A BOURNEMOUTH academy for teenagers excluded from mainstream schools has been praised for its efforts to help pupils stop smoking.

A staggering 70 per cent of pupils at Tregonwell Academy in Bournemouth are addicted smokers when they join the school.

Academy staff will discipline pupils who are caught smoking and, in the first half-term of this school year, 15 pupils had a consequence for inappropriate smoking.

But in conjunction with this, the academy also invites in NHS representatives to talk to pupils about the effects of smoking, invites pupils to test the levels of toxins in their breath and urges pupils to attend stop smoking sessions. They also run addiction programmes and reward pupils who decide to stop smoking.

And it’s an approach that appears to be paying off, with 18 per cent of pupils kicking the habit since joining Tregonwell.

Executive head Sian Thomas said: “These pupils come to us with a huge amount of issues.

“They have never been successful at school and their confidence is at rock bottom, it simply isn’t feasible for us to issue repeated punishments for smoking, as mainstream schools would.

“You have to look at it in context; a report by ASH (Action on Smoking and Health) said the children most likely to smoke are those who live in deprived areas, those whose parents and siblings smoke and people who have been excluded from school. Most of our kids fit into every single category they identify.”

“It’s about managing a very complex and difficult situation but we are slowly beginning to build this culture of people wanting to give up.”

Stop Smoking advisor Christina Croucher said: “We’ve never been asked to come into any other school so I would say Tregonwell is a model of good practice.

“The kids seem to respond well to the information we give them, they ask a lot of questions and seem genuinely interested in the effects of smoking.

“I think this approach has to be a good one.”