Violence in Britain's badly behaved schools sees 900 suspensions PER DAY

By KATE LOVEYS

 29th July 2011

Bad behaviour is blighting Britain's schools with almost 900 children suspended every day for attacking or verbally abusing their teachers and classmates, new figures show.

Every school day 13 pupils are permanently expelled for attacks and abuse and 878 are suspended in England's primary and secondary schools.

The figures, from the Department for Education, include physical assaults, racist abuse and threatening behaviour.

In total, they show school children were suspended on 166,900 occasions for assault or abuse.

And pupils were expelled on 2,460 occasions.

And the level of violence in primary schools was also high with children aged four and under suspended 1,210 times and expelled 20 times.

Across all of England's primary, secondary and special schools, boys were around four times more likely to be expelled than girls, with boys accounting for 78 per cent of expulsions. 

 

The suspension rate was also almost three times higher for boys than for girls, with boys accounting for 75 per cent of all temporary exclusions.

Overall, the statistics, for 2009/10, show a slight drop from the previous year.

The most common reason for exclusion was persistent disruptive behaviour, which accounted for almost one in four, 23.8 per cent of suspensions and nearly a third, 29 per cent, of expulsions.

Schools Minister Nick Gibb said: 'With thousands of pupils being excluded for persistent disruption and violent or abusive behaviour we remain concerned that weak discipline remains a significant problem in too many of our schools and classrooms.

'Tackling poor behaviour and raising academic standards are key priorities for the coalition Government.

'We will back head teachers in excluding persistently disruptive pupils, which is why we are removing barriers which limit their authority.'