Opinion: Soapbox - Including the excluded is the way forward

It's easy to believe that excluded children are generally young thugs with feckless parents, but the reality is that two thirds of excluded children have special education needs, and many more are children identified by the Social Exclusion Unit as vulnerable: looked-after children, children from minority ethnic families and those with mental health problems.

The Children Bill proclaims every child matters - but do they? The PM appears to have thought that his audience of headteachers wouldn't welcome this message. Our education system provides well for the successful, but schools are allowed to choose which children they will educate.

Social workers say that getting a school place for a looked-after child is one of the hardest tasks they face; parents of disabled children have fought for years for the right to have their child educated in the mainstream, and still face barriers; and parents of excluded children can face huge difficulties finding a new school for their child, many of whom never return to mainstream education. Tony Blair seemed to welcome this when he suggests schools should not be "a dumping ground" for the most difficult cases. In other words, these children should be educated out of the mainstream, no doubt in the expanding pupil referral units run by LEAs, which offer a restricted curriculum and are often judged substandard by Ofsted.