A new report reveals the radical tactics now being used to tackle bad behaviour by pupils in York's schools. Mike Laycock reports.

Just expel 'em. You might think that this is the obvious solution to violent, abusive and generally misbehaving pupils - now that caning is but a distant memory.

But it is not that simple. For a start, the Government is putting pressure on local authorities to reduce the number of exclusions. Secondly, local education authorities still have a statutory duty to provide 25 hours of education a week in a special pupil referral unit, at a national average annual cost of almost £12,000 per pupil.

Permanent exclusions from York schools are among the lowest in the country, with the hard work in reducing numbers cutting the average cost of educating each excluded pupil in the city to £4,100 per annum.

Instead, a massive and often unseen effort is going on to tackle the root causes of the problem behaviour and combat the disruption caused for teachers and well-behaved youngsters.

New methods were still being developed and deployed.

A report by Murray Rose, City of York Council's assistant director (access and inclusion), has revealed the full range of tactics being deployed, from "chill-out anger management groups" to "therapeutic lunch time clubs" for aggressive or bullying children.

There are nurture classes at two York primary schools, Westfield and Carr, where full-time learning support assistants work with children identified as being at risk of "failing to thrive" from an early age - work that has been praised by Ofsted.

There is a Behaviour Support Service, employing teachers and support assistants to carry out "outreach" work in schools, and a voluntary sector organisation called Rathbone is dealing with up to 20 children aged 14 or older with very challenging behaviour.

Mr Rose said there was also a growing recognition that qualified "school counsellors" can help deal with some of the more complex needs of young people, and it was now proposed to fund such counsellors in all York secondary schools from September, if not before.

But how bad are the problems? He stressed that most children in York behaved very well, but said school heads tended to report that they had one or two children who were more difficult to manage.

"There is a small but significant population of children and young people who are more challenging than ever before in mainstream schools," he said.

He believed the problems were caused by changing social circumstances. "More parents are working either longer hours or commuting further to work; more children spend more time in their rooms with televisions, electronic games etc, and so spend less time within the nurturing family context."

Mr Rose said the challenge to the education service and other agencies was to work better together to provide timely and coherent support for children, their families and their schools.

Updated: 11:00 Wednesday, June 09, 2004