Badly behaved five-year-olds to be sent to 'sin bins', minister warns

Classroom troublemakers as young as five will be removed from school and put in "sin bins" to avoid expelling them, ministers revealed yesterday.

They will be sent for a spell in a specialist unit where they will be given anger management classes alongside normal lessons to prepare them to return to their schools.

Children's Secretary Ed Balls said the aim was to prevent pupils getting into serious trouble by giving them intensive help before  they force schools to suspend or expel them.

Heads will be expected to identify those with "risk factors" for bad behaviour at school, such as a sibling or parent with a criminal past, while also considering the child's own behaviour.

Mr Balls said efforts should focus on primary age pupils and those in the early years of secondary school. However, he admitted there was a risk of stigmatising children from troubled backgrounds.

The measure forms the centrepiece of a Government blueprint for overhauling the 'forgotten service' of 450 pupil referral units  -  so-called sin bins  -  for the country's most disruptive youngsters.

Mr Balls also raised the prospect of private firms running the units for profit, a development certain to infuriate many within his party and the teaching unions.

The minister also gave his backing to '"studio schools'" where pupils will be treated like employees from the age of 14 and learn in a business-based environment.

Mr Balls said a "radical transformation'" of the education of the 135,000 children every year who cannot be taught in ordinary schools would see more sent to refertensionral units  -  but for a shorter time.

"We would like to be intervening at a much earlier stage and using alternative provision before you get into the world of exclusions at all," he added.

"If you are going to spot early young people who are at risk of going down the wrong track and intervene to give them support, then starting that in primary school is absolutely the right way to go."

Pupils could be sent to the units fulltime or spend only part of the week there.

Mr Balls admitted, however: "There is a between early diagnosis and prevention-and stigma.'"

The Government's White Paper says: "We would... expect to see more children coming into contact with alternative education for shorter periods as part of efforts to keep them engaged and in mainstream schools.'"

This could involve courses to boost self-esteem and 'help with issues such as anger management'.

Under the shake-up, pupil referral units will be renamed "alternative education centres'" and private firms and charities will be encouraged to bid for a slice of the £26.5million available to develop new provision.

A placement at a unit cost £15,000  -  more than three times as much as a secondary school place.

Yet only one per cent of pupils at the units gets a decent haul of GCSEs. Some expelled children were simply ' accelerated along the path to entrenched criminality', the White Paper warns.

Ministers want new powers to force local authorities to replace failing referral units or allow charities or firms to run them.

The Department for Children stressed last night there were currently only 35 five-year-olds in referral units. "No one is talking about routinely sending children of five to other institutions," said a spokesman.