New efforts will be made to reduce the number of children being excluded from Aberdeenshire schools for bad behaviour.
The council’s current rules for the use of exclusion as a punishment date back to 2006, and are considered to be outdated.
Councillors on the authority’s education committee will next week be asked to approve a revised policy to better reflect modern laws and attitudes towards taking such a drastic step.
It is hoped that the new policy will reduce the frequency of exclusions in Aberdeenshire schools, amid growing concerns about how being separated from their peers can “marginalise” children.
However, a report on the potential policy shift has highlighted the importance of the punishment when necessary.
The council’s director of education and children’s service, Laurence Findlay, wrote: “Formal exclusion is an important sanction.
“It marks the extreme seriousness of a breach of discipline that is detrimental to the good order of the school, or to the educational wellbeing of the pupils there.”
Fraserburgh and District councillor, Charles Buchan, was head of physics at Fraserburgh Academy until he retired in 2012.
Last night, he welcomed the prospect of a change in guidelines but called for extra support for teachers, in the event they have to manage a larger number of disruptive pupils.
He said: “Behaviour isn’t getting better, I don’t think.
“More and more children are not content to sign up to behavioural norms, and schools are finding things really difficult in some cases.
“But there’s nothing worse than an excluded child, who is put out of school, who starts feeling marginalised.
“It almost divorces them from the mainstream, they can get a reputation, and often they can get stuck in a vicious cycle which usually does not have a great outcome.”
He added: “I completely believe in inclusion and we have to be progressive in this, but resources must be made available to help teachers cope and make it so that the rest of class members do not suffer.”
