The council’s education and learning directorate annual report was recently published, highlighting statistics that councillors this week described as “worrying”.
Overall school attendance for both primary and secondary schools has decreased over the five years from 2017/18 to 2021/22.
Primary pupil attendance for 2021/22 has dropped by 3.8 per cent compared to the previous year and currently stands at 92.2 per year. Authorised absences were 6.1 per cent, while unauthorised days off are 1.8 per cent.
At secondary schools, exclusions have increased slightly in the last year to 38.3 exclusions per thousand.
However, the number of primary pupil exclusions has almost doubled from 4.37 per thousand pupils in 2020/21 to 7.93 incidents per thousand pupils last year.
These issues were discussed at length at the council’s education committee on Tuesday.
Mid Galloway and Wigtown West Councillor Jackie McCamon said: “Regarding pupils that have been excluded, do we know if they are being home schooled? Do we keep in touch with the child of the parent that has been excluded if it has been long term?
“Are we actively seeking to get them back involved with the school curriculum?
“It’s a worrying statistic. If kids are being excluded, what happens to them after that?”
Alistair Young, the council’s curriculum and quality improvement manager, said: “In any instance where the pupil is excluded the school should be tracking and looking very carefully at meeting the educational needs of that young person.
“There would be an expectation on our part that the school would be working hard with the young person, their parents, any agencies or partners that are involved, to be coming up with a plan to make sure that exclusion is understood and what support can be going in to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Meanwhile, Mid Galloway and Wigtown West Councillor David Inglis quizzed education bosses on how they handle extremely unruly pupils to ensure they don’t negatively affect the learning of others.
He said: “I need to know who it is that draws the line in the sand when someone is so disruptive in class that we’re not getting it right for every child in the class setting.
“It’s really important that we get to the bottom of this because from what I can gather this is happening right across the region.
“I understand and fully support inclusion, but there has to come a point where there’s recognition that there could be children out there who will not settle in the general education environment.”
Council education director Gillian Brydson said: “Ultimately that responsibility lies with me, and I know that we’ve spoken about this for many months now.
“My duty is to ensure education for all children in Dumfries and Galloway, and our position and philosophy is to include all children in education.
“But there is a route outwith mainstream education should that be deemed necessary, and that is something that in a handful of cases we will take.
“Those routes are not easy and that’s why we do absolutely everything in our power to keep our children in our schools.”
