My seven-year-old has been suspended TEN times – I’m terrified he’ll end up in prison
AS the phone started to ring, dread flooded through me. I knew who would be calling.
“There’s been an incident and we are suspending Josh again,” said a familiar voice. “How soon can you collect him?”
I had only dropped my seven-year-old son at school an hour before, but taking him home early had become a regular occurrence.
Over the previous year, he had been suspended ten times, missing more than 40 days of learning as a result.
As his mum, I am well aware of how challenging Josh can be. His misdemeanours are serious and usually involve lashing out at others.
On one occasion he hit a staff member with a piece of wood, and he stabbed another one with a fork at lunchtime. He also set off the fire alarm.
But his actions were also a child crying out for support and help.
Football-loving Josh has ADHD, autism, pathological demand avoidance and sensory processing disorder.
It means he struggles emotionally with the rigid rules in a busy school and can be overwhelmed by all the noise and people.
We aren’t the only family dealing with this.
Last week it was revealed that suspensions in England’s state primary schools have more than doubled in the past decade.
There were 37,700 in autumn term 2023-24, according to the Department for Education — almost as many as in the whole of the 2012-13 academic year.
Permanent exclusion rates have also gone up by almost 70 per cent in the same period.
I suspected Josh had additional needs from the time he was a toddler, but it took until November last year to get official recognition and an Education, Health and Care Plan to set out the support he needs.
Devastating consequences
His mainstream primary school was unable to provide this or manage his behaviour, even after introducing a one-to-one teaching assistant and reducing his timetable to a couple of hours a day.
Josh’s young age and his neurodiversity meant he didn’t understand what he’d done wrong and why he wasn’t welcome at school
Kyn Linton
The suspensions left me at breaking point.
As a solo mum, I was struggling to deal with the fallout of Josh missing so much school.
He has regular meltdowns at home and can get aggressive. He also struggles with his sleep.
I fretted he would never get an education if he was rarely in lessons and struggling to engage when he did attend.
He was only in Year 2 and it felt like society was giving up on him already.
As a former prison officer, I strongly believe my son is going to end up behind bars if he doesn’t get the right support now
Kym Linton
Josh’s young age and his neurodiversity meant he didn’t understand what he’d done wrong and why he wasn’t welcome at school.
Like Josh, 97 per cent of those suspended or excluded from primary school over the past five years also had special educational needs, according to analysis carried out by children’s charity Chance UK.
The consequences of these decisions by schools are devastating.
I believe they send a terrible message to children who already have great difficulties in their young lives.
It tells them: You don’t belong. You are not welcome.
Then there’s the academic impact and the long-term consequences for individuals and society. That should be a worry to everyone, not just their parents.
Chance UK says 90 per cent of children excluded at primary school fail to pass GCSE English and maths.
As a former prison officer, I strongly believe my son is going to end up behind bars if he doesn’t get the right support now.
I’m not being overly dramatic — I’ve seen first-hand the impact of school absenteeism. I worked for four years at a Category-A, all-male jail.
Many of the prisoners I worked with were neurodivergent and fell into crime after missing school and being failed by an education system that didn’t provide for them.
I was a key worker for five inmates and part of my job was taking them to weekly meetings, like appointments at an ADHD clinic, but also reading to them.
Many didn’t have a basic reading level because they had missed so much of their education.
I got to know their back stories well and whenever I asked how they ended up in prison, it was almost always the same starting point — they had been expelled from school.
Their stories resonated with me because one of my relatives dropped out of school aged 11 and ended up in jail, barely able to read and write. I was also expelled at 15, for being disruptive, smoking and truancy.
Luckily, I was allowed by the local authority to take my GCSEs as I was bright.
It was only when I got a diagnosis for Josh that I realised I also had ADHD and understood why I had struggled with the school regime. I wasn’t “naughty” — I needed extra support.
Instead of building more prisons, why aren’t we building more specialist schools?
Kym Linton
It’s only now I’m in my forties that I have managed to follow my dream of going to university to study for a degree in forensics and criminology.
But it’s extremely difficult to make this work with caring for Josh, especially when he is constantly being sent home.
There are tens of thousands of parents in a similar position.
The We Can Learn campaign, led by charities SEND Reform England, The Disabled Children’s Partnership and Let Us Learn Too, says 80 per cent believe their children are not getting enough support to go to school, while almost four in ten have had to leave employment as a result.
I don’t blame the schools. Teachers are under tremendous pressure to get good marks and ensure other pupils can learn without disruption.
But I do blame successive governments who are failing SEN children with a lack of investment and an obsession with league tables.
Given that almost all primary school exclusions are SEN students, surely helping them access education in an appropriate and safe way would benefit everybody?
That means quicker diagnosis, more support within mainstream schools, more specialist classes and more SEN schools for the neediest cases.
I believe we would see a massive reduction in crime further down the line — and fewer people in jail. Instead of building more prisons, why aren’t we building more specialist schools?
Heartache along the way
It makes financial sense. It costs £65,000 to imprison someone once police, court costs and all the other steps are taken into account.
Then it’s £40,000 a year for the duration of their sentence. An SEN school place costs £10,000 a year.
The system is broken and soaring suspension figures are a symptom of that.
Families are being completely let down and the treatment of these kids is inhumane, pushing them into the margins at a young age.
Josh finally moved to a SEN school in September.
But it took me three years of fighting to get him this specialist provision — and a lot of heartache along the way.
Missing so much school time means Josh has struggled to maintain friendships and not been invited to parties.
He feels rejected and thinks everyone is talking about him, which has damaged his self-esteem.
I’ve had many times when I’ve felt judged, too, mostly by other parents or strangers when we are out.
I am trying my best, but it does make you feel like a bad mum. I don’t have any help and when I asked for a carer’s assessment, I was told I don’t meet the criteria.
Even now, after moving Josh to the SEN school, problems persist.
He is only accessing school about half of the time because of all the trauma he has gone through.
My son — and all of our children — deserve so much better.
‘Failing support is fuelling record exclusion levels’
UNMET needs and pressure to get top academic results are driving suspension rates up, according to Beth Prescott from think tank the Centre for Social Justice.
Beth, the CSJ’s programme lead on exclusion and absence, says: “Exclusion should be a last resort, but one that is available for schools in order to ensure safety and a fair education for all.
“But the most common reason for suspension and exclusion is persistent, disruptive behaviour – and often that is a result of unmet needs, with the impact of the pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis, mental ill health and an increase in the level of SEN contributing to this.”
The CSJ is calling for a national parental participation strategy to improve the relationship between school and home.
It also wants a national inclusion framework to support vulnerable pupils and additional extra curricular activities such as sport to help children re-gage.
“It’s important that action is taken now,” says Beth.
“A child who has been previously excluded is less likely to end up in education, employment and training, and has a higher risk of ending up in the criminal justice system.”