By TIM DOUTRÉ
MORE than 2000 students from the West were suspended and nearly 20 expelled in a seven month period last year.
Department of Education figures provided exclusively to Star reveal 2089 of the 14,249 students suspended from Victorian public schools between February and August last year were from the Western Metropolitan Region.
Out of the 123 students expelled in Victoria during the same period, 19 of them were from the West.
A Department spokeswoman said the suspensions and expulsions were in line with state averages and that schools in Melbourne’s West were focused on supporting “challenging students”.
Of the 2089 students suspended in the Western Metropolitan Region – which consists of the Local Government Areas of Wyndham, Brimbank, Hobsons Bay, Maribyrnong, Melbourne, Melton, and Moonee Valley – 219 were primary school students, 1836 were secondary and 34 were classed as ungraded.
“The number of expulsions in 2011 accounted for 0.03 per cent of students enrolled in government schools in the Western Metropolitan Region,” the spokeswoman said.
“The number of suspensions accounted for 2.8 per cent.”
Across the state, students as young as Grade 4 were expelled for reasons including committing “significant acts of violence against a person”, destruction of property and theft. The Department could not confirm whether these incidents occurred in the West.
Altona P-9 College Principal Nathan Chisholm has noticed a “massive shift” in student attitudes which has resulted in a reduction of “problem behavior” in recent years.
“That manifests itself anecdotally but also in terms of real data of suspensions which have reduced considerably in the last three or four years,” he said.
“That isn’t to say we don’t have kids here who aren’t a bit of a hassle. Anyone who says they don’t is lying in any school in Victoria.
“I have had to expel a student in my time here after exhaustive attempts to re-engage and support that young person, but sometimes there is a bottom line and it doesn’t do the young person any favours ultimately to keep taking away responsibility from them.”
In metropolitan Victoria, the Year 8 bracket had the most amount of students suspended with 3166 out of 14,254.
A total of 28 Prep students were suspended in Victoria during the same time period – 27 boys and one girl.
