Greeny News

Torah to get rid of appeals panel, but the fundamental right of children who may have been unfairly excluded from school

He is one of the most successful athletes in the UK, a multi-millionaire role model for millions of people.

But a less well-known fact about the racing driver Lewis Hamilton is that as a 16-year-old in 2001 he was mistakenly expelled from school, and only cleared after his father, Anthony, vigorously fought the headteacher's decision at an independent appeals panel.

The panel concluded it was a case of mistaken identity, with Hamilton wrongly excluded alongside five other teenage boys after a fellow pupil was attacked.

"I knew I was innocent but [the head] did not appear to be interested," Hamilton wrote in his autobiography. He added, of the situation before the panel heard the case: "No one appeared to listen â€" no one either wanted to or had the time. We were on our own and I was out of school."

The case is being put forward as an example of the type of miscarriage of justice that could occur if the government goes ahead with plans, proposed by the Conservatives before the general election, to scrap independent appeals panels.

On the eve of the election, David Cameron told London 's Evening Standard: "Director of Schools shall have the discretion to expel students who behave badly. Currently director of a school can exclude a child who is behaving terribly, and appeals The panel can put the child immediately returned to school. "

Scrapping the panels, three- or five-person bodies that hear pupils' and parents' appeals against exclusion decisions, has been Conservative policy for several years. It is thought the move could commence in an education bill due to start going through parliament in the autumn.

However, a paper being published by the Runnymede Trust charity highlights the Lewis Hamilton case as an example of what could go wrong. The paper, by David Gillborn and David Drew, of London University's Institute of Education, also presents some interesting statistics.

Of the 8110 permanent exclusions in 2007-08, he said, only 710, less than 1 in 11, were challenged in front of the appeals. Of these, the panel ruled in favor of the student in one in four cases: a total of 180 times. This is the principal 's decision to be reversed on appeal only 2% of all cases of permanent exclusion.

More strikingly, perhaps, state figures show, 180 times that a parent or student is successful, only 60 cases as a whole, in 2007-08, not the child actually return to school. In other cases, the decision would be taken to bring the child to another school or division of student directions.

To critics, it seems a lot of political fuss about the disruption potentially caused by 60 pupils, out of a total pupil population in England of 8.1 million (or one pupil in 135,000), returning to classrooms from which the head wanted to expel them.

"[This] hardly constitutes a huge disruption to the flow of exclusions. However, panels are highly significant to the people who hope to find justice," says the paper.

Government guidance published in 2008, said the panel 'does not need to restore a student without a valid reason': cases of mistaken identity, or disproportionate punishment, or when they have no "procedural violations 'school' s exception handling.

Sam Murray, head of policy and information at the Advisory Centre for Education, which works with families affected by exclusion decisions, is concerned. She is particularly worried that the move could take away safeguards for those families with children with special needs, those who are eligible for free school meals andethnic minorities including black Caribbean pupils over-represented in exclusions statistics. She says: "As an adult at work, I would expect to have the right to make my case to an independent body. Why should pupils not have that right?"

Carl Parsons, an expert on exclusions, visiting professor at the University of Greenwich and sometime appeals panel member himself, says that the panels are imperfect, in that the process of fighting a quasi-legal battle can be intimidating for parents. He advocates a system whereby schools and local authorities work to make exclusions unnecessary. He adds: "I would not want to stick up too strongly for the system that we have. But there has to be that right of appeal."

Paper to be published in the journal with the Runnymede Trust, 'also presented new data showing that students from black Caribbean, and from the "any other black" backgrounds were more likely to be expelled from the academy than all other ethnic groups.

Some 0.72% and 0.74% of pupils in these two ethnic groups were permanently excluded from academies in the academic year 2007-08, the figures show, compared to 0.62% and 0.59% in conventional state schools. The permanent exclusion rate for white pupils from academies that year was 0.44%, more than double the figure of 0.2 % for non-academies.

The document states that the ministers who are currently looking academy status for all schools to monitor this situation very carefully.

A Department for Education spokesman says: "Ministers are currently considering the future of independent appeals panels, as part of a wider reform of school discipline. The education and children's bill in the autumn will put heads and teachers back in control, giving them a range of tough new powers to deal with bullies and the most disruptive pupils. We will set out full details in due course."