Parents of excluded pupils: customers, partners, problems?

Abstract

In this paper we present new data from interviews with parents of pupils permanently excluded from alternative provision in England, and related service providers. We report the social contexts of the families, their experience of 'choice', and how service providers talk about them. Our findings support those from earlier studies in relation to the disadvantage experienced by many parents. As predicted, the parents experienced choice as very limited. Some parents, due to a lack of personal, social or economic resources, felt unable to engage with the parental choice agenda beyond vetoing options. Our data suggests that service providers talk about parents as problems rather than as equal partners. How parents are viewed is shaped both by their level of compliance and their access to resources. We conclude by considering the potential of the 'parental choice' discourse to provide a more positive re-framing of parents.Keywords: parents; partnership; choice; school exclusion; anti-social behaviour. IntroductionThe data reported here concern the families of pupils in England who have been permanently excluded from alternative provision (Pupil Referral Units (PRUs) or special school), rather than excluded (permanently or otherwise) from mainstream schools. The excluded pupils have reached 'the end of the line' in terms of available educational provision. In this paper we examine both the circumstances of the 24 families in the study, their experience of exercising parental choice, and the ways in which service providers talk about them. This is an important area, as the attitudes towards and beliefs about the parents that service providers hold will inevitably shape the nature of any partnership. Whilst the proper nature of partnership working is open to debate (Murray 2000) there is no doubting the reality that parents and providers working well together benefits the young person (Bridges 1994 ). Not all of the families in this study could be described as 'typical' of families of excluded pupils, who previous studies have found to be often under financial or emotional stress and experiencing multiple social disadvantage (Daniels et al. 2003;MacRae, Maguire and Milbourne 2003). In contrast, a number of parents in this study had access to a range of personal, social and economic resources. Moreover, social disadvantage appeared to have some impact upon how parents were perceived by service providers. We found that parents from more disadvantaged backgrounds were positioned either as 'to blame' (for example because of perceived lack of interest, prioritising their own needs, or a refusal to accept help), or alternatively as much 'a victim' of circumstances as their child. However, parents with access to resources were positioned as 'pests' (our word), they were seen as over involved, and as making unrealistic demands for resources for their child. In this paper we consider the potential of the 'parental choice' discourse to provide a more positive re-framing of some of these parents.The interviews with parents (mostly,...

Schooling children with disabilities: Parental perceptions and experiences

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A review of parent–professional partnerships and some new obligations and concerns arising from the introduction of the SEND Code of Practice 2015

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“SEN’s completely different now”: critical discourse analysis of three “Codes of Practice for Special Educational Needs” (1994, 2001, 2015)

“…There is also small scale and anecdotal evidence of some academies being reluctant to accept pupils with significant special needs (Institute of Public Policy Research 2014 cited by Norwich and Black 2015, 131) or re-locating them within an academy group or chain (Perraudin 2016). Macleod, Pirrie, McCluskey and Cullen (2013), writing of pupils who have been excluded from specialist provision, point out that choice is complicated in relation to pupils with SEN and largely illusory for pupils with a history of challenging behaviour and exclusion (389).…”