Thousands of academy pupils suspended in discipline blitz

Official figures obtained by the Evening Standard showthat the Harris academy in Peckham temporarily excluded the equivalent of 28 per cent of its pupils in one 12-month period, compared with the national average of 10.4 per cent.

The West London Academy in Ealing expelled 17 pupils in the same school year - the second highest number of any academy in the country.

The figures, released today by the Department for Children, Schools and Families under the Freedom of Information Act, underline the determination of academies to mark a new era, especially where they replaced schools that had become local bywords for failure and disruption.

The Harris Academy insisted the figures were misleading as individual pupils were given more than one fixed-term, temporary exclusion.

Dr Daniel Moynihan, chief executive of the Harris Federation of academies in south London, said around 10 per cent of the school's pupils were given one or more suspensions during that year.

He said that in 2006-07, suspensions fell from 319 to 124 as pupils got the message that the academy was taking a firm line on discipline, compared with the regime that existed in the predecessor school, Warwick Park.

"When kids were asked what was the difference between the academy and the predecessor school, they said that one of the biggest is the improvement in discipline," said Dr Moynihan. "The school has had to set out its stall in terms of what is and is not acceptable behaviour." Since it opened, the proportion of the Harris Academy pupils achieving at least five Cs at GCSE including English and maths has risen from 10 per cent to 24 per cent.

Dr Moynihan said independent analysis showed that was as good a performance as any comparable school in the country had achieved.

He stressed Harris academies would continue to exclude pupils when necessary, saying: "If you have to talk the talk, you end up walking the walk."

Dr Moynihan said the Peckham school had a successful mentoring policy and had established a link with Oriel College Oxford, one of several initiatives aimed at showing pupils there were people "just like them" studying at leading universities. A Department for Children-Schools and Families spokesman said: "Academies tend to have higher exclusion rates than average when they open. This is because they often have very challenging intakes and are taking over from weak schools in disadvantaged areas where standards of behaviour were unacceptable. We support heads in using fixed- period and even permanent exclusions as a tool to regain discipline."

West London Academy principal Hilary Macaulay could not be contacted for comment.

Officials could only provide the statistics for one year, 2005-06, and were unable to give a breakdown of the reasons for the exclusions.