Excluded Girls: interpersonal,
institutional and structural
violence in schooling
Audrey Osler
[email protected]
www.leeds.ac.uk/cchre
Girls and
Exclusion:
rethinking the
agenda
Osler and Vincent
RoutledgeFalmer
2003
www.leeds.ac.uk/cchre
Outline
• context
• the data
• excellence and exclusion
• defining school violence
• girls’ experiences of exclusion and violence
• interpersonal violence and everyday school practices
• school organisation and institutional violence
• policy frameworks and structural violence
• conclusions
Context
•
•
•
•
•
Exclusion high profile political issue
83% permanent disciplinary exclusions boys
1 in 4 of 14-15 year olds excluded female
Need to look beyond disciplinary exclusion
Need to examine what happens to 10,000 girls
permanently excluded in 5 year period
The Data
• From three LEA’s and three EAZ’s
• Inner London, Midlands, South East &
North
• Ethnic mix – varied
• Interviews with girls aged 13 – 18 (81)
• Interviews with professionals: health, social
services and education
Aim
• To understand young women’s own
experiences of exclusion and violence, to
inform policy making
• Girl’s voices set alongside those of
professionals
Excellence and Exclusion
• 1997 SEU link acknowledged between exclusion,
truancy and longer term social exclusion
• Target to reduce exclusion by 1/3 by 2002
• Reducing exclusion seen as central to standards
agenda
• By 2001 government policy shift exclusions again rise
• New focus on violent and unruly students with
excellence and inclusion in intension
• Girls ‘not a problem’: hidden problem, exam success
A hidden problem
“There is someone I am working with at the
moment … she’s very emotionally
distressed, as shown by crying, worrying,
refusing to do her schoolwork and those
sorts of things. Whilst the school are
concerned about her, it’s not as pressing as a
six foot kid who’s throwing desks about”
(educational psychologist)
Invisible Problem Girls
• Hidden problem = lack of resources,
support
• Typically, girls’ problems don’t threaten
learning environment
• Is a ‘good’ school high excluding or low
excluding?
Defining school violence
• ‘violence’ in schools used by researchers
internationally
• Not a feature of English policy documents
• Terms: disaffection, bullying, anti-social
Defining School Violence
• Everyday incivilities
• Psychological violence
Institutional violence?
“Schools can either be a force for violence prevention, or
can provide an experience which reinforces violent
attitudes and adds to the child’s experience of violence”
(Gulbenkian Foundation, 1995: 139)
• Teacher initiated?
• Systemic?
Three types of violence
• Interpersonal
• Institutional
• Structural
Interpersonal violence and everyday
school practices
• Girls link bullying to exclusion
• Physical violence
• Psychological
“If a boy’s going to bully he’ll use violence.
Girls do it mentally because they’re clever.
They know it hurts more.” (Beth,
mainstream school, no exclusions)
Responses to interpersonal violence
• Bullying → self-exclusion
• Interpersonal violence can escalate
• Girls value social networks – exclusion
from group a powerful form of violence
• Professionals under estimate academic and
social impact of inter-personal violence
School organisation and institutional
violence
• Girls highlight setting (ability grouping) as a form
of exclusion
• Education seen as access to better paid
employment
• Large classes: less support, more teacher-student
friction
• Apologising, crying to diffuse tension – no
support follows
Policy frameworks and structural
violence
• Policy relating to pregnancy
• Lack of support for school-aged mothers
• Pregnancy often follows other forms of
exclusion
Everyday violence and pregnancy
“There was this girl and she started to get bullied because she was very
big built and they used to call her fatty and everything …but she
wasn’t. Then she started skipping days off school. They just thought
she was skipping days off because she didn’t like school. I think she
missed 17 maybe 20 science lessons, then it was whole days, weeks
and months. Then she left because she fell pregnant and then that was
it. She’s trying to get into college but she hasn’t got any GCSEs and
it’ll be hard because she’s got the baby. I really wanted her to have
some more life. I wanted her to have an education …to just have
something to help her but she never managed it. She’s dyslexic as well
but she’s not statemented. She just thought to herself she was thick: ‘I
don’t know nothing. I’m stupid’, because people put her down and so
she’d skip days off school.” (Sam, self-excluder)
Conclusions
• Girls’ exclusion hidden
• Girls’ difficulties hidden from professionals
• Everyday violence and incivilities helps
focus away from extremes and onto
mundane
• Young people can contribute to policy
formulation
• Exclusion ≠ disciplinary exclusion