Education risk factors

There are a range of additional risk factors that education practitioners should be alert to.

Risk factors in education

Heightened vulnerability

Education practitioners must be alert to the amplified risk when young people have a range of vulnerabilities and adopt strengths-based ways of supporting these young people. This includes those with additional learning needs, local attendance rates, and those who have managed moves, temporary or permanent exclusions.

Transitions

Exploiters target young people when they feel vulnerable. This can include the worries and concerns around making new friends, settling into a new setting or travelling independently to and from school. Additional support and interventions should be offered before, during and after transitions from primary to secondary education and moving from secondary to college education.

Grooming at the school gates

Exploiters may hang around outside the school gates and use ex-pupils or older siblings to groom younger pupils. Education settings should take measures to safeguard young people during the journey to and from school. This should include ensuring that school staff are available before and after school and working with the local community to safeguard young people.

School exclusion

School exclusion is associated with child criminal exploitation. This is partly due to the over-representation of vulnerable young people in Education Other Than At School (EOTAS) provision.

Our review for the Wales Violence Prevention Unit (Maxwell and Corliss, 2020) found that school exclusion includes:

• self-exclusion, where young people remain at home to avoid bullying.
• voluntary exclusion, where parents are asked to keep their child at home in response to problem behaviours.
• unlawful exclusion, where young people are sent home as a form of discipline, either for short periods, indefinitely or permanently.
• managed moves, where the school is unable to manage the young person and arranges for them to be transferred to another education setting.

School exclusion reduces professional oversight and increases the amount of unstructured, unsupervised time for the young person. In addition to increasing the availability of young people to exploiters, education practitioners must consider the impact of school exclusion on young people’s future opportunities and self-worth:

People need to tell young people about the consequences of being kicked out of school. I didn’t feel supported at school. School need to talk to me and ask me how I’m feeling and what’s not going okay in my life, don’t just blame me for bad behaviour.