Everyone welcome: inside the schools that haven’t expelled a child since 2013

As the government tries to curb high exclusion rates in England, one academy trust is proudly ‘on-rolling’ – open to all

Jason Thurley, headteacher at Beacon academy, near Grimsby, leans across the table explaining why yet another of his pupils was excluded before joining the school. “He’d brought in a £1 potato gun. It was at the bottom of his bag and so he goes up to his form tutor and says, ‘I don’t want to get into trouble with this, sir, can you take it?’ And he gets permanently excluded. The school said ‘we have a zero-tolerance policy on firearms’.”

Thurley laughs in disbelief. The same boy is now a year 10 sports leader who helps organise cross-country championships. He’s just one of dozens of pupils who joined the school after being booted out of another one.

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from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2JJrkAW