A report of a discussion about student exclusion in the UK, aka "expulsion", noted that the position being debated was that students should never be expelled, and that any expulsion is a mark of failure for that school. I beg to differ.
These armchair quarterbacks are oversimplifying a complex issue or are completely out of their lane, or both and I have written on this topic before (see below). No school leader or board takes an expulsion decision lightly, and usually other avenues have already been explored. Expulsion occiurs for three reasons : legal, including the safety of others in the community, mental health and lack of resources which generally features in both of the other factors.
The legal issues are in essence that the student is a danger to others, such as what happened in this report. Violence, weapons, drugs, sexual assault - often public schools respond to these threats with armed SROs. This doesn't solve the problems and often escalates them.
Legal issues also include exposure for the school, its staff and leadership and its insurers. When a student harms another student, staff or faculty member or visitor, the school may be found liable or responsible for this harm, its costs and its effects. This harm may not be physical, but in terms of wellbeing and of future possibilities.
Added to this can be vandalism and destruction, on and off the school campus, theft, altering or deleting academic records, hacking, revenge porn ...
Mental heath issues present a particular problem. Schools can usually identify that something is wrong but not what and rely on parents' accepting a particular reality and/or doing something about it and/or having the finances to do something about it. When parents can't or won't do something, the onus to help falls on the school which is of course not a mental health services provider.
Both the above lead to the resources question. Any non-mainstream need places extra demands on a school. Reading delays, dietary requirements, advanced academic interest all require specialist advice, support or facilities.
I remember once attending a seminar where a principal from a charter school had accepted a highly disabled student. They received eg $10,000 from the state for every student, and another $10,000 for this disabled student, thus $20,000. However, the full-time TA and the part-time TA to allow the other to have mandated breaks and the stand-by TA cost eg $100,000. The school also had to pay a fee for access to medical and other support services. So just to have this student entirely consumed the income for 8 other students, not including any program adaptation costs.
What really hurt the school was the $1,000,000 plus in building and other changes they had to make. The principal shared that he thought the school might not survive.
My point is not that disabled students should not be part of regular schooling. My point is that schools have limited resources, and every additional expense is a Peter and Paul situation. Every internal suspension removes a teacher and a room from general use. Every hour spent investigating an incident, writing reports, and meeting with parents and external agencies is an hour taken away from other things. I was once called as a witness in a custody hearing, and my ten minutes on the stand represented about six hours out of the office. Schools are not resourced for extra-ordinary demands.
Sometimes, the needs of the school and of the many must trump those of the individual. These decisions are taken never lightly, and are never easy. Rarely are they a failure of the school.
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Further reading
http://teaching-abc.blogspot.com/2014/08/again-what-is-school-to-do.html
http://teaching-abc.blogspot.com/2014/08/what-is-school-to-do.html
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