the same groups of young people the same young people who are experiencing multiple of these types of exclusion they might be you know suspended once or twice go on to experience a managed move perhaps that's not successful they experience another managed move and they eventually kind of just end up falling out of mainstream education and are picked up by the proof so in terms of kind of a prevention angle we need to be looking at these kind of less serious types of exclusion uh in addition to the more kind of serious more well documented types of exclusion uh next slide please so i pulled out some i think notable parts of um the kind of most recent version of the various kind of guidance documents so in england um the stance of the government is that suspensions exclusions are an essential behavior management tool which contrasts for example with um guidance from scotland which i think might be worth looking at where there's a much more of a focus on inclusion and uh exclusion as a really kind of temporary measure to support pupils and get them kind of back into mainstream education um in england's guidance you know it says schools in la should not adopt no exclusions policy um some pupils may sort of uh be able to access support through exclusion uh and you know ap and that is going to be something that is necessary for that pupil um pupils can also be legally suspended for up to 45 days so this is um of course more rare to be suspended for that many days but it is kind of legally allowed for pupils to miss close to a quarter of school days which is you know going to have an impact on their learning recently guidance has kind of expanded to touch on some of these different types of exclusion that we know less about so i think that's in recognition of the fact that schools are using them and have been using them for for many years and the national kind of government is now deciding to kind of lay out some uh some kind of parameters around how they should be used there's also an increasing focus and this has been touched on um a bit previously on uh the need to adapt behavior policies to make adjustments for pupils with special educational needs but this relies on the assumption that schools know who the pupils are that have special educational needs and that is an issue that i'll get into a little later on uh next slide please so uh here are two charts that show how the permanent exclusion rate and the suspension rate um suspension rate on the left from exclusion rate on the right have changed from the kind of from when we start kind of having data that dfe publishes right up until the latest year of data 2023 you can see that rising exclusions and suspensions were the trend especially in secondary schools pre-pandemic but then through the pandemic there's a bit of a kind of blip there that's that gray bar and then after the pandemic we see a big jump in the rate of suspensions and a slight rise in the rate of exclusions but essentially we're right now at like some of the highest levels of permanent exclusion that we've seen since kind of record begin and the highest level of suspensions uh next slide please why is this the case i mean i think you know we've touched on the range of issues that the things that young people are dealing with right now um with the the through the other speakers um so worsening mental health there's a lot of data showing that that has gotten worse since 2017 and kind of through the pandemic um this obviously has translated into behavior issues we've touched on the link uh quite heavily between mental health and behavior um but young people feeling less engaged feeling less motivated um looking forward to the future less there's lots of kind of qualitative evidence that the pandemic has had that effect um and the kind of starkest indicator of this is the the big rise in absence rates that we've seen um we've also seen widening gaps so there's always been a big attainment gap in england between young people who are from no disadvantaged backgrounds and those who are um from more affluent backgrounds but this has grown through the pandemic so young people who are eligible for free school meals have fallen kind of even further behind next slide please so just briefly um kind of what do we know about kind of national data on the different types of exclusions or the kind of less uh less uh transparent types of exclusion that i mentioned kind of earlier so we've done some work looking at pupil exits from schools um and the education system that are not according to the data due to you know the people's family moving house or leaving the country or having a parent or carer in this um so not a kind of family related reason but potentially a reason that is to do with the school pushing the people out we found that these exits which we've called unexplained because we can't really tell why they're happening in the data um affect one in ten pupils in a secondary cohort this pre-pandemic data so this is you know tons of thousands of pupils that are exiting a school we don't really know why um some of these are going to be managed moves some of these will be cases of off-rolling and you do see a really big kind of spike in these exits in kind of the end of year 10 first term of year 11 which to me is a sign that this is you know off-rolling is part of this picture um off-site direction we we now kind of have more data on that in the in the kind of school census so the data covering kind of all pupils in england it's relatively rare um it's still still you know thousands of pupils that are being directed off-site and we don't really know what type of provision they are receiving um that data is going to be released in future but we don't really know what sort of learning or what type of experiences those those pupils are having and then internal exclusion isolation boost this has also been touched on earlier um lots of terms for this um you know internal ap um some approaches are more therapeutic some more disciplinary but again this is something that we have very little um insight into we know it's a very widespread but we don't know um you know what happens to pupils who are being internally excluded what type of um provision and support that they're getting there's just not really a lot of data on that next slide please so this very uh messy chart is essentially showing um exclusion rates starting from 2006 2007 the kind of earliest year up until the latest year of data for um hackney and some other inner london boroughs i haven't included all of them because it would just be too confusing it already is very confusing but you'll see hackney is the kind of brighter neon green line um and you'll see it it's consistently from about 2013 it is in the kind of higher well i guess a bit earlier than that it is consistently kind of higher compared with other boroughs but there is quite a lot of year-on-year variation which i think is worth worth highlighting um obviously post pandemic um you see there is kind of a rise again happening across multiple boroughs but hackney is sort of higher than most um but i think it'll be interesting to kind of see what what trends kind of look like once things kind of settle down more post pandemic um next slide please so why is this the case why do we see this kind of level of local variation especially in kind of inner london when there's we see you know there's similar levels of deprivation i mean this very slightly similar levels of um you know uh racialized communities of of of of ethnic diversity in these in these areas um so what do we know from the research we know that schools and local authorities play a role in this kind of variation exclusion rates so in one city um uh the the researchers find that schools account for about 20 which is really kind of a big statistically speaking a big amount of the variation in suspension rates and local authorities account for six which sounds low but again this is quite substantial from a statistical perspective so schools in la's and the approaches that they're using statistically have been shown to be an important part of this picture and i think one question that i would ask about hackney's relatively high permanent exclusion rate are the surrounding boroughs that have lower permanent exclusion rates are they using other types of exclusion like managed moves which are less transparent like there's less oversight we just don't see that those exclusions are really happening in the data i think the role of academization is a really interesting question as well and i'm just going to highlight that in regards to two reports one of which we just published last week one is coming out this week um we looked at the variation in identification of special educational needs in one of them and we found that schools were actually the most important factor for whether a pupil is identified as having a special educational need or not so regardless of the the pupil their characteristics their actual level of need it's the school that they attend that is making the most difference and we find that in areas where there's higher levels of academization pupils are less likely to be identified with send um so that could be part of this picture um we've also in a report that's about to come out so i'm not going to get into too much detail because it hasn't been published but we look at how um fsm eligibility rates relate to local kind of poverty rates and looking at where there's a kind of imbalance there and we find that in areas with higher levels of deprivation so hacking would be included there there are more young people who are who are kind of probably under registered for fsm so there's this level of disadvantage that may not be kind of fully recognized by schools there's also potentially part of the picture a kind of under recognition of spend i'm speculating here but this is you know speculating in a kind of based on the evidence type of way and i'm happy to share those um two reports um after the session um in terms of pupil level drivers we've touched a bit on the inequalities the long-standing disparities and exclusion rates that exist for young people from certain racialized community communities or young people with special educational needs for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds but again it's hard to it's hard to say that this is what is playing the role in the kind of slightly higher rate of exclusion we see in hackney because you know other local authorities also have a kind of similar socio-demographic characteristics uh next slide please so what do we know about interventions to reduce exclusions i mean short answer is we don't have a lot of robust evidence um that's not to say there aren't good things that schools are doing right now that just to say that they aren't being studied or evaluated um some older evidence reviews basically suggest the evidence base is quite weak but they talk about things like you know mentoring programs having a bit of an effect for a few months um but that kind of peters out um i i just came across a recent review by the welsh government highlighting that in terms of universal approaches a more of this kind of culture shift permanent change type of thing is shown to be kind of effective so embedding restorative practice employing a kind of school-wide whole school approach to behavior management which we've talked about earlier and in terms of targeted interventions they again support this idea of mentoring programs um showing more consistent positive outcomes but the short answer is we don't have just a lot of evidence out of england or the uk about about what works again that's just based on data that's not necessarily going to be true for what schools are doing right now um next slide please oh oh yeah there we go so i just wanted to finish up here with uh as i mentioned earlier a piece of research we published recently um which i think really brings home the fact that exclusion is part of this bigger picture of disadvantage and marginalization for young people um looks at kind of five outcomes um at age 19 and age 24 and this is for all people who've ever experienced suspension or exclusion um so you'll see the kind of outcomes in the titles at the top there so whether they achieved a level three qualification entered higher education were in employment education or training or received benefits and you'll see that those who are permanently excluded there's a very high proportion of these young people who are not achieving good outcomes at these older ages which ties in with kind of what we know uh existing evidence but also there's a very high number of young people who are experiencing um many suspensions who are kind of similar at similar levels of those who are permanently excluded in terms of like the bad or the more sort of poor outcomes that we're seeing at these later ages um so this is not a causal study this is not saying exclusion is causing all of these things but i would like to highlight we have growing numbers of studies that are using causal methods linking exclusion to poor labor market and poor health and well-being outcomes in adulthood so really i think growing evidence um supporting the idea of really questioning the high the high levels of exclusion we see in england and um and you know what the kind of drivers are and and trying to kind of reduce those levels or at least reduce the impact of exclusion on on young people and i will finish there thank you so much for that whitney i'm conscious that we don't have very much time so if much members can indicate they want to ask a question i will kick us off with a very brief one which is just to say how disappointing it is to hear that there isn't really an evidence base for what works and it sort of begs the question then so then what are we doing because you know how what is guiding any approach that we're taking to anything if we don't actually know what works you know it's it's a bit you know when we're talking about how do we how do we not just as a local authority but obviously this is far bigger than us how do we how do we set a standard and say this is what inclusion looks like this is the expectations that we have of schools if there's actually not a standard to measure that against or an evidence basis yeah i don't know if that's more of a comment rather than a a question really um deputy mayor bramble and thank you chair and apologies for not making the declaration earlier i am on the advisory board to the education policy institute but please note that i haven't had any input into the presentation it's more high level and strategic so about how we set the priorities as the board and how we lobby and approach government and for example uh maybe influence or decide on the papers that we might research so just wanted to say that and apologies again for not mentioning that at the beginning of the meeting chair thank you councillor bini-lubbock and then councillor tebert to off please thanks that was a really uh really useful um report um uh it was really following on from your comment actually like who should be collecting the data on the effective interventions who should be making that data on a bit uh you know we've constantly frustrated by the lack of data on you know those as you said like softer um uh it's all exclusions and managed moves and those kinds of things and lastly you know we don't actually see them as a software because we know that they have a massive impact on individuals um so there's this seems like there's a gap of data there there also seems to be a gap in the speed of data reporting because obviously the stuff that you're looking at is long term uh i would like to see the quicker data boards about where we're seeing um spikes in uh in exclusions because that that reporting seems to be so slow that once once it's happened we can't react to it um but yeah my big question is who should be collecting that data around the effective interventions yeah very good questions um so on the point about the kind of delayed data releases i mean yeah let's take that up with dfe i mean that is just kind of the yeah there's always there's always the significant delay especially when it comes to exclusions data we um we a lot of the analysis that we do look in the more hidden types of exclusion on secure data that we request um and again there's always um quite a delay in that so we yeah it's it's hard to have you know a really up-to-date picture of what is going on and and to be able to respond in an up-to-date way um uh you know so yeah it's a it's a problem i don't really have a solution to that um who should be collecting data on intervention i mean it's something that local authorities could be doing right if they had an idea of things that were being um tried in schools things you know interventions or different types of approaches you know um some of the interventions that charlotte mentioned uh in in her uh presentation i mean it's if local authorities were collecting you know had an idea of some of the measures that they wanted to see change um after the intervention was implemented if there was data collected on on those beforehand the intervention is implemented there's some evaluation of how that went um you know uh interviewing stakeholders things like that and then you look at how the measures change afterwards i mean it's something that could be could be undertaken at the local level because we do know that there are individual schools groups of schools that are trying these different types of uh approaches to inclusion more restorative approaches relational approaches it is happening and we do have good feedback you know charlotte mentioned some as well so i don't want to paint an overly negative picture saying we have no evidence of what works it's just based on these big systematic reviews that are looking at randomized control trials you know there's there's strict inclusion criteria there isn't a huge amount of robust evidence saying this is the way this is the one way that we're going to solve this that that is kind of what i was trying to get across there are pockets of practice there are things happening and it's something that local authorities could be taking upon themselves to evaluate i think yeah it's a good point whitney i think we we probably share your perspective in the various different pieces of work that we've we've done we've definitely seen examples locally of fantastic practice where both children and and young people and their parents and carers have you know commented on that i think that for me the concern is around especially which i might bring this question to um john at some point around how how do we hold schools how how are we expected to have like a framework where we're able to provide some guidance and to to inspect schools on what the expectation is if there if there isn't a sort of at a very basic level of one size fits all i know that's going against what we've just been saying but if there is not just one approach that we're able to say that we know works in terms of inclusion um so yeah anyway um counselor thank you chase following up a little bit of what you said thank you whitney i put my screen here because your report looks fantastic and i have to really from here i couldn't see from the big screen um we need just a quick thing so it is very as counselor vinilo what was saying from the chair it's really sad to hear that we don't have evidence-based data but we know that there is data on good performance from schools and how schools are doing so it is possible to collect data my view and it might be a controversial view is that i think that the data actually often is is hoped to be hidden because there is an visibility of what is going wrong in schools especially academies now i think that actually the question will be for think tanks like yourself start doing such great work what could be the questions that we local authorities should be also asking to help you help us do the work of proper scrutiny because we do know from the data and we can see it you know we can see happening for example we have the highest level of exclusions and suspensions in inner london boroughs but we also know that neighboring boroughs don't have as many suspensions and exclusions so what are they doing that we're not doing what are they doing well that we're not doing right so what can we perhaps then think what are those questions or parameters that we can think that we can implement so you can help us you we can help you help us thank you yeah no i mean i think that would be a really interesting and obviously useful to you and useful in general research question um i think it would involve a mixed methods approach in that we we could use some of the quantitative data that we have which is not going to paint a complete picture but we can at the local level look at the publicly available measures you know permanent exclusions suspensions absences things like that and then we can look at with the secure data that we have some of the more hidden types of exclusion and we could see how those how those compare across in our for example how it's compared to national averages um and then the qualitative component it would be really necessary you have to go and ask you know what is what is it that is going on here um that may be driving these different exclusion rates um i do i would say that there isn't a massive difference between hackney it is it is higher but i would say that the differences are subtle um but that's not to say that you know us or other think tanks couldn't be kind of commissioned to do to do this work to kind of find out i think what is going on um but i think there's there's limits to how far the data can can take us right i think it needs to be there needs to be this qualitative work this type of work that charlotte was doing with with their review um at the the the coalition um to find out kind of what you know what what are stakeholders saying what is actually going on at the really kind of micro level councillor boardman please yes thanks um very much whitney a couple of really um sort of um brief reflections on on what you've been saying i mean um again picking up the point about um you know the insufficiency of evidence based on what works um and i think we've had um you know heard earlier in the evening really about the fact that there are sort of quite a lot of sort of strong polarized views really um on this topic um and it's interesting to sort of suppose that really with the sort of um with the the evidence base so you know um and i think that's obviously one of the things we're going to be exploring more in the sort of you know the course of this um investigation um i suppose a couple of really quick comments in terms of um the data in hackney and also the sort of helpful health warnings you you put on it um i suppose the thing that's sort of immediately um jumped jumped into my mind in relation to the um increase in sanctions for hackney including exclusions is that we've got really significant um number of children um out of school since pandemic in that same period so so i think that makes that that jump look even more you know if if um if those children up it look even more stark during that period the significant amount of children i'm out of school the other thing that um and i may have got this wrong is that my understanding was that hackney's got quite high um figures in terms of ehcps um as well so i think those those were two sort of points that just sort of occurred to me in looking at that data i mean this is something we're going to obviously be i can see the um officers may have um reflections on that as well but i mean these are things that just sort of jumped out at me in in relation to that and we could be exploring this in the course of the um investigation um so um i suppose really um yeah i'm sorry oh no i'll stop in it i'll stop in a minute um okay maybe i'll stop there yeah yeah sorry yeah so i mean i think those are yeah really valid points um i think on the the children who are just not in school missing school missing a lot of school again that that is sort of hidden in in the data i think it's a big part of the picture i think also elective i put it in quotations because sorry elective home education because a lot of we know a lot of children are being pulled out of school not because their their parents or carers want to but because they just cannot get their needs met in school and it is a very kind of stressful environment to them not conducive to their well-being so that is a really important part of this exclusion picture as well um on the ehtp and send point yes obviously we see a much higher rate of exclusion in that group of young people i was looking at the data earlier um i i i i mean i i take what you're saying about hackney having higher levels of ehtps i think i'm not sure if that would be like the standout reason or or kind of the defining the defining kind of factor here that is driving this but i think looking at those people groups that we know are at higher risk of exclusion what that looks like in hackney compared to other areas that's going to be important part of of this review for sure thank you very much that i'm conscious of time um don't have any other questions i wanted to ask john a final question i suppose just based on some of the contributions that we've had both from whitney and charlotte and that was i suppose around that point about the evidence base and just thinking about what we're trying to achieve with this piece of work recognizing the limitations of course how do we figure out what best practices um can you know and and how how has ofsted done that without having that clear evidence base that says that restorative relational you know that to have an example of of what a behavior policy um management policy should look like both to promote good behavior and inclusion um i'll try and answer that in a couple of ways one is we have published in 2019 some research that we've done and we will be publishing more on that so i think there's quite a bit in that research about what works well and so that's the first point the other interesting thing while i was listening to uh whitney uh speaking and charlotte i was looking at the um the data for hackney for um 2021-22 which i think is the most recent published data and correct me if i'm wrong whitney but i think it's goes back around that time it's really interesting to look at the suspension rates for schools in a trust compared to schools in hackney who aren't in the trust there's a significant difference in the rate of suspension um it's about two and a half times more um in terms of suspension rates for schools in a trust so there's something there about trying to understand what it is that makes that difference there's also a significant difference in the permit exclusion rates between schools in a trust in hackney and schools in not in a trust it's about four times higher so there's something there that there are some schools that are working well and it goes back to my point about analysis if schools are analyzing what's working well you should be able to tap into that be it at a trust level or at a state-funded school level so i think there is something to be said for asking schools about the analysis they do because we do that on inspection there's nothing stopping you asking for that analysis and i think that will tell you quite a bit i see whitney kind of nodding hopefully in agreement but there is a stark difference between schools in a trust and schools not i know when you compare suspension rates in camden which is you know a local authority very close by the difference between state funded and and trust schools is not as stark as it is in hackney so there's something there that is worth exploring a final question from councillor bill lubbock please a question as a comment which is uh when we were talking about doing our own research or when you're talking about looking at the research that schools have done i do fear that there might be a risk of confirmation bias and things like that if we haven't got that kind of deep level data so i mean i think uh when he's very uh right to say that we've to back up with the qualitative work is really important yeah yeah i'd like to thank everybody now i'm gonna let you get oh sorry did you want to come in yeah i did it at some point i mean just listening to the different contributions and i think it's been incredibly interesting and i'm just reflecting on the final point i think that you just made john about the difference in in trusts and i think i don't know if you're referring to secondaries i suspect jason do you want to introduce yourself just oh sorry i'm jason i'm the director of education inclusion i know john quite well but i don't know the other contributors so um pleased pleased to meet you um i was just kind of reflecting on that um and i think you know i know that some of our trusts do try to find other solutions within their school so there's just an interesting point there um but if it's all right if i just kind of give a contribution now um i think i would probably just begin by saying some probably just reiterating points that were already made we know that schools set their own policies um and we know that they implement them so i think it's really important as we undertake this work that we're really clear about where we can make change and where we can make influence and the best ways of doing that um what i would point out is i just want to go back i think the work you did on exclusions i know we're looking at behavior management and inclusion which i you know i think is is right to take that focus on inclusion but we have been talking a lot about exclusion this evening and i just want to reference back to the recommendations made by this commission in 2021 which were responded to by hacking in 2022 and i think of the 18 of them um there are 13 that are actually quite pertinent to work that my service is doing right now which i've spoken about i think with with some uh parties here but not everybody um i just want to go back to i think a point that was made a couple of times i think charla made it you know schools have to be seen as part of the system and and i think many contributors spoke about the role of the la um and i think we offer some really positive things i'm thinking about well-being and mental health that was mentioned today our wams program we know is is really kind of trailblazing in in the support that it offers we have a very successful re-engagement unit one of the recommendations made by this commission was to expand that to secondary which has been done but if i'm being honest i think our system needs a lot more our young people need a lot more their families need a lot more our schools need a lot more because we use our schools as the vehicles in which to deliver that so um we're looking at that right now we're looking at that offer and what we provide uh because if i look at some of the la's our neighboring la's which have been referenced tonight which appear to be doing this better although i take the point that um wendy's made about managed moves um so you kind of have to look behind some of that data but they just seem to be offering a lot more at various different levels and we've identified three as part of what we're calling heels our hackney education alternative learning service um we talk about alternative provision a lot and i know we spoke you spoke about that in your commission i think we just have to be a bit careful because um the way that we're envisaging this is this begins with a support offer in school to try and and then enable as many young people to stay in school as possible so we are offering some but a lot of our neighboring la's and the research that we've done seem to be offering much more and that's the work that we want to be looking at and developing that right now um some la's that appear to be doing this well from from my point of view are actually using community partners to deliver a lot of that work in fact some are using hackney community partners but we're not so we'll be looking at how we can do that in a much more coordinated and effective way and offering that to our schools um so we're sort of calling that tier one that outreach offer to schools um again i said we're looking at that right now we're getting parental input through our send an ap parent partnership board i think we need to look at how we get young people's input that's work that we're engaging in right now um but that isn't quite done yet and we're certainly working on this with our schools um in in terms of so that would be a support offer that i look forward to bringing to you and i hope that this work will bring that forward i know it's something our schools really need another point i wanted to make i think sometimes schools get i was a head teacher so you know you have your different stages of your behavior policy but if you're not able to support children at right levels to get through that policy quickly if that makes sense and i don't know that we've been supporting our schools well enough to help them engage their policies at the earlier levels i think they do need that support which which colleagues have mentioned today um but we know that some children sadly won't be able to remain in their schools so one of the things you talked about was that hackney education relationship with new regents college i think i just want to make sure everyone's aware that new regents is currently looking for a new head teacher um there is an executive head teacher arrangement in place that that person has given many years to to a hackney school and new regents is retiring um so um we're working with new regents to look at the delivery of heels in coordination with new regents so through a new service level agreement the head teacher of new regents will be able to lead on this along with other officers but i want you to see it as outreach we know that proofs have connotations and and you know i think there's an opportunity to look at how we do that and to look at how we offer that support and what our proof can look like again looking at um you know building on the good work that they've done but looking at what other neighbors are doing as well um and just to come on just i think something that whitney just said um you know what about children who just have we haven't found that right provision for them and i think that's where our tier three kind of level to this comes in what alternative arrangements have we got in place um through work that jackie's done we now have a really strong commissioning function which is really finding its feet which can help us really broaden our offer and make sure that we do have um you know a really wide offer the boxing academy which is a really strong um outstanding provision in hackney is one example but we need more we need more because i think the point was well made tonight that um needs have really increased i think we've seen that so i just wanted the commission to really understand the work that we're doing and we're engaging in right now and a lot of these things are live so i hope that this can form a part of the work that you do it's live work so it's not reviewing it's actually inputting into something so i just wanted to make that point thank you very much i am conscious of time i've got two two hands up and i'm going to ask that you be very brief because you're not scheduled to speak today so i'm going to be firm i'm afraid um deputy mayor um mayor woodley and then deputy bramble please all i wanted to add because i think um what you heard from jason was the the sort of the will to improve the will to learn and the will to engage and um and i think actually the work that this this commission is is now doing um is really helpful towards that so the only all i want to add is that there is a context here um in terms of the pressure on schools that we're seeing with falling rolls uh closures and mergers and the wider pressure across our borough and pan london in terms of housing need overcrowding temporary accommodation all of that and i think as we progress um with the work it'd be really good if we look outside the education and to the wider sort of landscape that that our children are engaging with and how that impacts as well and i know our educators have also done an awful lot of work to try and support our children not only to continue to be educated through periods of crisis whether it's the pandemic or otherwise um but are also trying to support them with with really basic things sometimes with food support or um connections to advice um in ways that they can sometimes support their parents you know i'm thinking about carers and so on so i i i think i just want to add that there's a need for that kind of um whole child whole family whole borough holistic approach thank you on that point very briefly um mayor woodley i think that just goes to show why it's so important for this piece of work that we're doing for us to hear from schools because if we have an absence of voices through this then we're not going to hear the bits that are missing and that aren't working in particular in so far as the relationship between schools and the local authority if we're you know so i i really hope this is an appeal to those of you in the room today or listening on the live stream we really want to hear as many sort of contributions towards this piece as possible to get a sense of what what we think are the challenges what we think are the examples of best practice and what we think um you know can be promoted to to to try and um to change those spikes we don't want to see them anymore we we don't want to see um yeah that our lines towards the top of graphs anymore i think those of us who've been in this commission for long enough uh you know would like to see the trends changing and outcomes for our young people um improving in that sense um and i know that there's probably lots of examples of good practice that we can draw on that will will help us to achieve that um so yeah um deputy mayor bramble and then thank you thank you chair i just want to acknowledge the work that the primary schools are doing we've got one permanent exclusion over the last five years which i think is some good lessons to learn from and we need to lean into that we've brought a lot of challenge to secondary school but what we haven't done is brought the provision and jason's spoken a lot about the provision that we're going to provide to work with secondary schools for that data to change at the moment and what but what i would say what maybe i haven't heard enough about that doesn't account mitigate disproportionality lack of provision uh challenges uh and the may set up challenging concepts but no challenge in context mitigates why black and global majority children children which send should be more likely to be excluded than any other child and i really think that's important we don't we don't forget that it's really important that that sticks in our minds in terms of context and and delivery and challenge but we want to acknowledge the work that is going on in schools yes because our secondary primary schools have led the way and our secondary schools are working want to work more closely with us and as i said the provision jason has set out is a response to being able to work more closely and improve those and exclusion rates thank you chair thank you just thinking about a point that jason made around you know the focus of this piece is about inclusion and behavior management but we've been focusing a lot on exclusion which i i've been grappling with that since you've you've mentioned it because i think often the example of where inclusion isn't working is where there's evidence of exclusion so you know i just want us to hold in mind that the the focus on exclusion is perhaps not so much in a way that the assumption is that inclusion is working well for everybody else and that's maybe where we need to be sort of you know taking some learning from and i think that we're on the point that deputy mayor bramble has made um in so far as um you know when i mentioned everybody else is that the people who got the earlier diagnosis is that the young people who have certain provisions at home who are not in temporary accommodation who are have not been moving around who aren't experiencing domestic abuse is is you know and for everybody else if we're noticing trends with those young people there are there are consistent themes that are experienced throughout then we know that perhaps inclusion is working less well for those peoples and that's where the work needs to happen um so yeah on that on that point we have to keep in mind that that this is about inclusion and that's where we're coming at i think with the recommendations but you know it will mean that we have to look at where that isn't working sorry i've kept you guys for significantly longer than i'd i think it was intended to and most of that was just listening to me talking so i'm sorry for that but thank you so much for joining us this evening and and for answer and for giving really detailed um presentations and and answering lots of questions from us we are um really grateful to you to you all thank you so much and please feel free to leave um so members of the commission i mean we were hoping to have some time to sort of reflect on the scope and the work plan for this review i don't know if there are any contributions in light of today or in light of the scoping document that has been shared in the supplementary agenda um bright and paint it's in the supplementary um no so item five is full estate so it's we're still on we're still on i think one thing that stands out for me is the need to really look at what happens in other authorities those that have you know low exclusion high achievement rates you know the the the data doesn't you know doesn't correlate you know you've got um high achievement and low exclusion rates for example in town hamlets you've got high exclusion rates and lesser achievement in kensington and chelsea so there's you know there's a lot of disparity in that data so i think you know we we should be looking at a selection of similar authorities and looking behind that data how many of them are maps how many of them are local authority run you know and and let that guide our our direction you know for the future you know like where we look for good practice um you know we may find good practice in in that but i think we may also find some very good practice in you know maintain stores and uh we need to be chasing that and finding out you know and then the other the other point i think is you know this lack of really you know a way of garnering good practice is a real concern and you know it seems to be left down to individual schools and individual government bodies you know to um develop their own systems for impact assessments um you know that very often around the pupil premium i think they look at you know how impactful was pupil premium in terms of raising attainment and um addressing you know the needs of children with special educational needs there's got to be a better way there's got to be a better way i i would suggest maybe um deputy mayor bramble in her capacity as a um you know a member of the board of the institute of education policy you know maybe that is a piece of work that they really need to hone in on and um you know perhaps something that they could commission i don't know but those are my principal observations chair thank you very much just on that point and council childson it occurred to me as i can't remember who it was who was speaking earlier on today but just how different things are beginning that i'm observing as a parent of a seven-year-old are beginning to look in the primary school setting and you know i just in terms of behavior change models that we are sort of promoting i think it might may have been charlotte who mentioned the distinction between behavior policies that say you must not do x versus the ones that say what they want you to do which reminds me of now in primary schools you frequently hear teachers say gentle hands rather than no hitting so there's an evidence base there that suggests that you shouldn't be telling children what you don't want them to do but instead you should be telling them about the behavior that you want to see but i only see that in primary schools and i don't know whether that's because that's an early years approach i don't know whether what's the secondary school equivalent to that what's the you know so i really do think that we might want to really have a look at what is going on in the primary school settings where we've got far stronger sort of emphasis on on that sort of relational based approach because it really did strike me there that that was where you see that language being used about you know the positive behavior that the schools have the expectations of seeing in children and there's far less of the don't do this and and don't do that but my experience of behavior policies are very much that you know there are reward-based systems in schools the policies themselves tend to focus on negative behaviors yeah yeah so i've got a number of hands have flown up um did you want to respond to that point jason yeah respond to both points if that's okay um i think i completely agree with you i think looking at la's in london um looking at what they offer getting back to the points i was making i think would be a really good starting point you can look at the school makeup as well um but definitely look at what they're offering and how they're providing that support and wrap around to schools with that increasing need that we've seen and i just wanted to respond to your point chair um i would just probably just slightly challenge that and say i think we've got examples in our hackney schools where they're you know hackney secondaries where there is there is good positive behavior work so let's not make assumptions and let's just make sure that um should we do this work that we're looking at it holistically as well and looking for good examples in in both sectors um you know and i take the point this isn't all about exclusion but we are using that as a measure so i'm i'm offering you a different way of thinking about why those numbers might be so high so that's the point i wanted to make sorry councillor pinkerton yeah sorry that echo um councillor charton's points about the importance of um speaking to some of the other local uh authorities i noticed it's on uh if this is what the right bit we're talking about for the meeting 30th of april other la's tbc um so there's you know uh invites going on it would be great to hear from harangay tar hamlets with the lower levels of exclusion um close to hear what they're doing and also to i guess ask those questions you know is there some hidden uh is there some manipulation because of the data going on there is their management and so on so it would be really great to um have a good chance to ask those questions of our our neighboring authorities thank you councilor to have it to laugh then sorry thank you very briefly just to just to add to what jason has said i feel i think it's very important that and i've said it before i think a number of patients in the commission it's very important not to demonize a single school because there are many schools that are doing fantastic work and i don't feel that the approach is to demonize or dehumanize teachers in any way capacity or form because this is part of the system that need is the system that we need to work on now there is a thing a big difference and as a youth worker in hacking the former youth working in hackney i can see the big difference with primary and secondary in where when when children transition to second it's almost that they disappear because they become it's a system it's just so difficult and so different and there is a more humanistic approach when they're primarily i did want to say that the for me the issue with with the report with this scope it is sorry paper it's also that the data is not accurate and that would be something that when we have data and what works or what doesn't but it would be good to hear from the schools as well to have those voices so secondly or supporting what you said earlier but the data really is not accurate i would like to kind of put more push on that that we work on having more accurate data across the schools okay council binnie lubbock and then i'll bring you in very briefly council because we do have to move on to the next item i just wanted to uh echo what uh john kennedy said and just recognize that there might be data in academies that as part of our desk research and um call for evidence um would be really good to understand if they've done their own analysis and what analysis they've done especially if it includes things like uh managed moves and and you know those kinds of things but recognizing that that is potentially quite sensitive data for them to share and is there a way that we can um approach them for that uh that that is sensitive but means that we get the best picture that is available thank you very much councillor root thank you so much um just very quickly i was really struck by some of the stuff that we learned this evening and one of the things i was thinking about with a deep dive into the data was whether or not you're thinking of looking at anything to do with the style of behavior policies in schools and um staff retention because i think the whole idea of the modeling from staff is a very interesting model um and i wonder if there's any kind of connection between um staff staying on in schools in certain situations where the behavior is a particular sort or not and if there's any way of looking at that i think it would be quite revealing in terms of um teacher retention um the other thing i was thinking about was managing moves and um off-rolling in primary schools um it does seem to me quite interesting that that it could be that other boroughs have um hidden exclusions if you like secondary level and we have no more sort of um open norms if you like but i just wonder if we're going to be looking at managing moves at primary levels and off-rolling at primary levels see if there is because you know one of the things that was brought out was this um this great discrepancy between primary and secondary one suggestion is that it might be academies the fact that we have so many academies but it might also be that there are different sorts of more hidden exclusion techniques being used at primary level thank you very much for that contribution which has sort of made me think that you know there are some organizations that i know support families who not not often in relation to manage moves but they sometimes do um support families who are going through sort of challenges with um you know to do with school exclusions and inclusion that we may want to speak to here and for that perspective potentially sometimes on even challenging those and that's to give a broader perspective on whether their experience is that some of the other local authorities you know there's an under reporting of exclusions because a a different approach is is being taken um and also how that compares to to hackney so um yeah it might be worth i'm conscious i don't want to keep adding things to this review but um on that note are we happy with the scoping document and the plan of action going forward with you know we'll of course reflect on what came through this evening and um help it to use it to sort of refine where we're going forward but but yeah on the point that you made actually councillor roots i think it will be really important to speak to teachers in all of this i think we we really do want to hear you know as many different perspectives of of you know because this is something that affects everybody isn't it behaviour policies so um you know we've frequently heard from parents of children with special educational needs talking about being called up frequently to come and collect their children from school because they've been excluded and you know the impact that that has on their ability to work and you know so there are lots of knock-on effects to um you know the implementation of of behaviour policies on on families also so it's really important to get that broad view um okay we will be moving on now to the next item unless there's anything else that i need to cover is that okay yeah so our next meeting on the 17th of march um we've got a similar sort of set up to today uh we have invited the the national representative for the nasu wt who do ongoing research around school behavior policies at school sorry school behavior schools with a particular impact to have the impacts on staff and staff views and perspectives of that so they'll provide a national and ongoing kind of a picture uh from that perspective we wanted to make sure that the kind of views of head teachers is heard in public obviously not wanting to put our local head teachers on the spot in this perspective so we invited the naht along and they'll be coming along to put uh the the different challenges that head teachers face in terms of uh uh developing different approaches to school power policy policy and the approaches to school behavior management and the challenges that they face within that as well we have invited the dfe we'll just be waiting for their confirmation for that as well so for a rounded kind of piece and the 3rd of april we'll be invited obviously hatton education to set out some of the more local policy and practice in their approach to this as well and we'll be that's we'll be trying to get in our other local authorities or other perspectives around behavior management what our local authorities are doing in that space as well that's where we are in terms of the full plan thank you very much thanks for that martin now moving on to the next item which is item five which is school estates and educational sufficiency at its meeting on the 26th of november the commission reviewed the school estates and education sufficiency strategy together with proposals to close two schools and merger further four over two sites the commission agreed to write to deputy mayor bramble cabinet member for schools and education setting out its findings and recommendations from this scrutiny session this is now published in this agenda for transparency the commission is awaiting the responsible publish this and the next available agenda after it's received do members have any comments to make on this okay great thank you then in which case moving on to item six which is unregistered settings the commission received an update on unregistered educational settings at its meeting in december 24th from this meeting the commission agreed to write to the secretary of state for education setting out ongoing safeguarding concerns around unregistered educational settings and whether the children's well-being and education bill would bring these settings into regulatory oversight the commission's letter was published in january 2025 the commission received a response from the minister for early education on the 6th of february 2025 which is now published for transparency do members have any comments or further points to add on this i mean it concludes by saying i hope that my reply provides you with the the assurance you were speaking but it doesn't really doesn't it you know so i just wanted if the director director had any anything to add to the to the letter you know i mean we've continuously heard that the commission that there's a very limited amount that we can do um and yet this seems to be saying that there are probably you know legislative provisions enabling um you know that regulation to take place so so there is um provision that's been looked at in terms of the schools bill and um there will be some strengthening of local authorities um powers in a number of areas um we are slightly anxious about the unintended consequences of the delivery of some of the intention on our and the children in the strictly orthodox jewish community and are talking a lot with clinic uk and interlink about this as well as talking about dfb and other authorities in the country where there are children from strictly orthodox jewish communities because what we all want is a good quality education safe education and all and um and certainly in terms of some of the work that jason and his team have been doing with the schools in stoke newton in sorry stanford hill we've seen a real rise in attainment achievement and in terms of good outcomes from offset inspection so we're really keen to build on some excellent um initiatives and to promote as far as possible excellent education to the community as well but we're mindful of there's some there's some risks in there that we we need to be mindful of sorry if i could just follow up so the education and skills act 2008 was that completely inadequate in terms of you know what the local authority could would do because all the new bill will do is build on on that so it doesn't kind of for me you know if you're just building on something is the found is the foundation stone good enough to build on you know um probably not it'd be an idea okay so i think we need to keep this very firmly on the agenda chair well yeah i think in light of the progress of the children's well-being and education bill um going through parliament i think it makes sense for us to keep this issue under review and i mean i think we've sort of unofficially already committed to doing so because we're obviously deeply concerned by the fact that we just don't have adequate oversight and you know to be assured about um the safeguarding of um you know it's worth referencing here that the reason why this is called unregistered settings it's not specifically about yeshivas although that accounts for a large proportion of what we're talking about here but it's it's unregistered settings and it's about ensuring that we do have adequate oversight to be able to safeguard all of the children in the borough and so we will with a you know we'll have a perhaps we'll put it on the agenda for the next municipal year which we're which we're fast approaching now jason what's been said and to go back to your question i think what's going to make the difference is exactly what clause 30 as has been pointed out is going to say what will it what will it bring into the regulation that isn't already there will it cover the ues as we've been talking about i think we you're absolutely right we should bring this in onto the agenda and monitor it carefully and and feedback at every opportunity and and jackie pointed out we have requested a meeting with other la's to look at the unintended consequences of i know it's a different quality that we're talking about the vat but you know the risk of it is if schools close down it's just going to it's just going to inflate the numbers of children that are potentially electively home educated and then and then become missing in education on the back of it so whilst they're different it just you know we've been able to work really closely with those schools for children you know before they might go into a ues so what's going to happen now if we don't have that right so we need to look at it holistically so i don't know if we can look at both aspects of that in the coming year but that would be my suggestion thank you chairman did we have any other just wanted to add something just to add the comment that we brought in the in november about our speaking experience of working with migrant hispanic speaking communities where unregistered settings become a form of a desperation as well for some parents that the children are experiencing harsh school behavior policies so they're having the struggles and the language and so on so i do share and i'm glad to hear that they're you know the concerns about how it can be how this will be implemented by taking into account as well that it is a form of desperation it has to be taken into account as well as to why they exist um um yeah thanks thank you yeah um then moving on to item seven here's what the work program the latest version february 2025 of the commission's work program for the remainder of the municipal year is attached for members to review and agree in in the report pack the remainder of this municipal year the commission will focus on evidence gathering for the review of behavior management but we will recommence this in 2025-26 given the proximity of meetings in the new municipal year the commission has given outline agreement to proceed with two items from the 2025-26 work program both of which were on the long list for this year's work program that's support for young parents um and update on sexual and reproductive health services for children and young people so that's the second of june 2025 for the former and 22nd of july do members note and agree with the work program right item eight minutes the minutes of the last meeting held on the 31st of january 2025 are contained within the report pack do members have any matters arising from the minutes and do members agree minutes agreed um any other business um next meeting is the 17th of march thank you very much thank you everyone thank you monso thank you

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