Andrew Henderson is head teacher of Beormund School in Southwark, South London, a special needs primary for children with social, emotional and behavioural problems, including many who have been excluded from other schools.

He believes that children as young as 3 or 4 should not be excluded from school and that permanent exclusions are particularly damaging.

“I think it is awful. Children can get a feeling of rejection. They develop relationships at their school and when these are broken, it’s like having to move home or move out of their area. It can be quite devastating for them.

“When they arrive here, we have to help them feel they are worthwhile individuals again and get them ready to learn,” he said.

While teachers in special schools received specialist training in using physical restraint on children, most mainstream teachers did not.

“You need training to know how to intervene physically without hurting the children,” he said. “There is nothing in the training to tell [mainstream teachers] how to work with very disturbed young people and the support they need costs too much.

“They are frightened [of using force], so instead, they just end up excluding the children. Or they use informal exclusions by simply ringing up the parents and asking them to take the child home,” he said.

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