Tackling school exclusions - Anna's Story

Anna’s teachers were keen for her to receive targeted interventions and support to get her back on track before her GCSEs, as she was on her final warning and at serious risk of being permanently excluded. After assessment by our partner charity, Anna was identified as being at high risk in her emotional and social wellbeing and academically, in her maths work. With this data and the insights from Anna’s teachers and mother, she was enrolled in a 2 year programme with her school Link Worker, Hannah, who would become her trusted mentor and champion. 

Through regular one-to-one sessions, Hannah learned that Anna felt misunderstood by her teachers, and although she wanted to do better, she didn’t know how. At this time, she had the second highest number of poor behaviour points in the whole school, so Hannah took the opportunity to have positive conversations with Anna about her aspirations to become an Olympic athlete and her love of football. As the term progressed, it became clear that Anna’s bad behaviour and projections of confidence were actually a mask to hide the fact that she felt she wasn’t good at anything and that her teachers had given up on her. Hannah enrolled Anna in a range of positive activities and over time, these activities helped to encourage positive self-talk and confidence, improved Anna’s emotional wellbeing and mental health, and helped her to identify situations where she could take a different approach and gave her the tools to do so. 

Anna now has an inner motivation to achieve things for herself, rather than just to make her mother proud, and is excited about her GCSE options. She has significantly reduced her behaviour points at school and is now motivated to achieve positive outcomes and will continue to thrive throughout the rest of the programme and into adulthood.

Through positive outcomes like Anna’s, we know we are  able to move the dial and significantly improve the lives of local residents.