The schools with a bad rep saving the kids everyone gave up on
By Jason Farrell, home editor, Andy Hughes, investigative specialist producer, and Sanya Burgess, news reporter
'Problem kids'.
They disrupt the classroom, act like they don't want to learn and in more extreme cases pose a physical danger to other students or teachers.
New figures show drug and alcohol-related exclusions in secondary schools are up 57% in the last five years.
Exclusions overall are up 15% year-on-year for the most recent recorded year, 2016-17.
These difficult children get shunted out of mainstream schools and end up in pupil referral units (PRUs), where many believe they encourage each other to misbehave and the units end up as a hotbed for gang activity.
Investigating if PRUs deserve their notorious reputation, Sky News spent time in these units talking to students and teachers.
These are the stories of teenagers from London and Harrogate - they are miles apart but have all felt let down by mainstream education.
They are young teens with mental health problems, anger issues, or drug problems.
They say their lives have been transformed for the better by going to school at a PRU and suggest the myth that these units are breeding grounds for criminals is unfounded.
Redbridge Alternative Provision (RAP)
East London
Paige Christopher, 14, excluded for fighting
Paige only found out she has ADHD when she got referred for mental health support to help her with anger issues.
She had been in a few fights at school and she ended up getting thrown out after she got into a particularly violent fight.
She'd struggled in her mainstream school and found working in big classrooms difficult, but finds it easier now she's in a PRU with class sizes closer to five rather than 30.
"I don't really get along with most people because people don't like how I am, straight-forward and everything. Other times it's quite distracting with other people, with my ADHD I will talk to other people and distract them from their work and get in trouble," she says.
As well as help in the classroom, Paige has been working with a mentor to help explore why, when she gets angry, she can't calm down for hours.
She's on a scheme to get her back into mainstream schooling, but this time with additional support. She wants to go back and plans on taking the lessons she learnt at the PRU with her.
Tye White, 16, excluded for carrying a knife
When Tye was at mainstream school his mental health deteriorated, he was stressed, no one expected him to leave with any qualifications and he frequently spent time in isolation - something he says felt like prison.
PRUs are supposedly unruly because of the close proximity of so many problem children, but Tye describes it as "much more peaceful" than his old school. He feels he is flourishing by having more individual learning and teachers who take the time to mentor, counsel and nurture him.
Almost from the moment he joined his old school in year seven, Tye says he behaved badly.
"It got to the point just before I got kicked out that I started to do whatever I wanted and I wouldn't care," he says.
Tye felt the teachers had given up on him. He was ending up in isolation nearly every week for breaking rules such as speaking without putting his hand up or his uniform getting untucked.
By the time he got excluded for carrying a knife, Tye was seen as the baddest child at his school of 2,000 pupils. At the time Tye saw this as a badge of honour - but now says he was immature.
When he got excluded Tye says he "felt like I wasn't going to get anywhere because I wasn't going to school anymore."
Now, a few months into his spell at PRU, Tye is studying towards seven GCSEs and expects to pass them. He plans to go to college to study music tech and to work in the music industry after that.
Through a smile, he reveals that since going to PRU, he's had his first ever B grade.
"That was good," he said.
Reflecting on why he's done better at a PRU, he said: "I find this place a lot more positive, a lot more helpful and useful to me. Education-wide, mentally-wise, it's a clearer place.
"In mainstream school, maybe because there were so many people, I felt I was constantly under pressure and felt like all the teachers were against me."
His mum Julie says "there just wasn't much hope" when Tye was at his mainstream school and her son would come home stressed out, the pressure building on their relationship.
Getting Tye's education back on track has made a "massive difference to his behaviour and it just works," she says.
She adds: "For some kids it might not work but it has just worked so well for us. The child that was at that school is nothing like the child that attends RAP. It's like two different kids."
The Grove Academy
Harrogate
Toby Povey, 14, excluded for hitting a teacher
"I know a lot of people that carry knives. I don't think it's a big deal until you actually get stabbed by a knife or even touched by a knife."
Despite having lessons about the dangers of knife crime, Toby's comments are not unique in his unit.
He explained most people carry because they think it makes them safer, but there are other reasons too.
He says that just because he lives in a small town, it doesn't mean there aren't issues around gangs and drugs.
While he's not in a gang, he knows people who are and in the past he's felt the need to carry a knife for his own safety - something that isn't difficult to get a hold of.
"I know some people who've got machetes, samurai swords, crossbows," he says.
"They sometimes carry them around with them," he continues, before adding that no one he knows actually uses their weapons.
He adds: "Sometimes it can be helpful, if you get what I mean鈥� you pulling it out, most people will start walking backwards and then you've got time to either run or fight. It depends what he does."
Toby ended up at PRU for "quite a lot of reasons", he says, listing fighting, smoking, vandalism and an assault on a teacher.
The 14-year-old punched and elbowed a teacher he says shut him in a classroom while he was having an asthma attack.
He thinks the PRU is "10 times better" than his mainstream school.
"I like smaller groups, it's better for my concentration. I still don't concentrate but they give you a chance here. Mainstream schools, if you do one or two things wrong then you get kicked out. Here they actually give you warnings and a chance."
Helen and her son Callum, a county lines victim (names have been changed)
Helen describes her son Callum as a typical boy, but one who struggled with his schooling.
At the end of primary school, he was diagnosed as having a learning difficulty, dyslexia - but it wasn't followed up at secondary school and Callum ended up falling behind.
By the time Callum was 12, like other children of his age, he wanted to go hang out with his friends at the local skate park. Before long, his behaviour started to deteriorate.
He became aggressive and despite previously being happy-go-lucky and close to his family, he began to shut his parents and siblings out.
"We didn't know why. We couldn't put our finger on what it was. It was deteriorating to the point where the school was calling us in and saying he was getting suspended. We just didn't know what to do," Helen says.
One day Callum's school rang. He had turned up under the influence of drugs and this was the final straw. He was kicked out.
He was moved to a PRU and that's when things turned around for the better. The unit helped him deal with anger and helped equip the family with knowledge of how to help him.
Helen says: "[They helped by] giving him a one-to-one, bespoke timetable and just being there. Letting him rant... [and listen to] him and trying to understand why."
Through this process and having extra support, Callum finally opened up about what was causing his behaviour - he had become involved in county lines, the use of young children to traffic drugs into rural areas.
Callum had been lured in with promises that he would make a lot of money, fast. He also was offered drugs and then was told he "owed them". Eventually the young teenager was addicted and needed medication to wean him off the drugs.
Helen had never heard of country lines and says the whole family was shocked.
Her son revealed he was told his family would be hurt if he stopped selling drugs or tried to escape. Helen hadn't understood why her young son kept running away from a safe, loving home but now it made sense - he was trying to stop them getting hurt.
Callum had ended up as a runner. He would get picked up in a car, driven out across Yorkshire and made to sell drugs.
Helen remembers finding her 13-year-old son one of the times he went missing. Callum was trying to push her car away while not being able to stand properly or open his eyes because he was so high.
She credits the PRU for changing the course of her son's life.
"They were fantastic. I can't praise them enough," she says.
When Callum would go missing, the staff would call to see if Helen and the family needed help - even on Christmas Day. They worked to show Callum he could trust them and what could be done to make him safe and protected.
With drugs often comes petty crime, something Callum was not immune to. Eventually, his mum picked him up one day from a police station and, she said, her son was broken.
They resolved to get him out of the area but when she asked the local authority for help, she was turned away - so little changed.
Callum then went missing for 10 days during winter. The PRU managed to get the local authority involved. Her son was found and taken into a care home to get specialised support and out of the area. The PRU also changed his school timetable to account for the time it would now take for Callum to get to school.
He's improving every day.
"That was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do but, touch wood, we've come through it and he's a good kid now - a live wire, but a good kid."
Amy Collins, 17, excluded for drugs
Amy spent two years at a PRU after she was kicked out of mainstream school at 15 for being caught taking drugs.
Now she can see she had fallen in with the wrong crowd, which contributed to her misbehaving at school and taking drugs - weed, cocaine or - as she put it - "all the recreational ones".
Amy felt her school didn't help or support her at all. There was the odd leaflet or powerpoint about the dangers of drugs but no one would pay attention.
She and her mates would go off and smoke weed during the break, come back for lessons before smoking more at lunchtime.
"They [teachers] had no idea until they actually caught us and then we just got excluded straight away."
Coming to a PRU was a big change - not least because Amy has to check her belongings into a cloakroom at the start of the day and breaks are in a game room rather than outside.
Amy also found that what she was being told about drugs was more helpful. There would be better information and assemblies about the risks led by, among others, police and those working in mental health.
She says that when you're in a big class and you're being told about drugs by someone you don't respect, no one cares or listens. But if someone from that area is speaking to you, then you do listen.
The turning point for Amy was when she got spiked with an illegal high and it almost killed her.
This experience, along with seeing and hearing what happens to other people, has meant she hasn't touched drugs since.
One of those experiences she remembers clearly to this day.
She said: "I found a girl one time and she was lying in a field frothing at the mouth having a fit and she was only 14, and it's experiences like that from other people and myself that made me think what am I doing."
