Off-the-books school suspensions fuelling Melbourne's youth crime crisis
Informal school suspensions and 'soft expulsions' are fuelling Melbourne's youth crime crisis, as young people are cut adrift from the education system with no clear pathways back.
Youth leaders and education experts warn that soft expulsions or suspensions – where a child is excluded from school without going through official processes – are widespread across government, Catholic and private schools. Children who have been excluded from school are often at high risk of offending.
Victorian state schools expelled 266 students in 2023, according to official records. But soft expulsions have been recognised since at least 2017, when the Victorian Ombudsman reported that the official number of expulsions was a fraction of those informally expelled, 'on whom no data is kept'.
Individual schools are required to record student suspensions and need regional office approval for suspensions of more than five continuous days, or more than 15 days in total in a school year.
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Lisa McKay-Brown, an associate professor at the University of Melbourne with expertise in school attendance research, said there was no way of knowing how many students were unofficially suspended or expelled.
She said that in some cases, schools might ask students to take a 'break' to give everyone 'a little bit of respite' and decide not to record a formal suspension, which could result in failing to devise support plans for returning the student to school.
'The problem with that is there's nothing that's recorded, and there may not be a return to school plan or some form of support plan for the student when they come back,' McKay-Brown said.
'[Schools] don't know what to do. They don't have the resources to support them to actually give the kids what they need to get back into school.'
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Off-the-books school suspensions fuelling Melbourne's youth crime crisis
Informal school suspensions and 'soft expulsions' are fuelling Melbourne's youth crime crisis, as young people are cut adrift from the education system with no clear pathways back. Youth leaders and education experts warn that soft expulsions or suspensions – where a child is excluded from school without going through official processes – are widespread across government, Catholic and private schools. Children who have been excluded from school are often at high risk of offending. Victorian state schools expelled 266 students in 2023, according to official records. But soft expulsions have been recognised since at least 2017, when the Victorian Ombudsman reported that the official number of expulsions was a fraction of those informally expelled, 'on whom no data is kept'. Individual schools are required to record student suspensions and need regional office approval for suspensions of more than five continuous days, or more than 15 days in total in a school year. Loading Lisa McKay-Brown, an associate professor at the University of Melbourne with expertise in school attendance research, said there was no way of knowing how many students were unofficially suspended or expelled. She said that in some cases, schools might ask students to take a 'break' to give everyone 'a little bit of respite' and decide not to record a formal suspension, which could result in failing to devise support plans for returning the student to school. 'The problem with that is there's nothing that's recorded, and there may not be a return to school plan or some form of support plan for the student when they come back,' McKay-Brown said. '[Schools] don't know what to do. They don't have the resources to support them to actually give the kids what they need to get back into school.'
