EXCLUDING pupils from school has to be a “last resort” a councillor has said.

At a meeting of Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council Education and Learning scrutiny committee councillors discussed a report on the number of pupils that have been excluded from schools during the last year.

They were also told of the help in place to bring the figures down and  understanding some of the issues that youngsters have to deal with which can cause disruptive behaviour.

The report shows that the number of exclusions fell during 2020/21 to 160 from 373 during 2019/209.

It was noted that this drop could have been due to Covid-19 as children were learning from home from December 2020 to March 2021.

The report says that 47 per cent of exclusions in primary school were for a physical assault against another pupil.

In secondary schools , the main reason for exclusion was persistent disruptive behaviour, which accounted for 33 per cent of exclusions.

Blaenau Gwent’s head of school improvement and inclusion, Luisa Munro-Morris told councils that these areas needed to be “focussed” on so that children are supported and don’t reach the point where their behaviour triggers an exclusion,

Cllr John C Morgan said: “Schools do not exclude for the sake of it, and no school wants to see pupils excluded.

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“Blaenau Gwent schools do everything to use exclusions as a last resort.”

Addressing Ms Munro-Morris, he asked: “Here we know wellbeing of our pupils is there right at the very front – no two pupils, families, schools or areas are the same can you outline good practice being shared between schools?”

Ms Munro-Morris explained that a school had set up a “nurture group” to help with child wellbeing.

She said: “Young people who are struggling and at risk of exclusion go into the nurture group, where they still follow the curriculum but in a much smaller setting.

“It’s an environment where if they need to get up and have some space or need some time out from the classroom or go outside they have areas to do that where they can take out their frustrations rather than physically react or being disruptive.”

She said that children are in the nurture groups for half a term and are then gradually reintroduced into their classroom.

“This has been impacted very positively on exclusion rates,” said Ms Munro-Morris.

She also explained that another strategy being used was having more teachers receiving “trauma informed schools” training.

This means that a school has a teacher who is able to support children and teenagers who suffer with trauma or mental health problems, leading to disruptive behaviour that affects their learning and also classmates.

Ms Munro-Morris said: “We are talking about relatively small number but at the same time they are extremely vulnerable young people.

“It’s really key to supporting those young people before they get to crisis point so putting in those interventions early, because what normally happens is we reach escalation point, and that’s when we need the exclusion.

“These young people need that positive reinforcement and different strategies to be put in place, so they don’t get to crisis points.”

The committee accepted the report which will go on to be discussed  by the Executive committee at a meeting in November.