12:00 pm
Sir Alan Steer: They are educational institutions. They are about children learning, not about putting them somewhere because we do not know what else to do with them, which has sometimes been the situation. Any child of school age ought to be in a school and the concept ought to be of them learning. Why do we assume that because a child goes to a PRU they are not capable of passing exams or doing well? One of my closest educational friends, and the head of an extremely able and high-performing school for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties, went to an emotional and behavioural difficulties school and, according to him, was illiterate until the age of 15. We lose that concept. Right back in 2005, we called our report “Learning Behaviour”. The whole concept is that the vast majority of children are capable of learning, improving and removing their problems. We have always got to hang on to that. PRUs ought to be seen as schools; they are learning institutions.