Sometimes a school wants to exclude a child but can’t. The student might have difficult needs that are costing money or taking too much time to deal with. Or their exam results might be looking likely to damage the school’s standing. But children can’t lawfully be excluded for getting bad grades or for needing more attention. Schools, though, have a way to get them off their books. They ‘off-roll’ them, a practice which is illegal.
In 2017, in the first widely reported case of off-rolling, St Olave’s grammar school in London told 16 pupils that their places in Year 13 had been withdrawn because they did badly in their AS-level exams, even though they had reached the sixth form entry requirements the year before. One father said his son was dumped like ‘old garbage’.
It seemed then like an isolated instance of a school trying to game the league tables. But a year later, a Times investigation found that 13,000 pupils had suspiciously vanished from government records just before their exams. They did not have any recorded results from their Year 11 GCSEs, despite being registered at a school in Year 10. Were schools systematically booting out poorly performing children to engineer their rankings?
In response to stories like these, Ofsted decided to prioritise inspecting schools with high levels of dropouts. The government also promised to review exclusion guidance and open a consultation to investigate off-rolling. It was originally meant to begin in summer 2020 but was delayed, inevitably, by Covid. The consultation finally opened last month.
Schools know they cannot exclude children for poor results. They just hope that parents don’t call their bluff
It has a lot to contend with because schools are off-rolling some students in increasingly creative ways. Parents, for example, might be told that their child is about to be excluded because of poor behaviour, and ‘advised’ (as schools like to put it) that they remove them themselves. Their child won’t have the black mark of exclusion against their record, the parents are told, so it’ll be easier for them to find another school. Schools know that they cannot exclude children for poor results. They just hope that parents don’t call their bluff.
Schools might also promise to have a place lined up for the child at a nearby college. The switch will be simple, they’ll say. In some cases, schools will block-buy places at colleges for this purpose. Spots cost a few thousand pounds. A school will make the money back in the time they save having the pupil off their hands.
One former secondary school teacher told me their school manipulated students’ records to keep them off their roll. Officials changed the status of poorly performing pupils to ‘guest’ — usually reserved for children who are between schools, perhaps because their parents have separated — meaning their exam results were kept off the books. In a year group of 120, around 15 students were off-rolled in this way, the teacher said, adding the children were left in ‘blissful ignorance’.
Academies have their own methods of off-rolling. They may for instance have their own alternative provision facility for troublesome children. In 2019, Tes, formerly the Times Education Supplement, published a leaked document from Farnley Academy exposing how they did it. ‘With Stephen Longfellow Academy starting in 2017, we have an opportunity to move students to an appropriate provision before they become an issue in KS4,’ the document read. The results of the school could be improved by the ‘removal of anchor students’ who had ‘not been able to achieve consistently’.
In 2013, Farnley, which is one of five schools in the GORSE Academies Trust, was given Ofsted’s highest ranking, ‘Outstanding’. In 2019, after inspectors confirmed they were off-rolling pupils, it was downgraded to ‘Requires improvement’.
Private schools are guilty, too. One independent secondary in Hertfordshire has informed several students’ parents that unless their child achieves 8s and 9s in their GCSEs, they won’t be coming back to the sixth form, even though the official entry requirements could be met with 5s and 6s. There have been ‘long and protracted conversations with parents’, a figure close to some of the pupils said. If the children don’t make the grades, they expect the school to produce a reason to exclude them. Most of these children have special needs.
Technical colleges, one education lawyer told me, are the ‘Wild West’ of off-rolling. While it’s illegal for schools to exclude students for bad attendance, colleges play ‘fast and loose’ with ditching students who don’t show up. There are laws on how and why schools can exclude pupils, but there are no similar rules for colleges.
Off-rolling even happens at primaries. While it’s usually related to a child’s particular needs that are difficult to deal with — exam results are less of a pressure — the lawyer said he knew of a handful of cases where schools wanted to game Year 6 SATs results by getting rid of badly performing ten- and 11-year-olds. Sometimes, he said, schools have fabricated excuses to remove children who come from traveller communities, which they deemed to be disruptive.
Teachers know that off-rolling happens. A YouGov poll found that more than three-quarters of teachers in England are aware of the practice, and nearly a quarter have witnessed it. The former teacher I spoke to told me there were ‘hushed conversations’ between school officials about the manipulation of students’ records. It is usually justified by citing schools’ financial pressures and the demands for better results put on them by the government.
Some have even argued that off-rolling benefits children. Students who struggle can learn better in a different environment, and pupils who need a more difficult curriculum can be challenged. In 2019, when Merseyside’s Sutton Academy was criticised by Ofsted for off-rolling students, the school argued that the practice was arranged by the local council, St Helens. It was done for the ‘benefit of all students’, the council said in a statement. Alison Sherman, the then principal, said some children had been moved to alternative education from as early as Year 8, just one year after joining the school.
In their eyes, off-rolling may have seemed akin to splitting children into sets, common at most schools for maths and sciences. Changing school, though, isn’t like changing maths class. Children lose their friends, the teachers who know them, and any tailored academic support. In January 2017, independent researchers at the FFT Education Datalab found that of the pupils who left the mainstream roll, only 29 per cent who went to colleges, and 1 per cent who went to an alternative provision or special school, got five good GCSEs.
Off-rolling may improve a school’s results, save money and benefit the brightest pupils, but it hurts the children most in need of a good education. The consultation should hopefully provide an opportunity to put things right.
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