I think it's a very difficult subject, because, in many cases, we're not really sure what the data looks like. We get these things from quite a broad perspective, and we don't actually see the extent of the reasons why. If you look at, for example, the statistical release, then you get a sense of why people are being excluded, but they tend to be—. It's a very reductionist discussion, so you see reasons like persistent disruptive behaviour, verbal abuse or physical assaults, but you don't actually get the underlying factors that are influencing that. Now, we know that that information exists, because, obviously, schools don't exclude anybody lightly, and I speak as someone who's been until this academic year a governor on secondary and primary schools. So, there's a great deal of paper trail, but that doesn't seem to really find its way up to a higher level.
Okay, thank you. And how concerned are you about the trend that we're seeing of an increase in younger children being excluded, and what do you think the reasons might be for that?
I think it's very concerning that we're seeing increases amongst younger children in particular. Those have gone up quite substantially in the past few years, and a lot of the evidence that we're hearing is quite anecdotal, so it tends to be around the behavioural issues or underlying issues, and there's a lot of discussion about the adverse childhood experiences agenda and how that's—. So, there's a better understanding of that, but I'm not in a position at the moment, really, to be able to explain why primary schools maybe are actually taking that position and excluding more than they used to.
What I would say is that the reason that Samaritans did our report on exclusions from school rested with—. They began with anecdotal information coming through to us around individual distress and from projects working with young people who'd been excluded. And there are projects that are working with young people who are being excluded—I mean primary school children. And the major thing we say in our report is that we—. So, this is enough to ask us some serious questions, to which we don't know the answer, unless we actually do some serious work on this. So, I would reiterate what we say in our report: that we need to examine this. It's a really important issue, and the life trajectory of those young people is being impacted by their exclusion.