A DEDICATED team of council officers will be monitoring pupil suspensions and exclusions and challenging those schools who are not using these measures as a last resort.

BCP Council's children's services overview and scrutiny committee was told hundreds of children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) have been suspended - a temporary exclusion - more than once in the past year.

More pupils with SEND support were permanently excluded (35) in 2021/22 than the number of permanent exclusions for pupils who do not have SEND (31).

Kelly Twitchen, BCP Council's head of virtual school and service manager for the inclusion team, told the committee officers were working to reduce the number of permanent exclusions.

A council team has been set up dedicated to this work, as well as looking at alternative provision across the conurbation.

Ms Twitchen said: "This team will be able to monitor data, challenge schools where necessary but also ensure that there is support for them as well and bring together professionals to work in a multi-agency fashion to look at where the needs are and where the support is needed to prevent permanent exclusions and reduce the numbers in total."

The virtual school is offering free trauma and attachment training to support schools with social, emotional behaviours they are often seeing which can lead to suspensions or exclusions.

An audit has been launched of the alternative provision with meetings taking place on a fortnightly basis to see what is available, what is needed and how the local authority can work with providers.

"We have in the past not supported and challenged our schools as much as we would have liked to," Ms Twitchen said.

"By having this data, by having resource in terms of a team to look at this data, we can now go back to our headteachers, go back to our schools and begin conversations about it."

Councillor May Haines said the number of young people with SEND being more than once with SEND was quite a high percentage. She asked what was being done to support these pupils.

"Nationally, there has been an increase with permanent exclusions and suspensions, certainly after lockdown and after Covid," Ms Twitchen said.

"We are seeing an increase in behaviours that are linked to anxiety, which we know as a local authority we need to support our schools with and we are working to devise an offer specifically for this area in terms of anxiety and emotional school-based avoidance.

"We are very much working with our SEND colleagues and our schools to ensure that schools are identifying early enough any special educational needs and when they are concerned about behaviours, the number of suspensions, potentially, or if they feel maybe they are not able to meet all the needs of the young person that they call an early annual review.

"We are very much signposting schools back to the SEND team to have discussions and make sure that communication is really clear about what the needs of the child are."