Maxine Boag: Pupil cases expose shortcomings

Maxine Boag

The cases of Lucan Battison and the Green Bay High School student with Aspergers Syndrome, whose exclusions from their schools were overturned in the High Court, highlight serious shortcomings in the way students can be removed from their schools.
Standing a student down, then suspending, excluding or expelling them from their schools may be seen by principals as a necessary means of ensuring the safety of staff and students. However, for affected students, these punishments can cause a significant disruption, even an end to their education, limiting future career opportunities and increasing the likelihood of future anti-social behaviour.
Principal Youth Court Judge Andrew Beecroft says up to 80 per cent of serious youth offenders are not in school, and that 60 per cent are special needs students.
Marie is mother of an adopted boy who was diagnosed with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome when he was six. His challenging behaviour, requiring one-on-one support not available in the schools he went to, meant that he was either asked to leave or expelled from three schools.
"It's not a happy place to be sitting in the Principal's office with the board of trustees making a decision to expel your child from school. You feel totally helpless, isolated and frightened for the future of your child. It is hard to fight the education system. No one would take a wheelchair away from someone with quadriplegia so why take the supports away from our children?"
Stand-downs and suspensions often lead to extended periods of exclusion. One-third of all students suspended will go on to either be formally excluded or expelled.
Those who don't re-enrol do not just disappear. The burden caused by their removal from formal education is borne not just by them and their families, but by the rest of the community. The costs to the criminal justice system, health and social services budgets are huge. The loss of their earning and contributory potential is immeasurable.
Yet despite the gravity of the issues at stake, the current disciplinary regime offers students and parents very few opportunities for appeal.
Before deciding to stand down or suspend a student, a principal needs only to be satisfied "on reasonable grounds" that their gross misconduct is a harmful or dangerous example to other students, or that others will be seriously harmed if they are not removed.
For stand-downs, once a decision has been made by the principal, there is no further mechanism of appeal. With suspensions, an additional layer of accountability is provided by boards of trustees who have the power to return a student back to school - or exclude or expel.
If they decide to exclude or expel, their decision is effectively final, with no direct right of appeal or challenge, short of taking the case to the High Court (as Lucan Battison's parents did) - an option way beyond the means of most parents, and inflicting huge costs on the affected school.
So what is the solution, or does Lucan Battison's case mean we are about to see what Associate Professor Bill Hodge called in Hawke's Bay Today "a tidal wave of expensive litigation from now on"?
A more sensible approach has been adopted in England, where, following a board's decision to expel or exclude, parents and students have the opportunity to take the matter further to an Independent Appeal Panel. The panel provides an impartial forum in which both the reasons given for the decision and the appropriateness of the penalties can be challenged.
Made up of a mix of lay people and educational professionals, this panel allows affected parties - usually without legal representation - to question witnesses and challenge facts. At the end, the panel has the right to uphold or overturn the expulsion or exclusion.
YouthLaw, a national organisation providing free legal services to under-25-year-olds, recommends the introduction of an impartial appeals tribunal similar to this in New Zealand, "to ensure that the suspension, exclusion or expulsion of a student is both necessary and justifiable under the law".
Free of charge and including representatives of tangata whenua, educationalists and those with legal training, this tribunal would be outside of any institutional pressures which can affect principals and boards of trustees' decision-making.
As YouthLaw says, such a tribunal would retain the broad discretionary power held by principals under the present regime, but also ensure that students in the most serious of cases will be able to fully realise their right to natural justice.
Surely this is what all young people deserve.
¦Maxine Boag is a resource teacher: Learning and Behaviour (Retired) and a Napier City Councillor
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