Here is a statistic to focus the minds of the top mandarins in the Department for Education. Since prior to the pandemic, while suspensions of students in England have soared by almost a third, at Beacon High in Islington, they have plummeted by 90 per cent. How Beacon High has gone from one of the highest excluding schools in London to one of the lowest at a time when exclusions are rocketing nationwide is a story that should have resonance for the entire education sector — if only the DfE were listening.
The narrative begins three years ago when Beacon High, supported by the Evening Standard’s Excluded campaign, adopted an entirely new exclusion strategy. Until then, its policy was to fight fire with fire and suspend or expel problem students, with more than 500 suspensions over three years. But in September 2020, Beacon High opted to trial a different approach. It hired a student mentor, Mark Cullen, to run a discrete on-site “inclusion unit” called “Pathways” in which he would give problematic students one-to-one attention with the aim of returning them to mainstream classes when ready.
Beacon High picked six of the most verbally abusive and disruptive students in the GCSE year who were on track to expulsion and Mr Cullen began to work with them intensively. He adopted the “trauma informed approach” which, as he put it, “treats negative behaviour as communication that points to a deeper problem”, rather than an end in itself.
Seeing them settle and succeed because we have addressed their deeper needs is the highlight of my career
The result? All six students ended the year back in mainstream classes, all six wrote their GCSEs and all went on to college. It was, in short, a resounding 100 per cent success. Their Pathways programme has since evolved to support scores of students a year, and with it suspensions have plunged by 85 per cent from 170 a year to around 25 a year.
Deputy head Andrea McDonald said: “It feels like a totally different school. Seeing children who couldn’t sit in a seat or control their emotions, seeing them settle and succeed just because we have addressed their deeper needs, well that has been the highlight of my career. We are literally changing lives. I have been here over 13 years and this is the innovation I am most proud of.”
The Evening Standard can also be justly proud of the changes at Beacon High, one of eight London secondary schools with higher than average exclusion rates that we funded in September 2020 as part of our ground-breaking £1.2 million campaign, The Excluded.
We gave each school up to £150,000 over three years to pilot an alternative approach to drive down their exclusion rates to a minimum, including by developing on-site inclusion units where disruptive children could get one-to-one support. Funding came from John Lyon’s Charity and tech philanthropist Martin Moshal, with The London Community Foundation managing the initiative on behalf of the Standard.
We challenged the Government to match-fund our initiative to double our pilot study to 16 schools but they declined and appeared uninterested in trialling inclusion units, despite their extraordinary success in Glasgow and in schools such as Dunraven High in Lambeth. We revealed the terrible outcomes for permanently excluded students in the current system — with just one in 100 sent to Pupil Referral Units gaining a good pass in GCSE English and Maths (grade 5 or above) — and we published research showing strong links between permanently excluded children and violent crime.
So far nearly 500 students who might otherwise have faced being sent to Pupil Referral Units have been helped by inclusion units in our eight pilot schools. An independent evaluator, the Centre for Evidence and Implementation, will assess quantitative and qualitative data from all eight schools and is due to report later this year — but in the meantime the Standard visited Beacon High to report on the startling impact of their programme.
Since being implemented, 111 pupils have completed Pathways, including Kain, 15, who was frequently suspended for disruptive behaviour and fighting with students. Kain said: “I wasn’t going to lessons and was constantly getting into other people’s issues and trying to be the popular kid. When Mr Cullen took me into Pathways, he talked about how being naughty was not going to work for me in the long run. He took me to a boxing club to work out some of my aggression and to build my self-belief. His approach made me realise I was being an idiot, that I needed to fix up.”
Mr Cullen said: “While Kain still has his moments, his engagement has completely changed and his level of truancy has fallen massively. We now expect him to do really well. He has learnt to regulate his emotions and that he can do well in class as well as be the cool kid.”
Jaylean, 12, said: “I was taken into Pathways because I couldn’t control my anger. I would lash out and throw chairs and tables and attack people verbally. My mouth was bad. I have changed. My mouth is less heated and I don’t lash out against teachers or cause fights. I talk to Mr Cullen and get stuff off my chest and then I don’t feel like an angry person. I am doing a lot better.” Kashun, 13, said he was “disruptive, unfocused and always late to lessons” because he would “talk to people in the corridor and create drama”. He added: “Pathways helped me. Mr Cullen told me to make it my goal to be the first person through the door and at my desk. I needed to change, I knew that, I just needed somebody to believe in me. I’m a smart guy and I want to become a lawyer or an accountant. Now I am on the right track.”
Instead of shouting at me, Mr Cullen talked to me and actually engaged me. For the first time, I felt heard
Ella, 15, who regularly bunked lessons and spent her school day arguing with teachers, said Pathways shifted her onto a new trajectory. Asked what helped, she said: “Instead of shouting at me, Mr Cullen talked to me and actually engaged me. For the first time, I felt heard. It made all the difference.”
The school’s more tolerant approach to seeking the reasons behind problematic behaviour and addressing those issues has led to them getting a higher Ofsted rating and becoming a beacon for other schools in the borough and more widely.
Ms McDonald said: “Our Ofsted has gone from ‘requires improvement’ to ‘good’ in November last year and it is in part due to our approach to exclusions. We are the first school in our local authority to get a Centre of Excellence award for inclusion and our rate of suspension is now half the borough average and just 10 per cent of the highest excluding schools locally.”
She added: “We have developed a reputation as a truly inclusive school that will do whatever it takes to support pupil’s educational, behavioural and emotional needs, and we have had heads from other schools as far afield as Manchester come down to see the work we do. We were one of the worst but Pathways has been massively successful and now we are seen as a model school.”
