Evening Standard comment: Here’s a better way to help troubled pupils; A bad defeat at Wembley; Remembering Tessa

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What happens to pupils kicked out of school for things such as violent and disruptive behaviour? The answer — as we report today — is that they are usually left with little hope.

Most end up at what are called Pupil Referral Units (or PRUs). In London alone, 3,206 children were meant to be studying at them last year, although the word “study” is an optimistic description of what actually goes on.

Over the past five years there has been a 50 per cent increase in the number of pupils excluded from mainstream schools — and once they are out, they are often trapped.

Only one per cent end up with five good GCSEs (and in Lambeth’s PRUs, in 2016, none did).

In England, the statistics are as predictable as they are depressing: excluded pupils are 10 times more likely than other children to suffer from mental health problems; four times as likely to have come from a poor background; twice as likely to be in care.

All this is an obvious gateway to gangs and serious crime: a better approach early on might prevent violence later — and today’s shocking news that knife crime in the capital has hit record levels underlines the need for things to change.

So what needs to happen? Fewer exclusions, for a start — some schools stand accused of driving out poorly performing students in order to boost their exam results.

That might make the school look good but it does nothing for children overall, and society ends up worse off.

As we report today , schools can take a different tack: at Dunraven School in Lambeth, permanent exclusions have fallen to zero and temporary ones from several hundred a year to just a handful.

How has it happened? The school has set up an on-site centre called The Base, which gives children support.

“I didn’t want to end up in prison or dead. I changed. Now I am back in the main school and thriving,” one pupil says.

It seems to work, and it certainly works better than the established — and sadly uninspiring — PRU we also describe today. And the most encouraging thing of all is the cost: a place at a PRU costs taxpayers around £18,000 a year, 20 times that of a place at The Base.

It’s a great scheme. But why should only a few pupils benefit? We need schemes such as this extended across London — and soon.

A bad defeat at Wembley

When we broke the news that the FA was planning to sell Wembley Stadium and put the profit back into grassroots sport we backed the plan. We still do.

Shahid Khan, billionaire businessman and the owner of Fulham FC, had offered £600 million for the stadium, while leaving the FA with hospitality and naming rights.

The plan had a lot going for it. At the top, football is a game of millionaire players, but for everyone else it’s tough. There are 91,000 teams affiliated to the FA in 1,100 leagues and they struggle for funding. Pitches are often in a poor state: 147,000 matches were cancelled last year, it’s claimed, just because of this.

And of course, stronger grassroots sport ought to pay off by helping build an even more successful England team.

It will take money to turn this around.

The men in blazers who make up some of the 127-member FA council scuppered the Wembley deal because they doubted Mr Khan’s plan.

But without the deal, where’s the cash going to come from? Tax agents’ fees? Don’t bet on it. Will the Premier League cough up more? Unlikely.

Meanwhile the deal is off — and football is losing out.

Remembering Tessa

Only a few people in politics ever leave a real legacy — and even fewer of them are also truly loved. Tessa Jowell, who died earlier this year, was one of them.

Today three former Prime Ministers are among those who will remember her life at a packed memorial service — and it has been announced that a path through the Olympic Park is to be renamed in her honour.

Without Ms Jowell there wouldn’t have been a 2012 Olympics in London. And without her now, life in London is a little darker.

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