More Primary Age Pupils Will Be Sent to Special Units to Improve Behaviour

Increasing numbers of primary pupils in the UK, some as young as five, will be temporarily removed from normal classes and sent to special units to tackle bad behaviour at a young age.

Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, said teachers would be expected to identify children most likely to “go down the wrong track”, including pupils with special needs and those with parents in prison.

Targeting children between five and 11 would prevent them being permanently expelled in their teens and then falling into a life of crime, he said.

"If you are going to spot early young people who are at risk of going down the wrong track and intervene to give them support then starting that in primary school is absolutely the right way to go," said Mr Balls.
"Often primary heads and teachers are the best early indicator of things going wrong. A child with a special educational need or a sibling who has been involved with crime or a parent who had spent time in prison - those are very substantial risk factors. We can identify all of those risk factors at primary school."

Mr Balls also said all schools - including those most sought after among parents should be forced to take their fair share of problem pupils to stop the worst-behaved being concentrated in the same schools.

The comments were made as he published a new white paper to radically transform education for unruly and vulnerable pupils.
Under new plans, existing pupil referral units - which educate pupils permanently excluded from school - will be revamped with a new curriculum focusing on the basics of English and mathematics and targets to improve attendance and exam results.

Teachers working in the units could receive extra pay for dealing with more pupils with special needs, the white paper suggested.

Some children could spend “half the week in alternative provision” to help them get back on track - but others would go full time, Mr Balls said.
The plans would also give Mr Balls the power to order councils to shut failing PRUs, with private firms and charities invited to step in.

About 135,000 pupils pass through PRUs every year after being excluded from mainstream schools, with the majority consisting of boys aged 11-15.
But just one per cent get five C-grades or better in their GCSEs and they are more than twice as likely to turn to crime.

In a further move, it was proposed all schools would join behaviour partnerships -groups of local state schools sharing badly-behaved pupils.

Ministers insisted they were not calling for a "one out, one in" rule in which schools take an unruly child for every one they exclude.

But the white paper said: "Where previously excluded pupils are to be re-integrated into mainstream schools, we believe that it is fairer for them to be shared across schools in an area rather than concentrated in one or two schools which may already be under pressure."