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Education and Skills Bill

I understand that concern, but there will be a safeguard under our new clause. The safeguard will be the appeal to the governing body. A section of the governing body that is not involved in the original expulsion will hear the appeal. That should deal with the concern. The effect of appeal panels on schools is clear. Since 1997 permanent exclusions have fallen from 12,700 to 9,300. In that period suspensions have risen from 290,000 to 340,000. That is a matter of concern to Chris Keates, the general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, who points out that when a child is expelled for hitting a teacher or for verbal abuse and goes through the appeals panel, they come back. A quarter of all appeals are won by parents. In half of the appeals that are won, the pupil returns to the school. I urge the Government to consider carefully new clause 1 and new clause 2, which makes home-school contracts a condition of admission to a school, which is currently forbidden.