Academies exclusion rate higher

Pupils are only permanently excluded for serious rule breaches like violence

Academies, the independent state-funded schools being expanded as a response to school failure, exclude pupils at twice the rate of all state secondaries.

The latest figures show that England's 47 academies in 2007 had an average permanent exclusion rate of 0.47%. It was 0.23% for all state secondaries.

Because there are only a small number of academies, the overall number of expulsions is small at just 190 pupils.

This compares to some 7,520 pupils expelled by all state secondaries.

Acting general secretary of the National Union of Teachers Christine Blower said: "The latest exclusion figures confirm an uncomfortable fact. Permanent exclusion figures in academies are over double that of other secondary schools.

"No school wishes to exclude pupils but sometimes it is unfortunately necessary."

These figures show that exclusions tend to rise in the early days but fall as the academy becomes more established Kevin Brennan Children's minister

She accused ministers of tacitly encouraging higher rates of exclusion in academies than in other state schools.

She said: "It is unacceptable that in order to boost a highly controversial government policy the government should apparently condone from academies what they condemn in their local family of neighbouring schools."

It is not the first time academies have been seen to have much higher exclusion rates than other types of schools.

In 2006, excluded 5.5 pupils in every thousand, compared with a rate of 2.4 in other secondaries in England.

Children's Minister Kevin Brennan said academies faced challenging circumstances and often inherited a high proportion of disengaged and poorly-behaved children from their predecessor schools.

"Disruption stops everyone from learning and we fully back academies getting the basics right so teachers can do their jobs.

"Since April 2008, all new academy funding agreements have included a clause which means that funding will follow the pupil if they are excluded.

"These figures show that exclusions tend to rise in the early days but fall as the academy becomes more established and behaviour improves - as it does where a new head teacher transforms a struggling local authority-maintained school," he said.

Overall the rate of permanent exclusions in state-funded secondary schools was down slightly in 2006-7 on the previous year.

However, the rate of fixed-term exclusions rose over the same period by 4%.