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Advocacy Training

Two-Day School Exclusion Advocacy Training Course

The Communities Empowerment Network (CEN) is the UK’s foremost education advocacy service with a long record of advising, supporting, representing and successfully reintegrating excluded BME pupils back into full-time, mainstream education.

Day 1 Programme
Lessons learned from the children and young people with whom we have recently had contact;Lessons learned from the adults, partners, colleagues, teachers and others in authority;The underlying issues leading to challenging behaviour;Institutional racism as a factor in the exclusion of Black students;Seeking the underlying causes of alienation and conflict;Discriminatory practices relating to the treatment of Black pupils, pupils with special educational needs and children/young people in care;What can the young people and the parents reasonably expect from the school and local education authority?;What do we mean by natural justice and due process?; andThe role of mentors, mediators, counsellors - marginal containment or mainstream transformation.

Day 2 Programme
School Policies - implementation and monitoring;Case preparation: source of information – young person, parents and documentation;OFSTED Reports;Empowerment of pupils and parents within a child centred model;Significant parts of the DCSF Guidance on exclusions that advocates need to absorb;Procedures to be followed at the governing body Discipline Committee and Independent Appeal Panel hearings;Case studies to illustrate use of guidance;Alternatives to exclusion; andVolunteering as an Education Advocate for the CEN to practice skills learned from the course.

Contact the CEN to book a training course.

A shortened version of the course can also be delivered over one day.

"...the shame... and stigma. Many feel disempowered and do not have the knowledge and/or resources to challenge exclusion (which is a highly complex process).' There can be serious amounts of paperwork involved and it can be overwhelming for some parents. Many will not even challenge an exclusion. For those who are more likely to, the process should be as simple, efficient, open and accessible as possible.”

(A consultation on revised statutory guidance and regulations for exclusions from schools and pupil referral units in England, Response of the Centre for Social Justice, The Centre for Social Justice, 2012, p.9).