Earlier this month, the Office of the Children's Commissioner published its business plan which proposed what the organisation intends to achieve in the coming year.
Introducing the plan, Maggie Atkinson said it had been developed in "the spirit of the recommendations made by Dr Dunford".
Kicking off the first major inquiry for 2011/12, Atkinson announced that for the first time she would invoke the commissioner's powers to summons people to give evidence to investigate the issue of inequality in school exclusions.
Challenging exclusions
"There are times when you can ask people about sensitive and difficult matters where people withhold information," she told CYP Now. "The charitable sector has been asking for a long time why these powers have never been invoked. Our statutory remit is for the child and we know from figures that the department openly publish about exclusions that there are particular children that are far more likely to be excluded than their peers for reasons that deserve to be investigated. It is not a matter of cold statistics."
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