The head of a London secondary school that places pupils in "lunch isolation" if their parents don't pay for school meals is unapologetic over the policy, arguing that parents who refuse to pay are betraying their children's education.
The letter states that Alam's actions placed pupils "at risk of vulnerability to radicalisation, promoted intolerance of difference and diversity and restricted their life chances by failing to provide pupils with the necessary learning and skills to flourish in modern, multicultural Britain".
It found some schools were failing to follow the correct procedures to record exclusions, while others were placing pupils on "extended study leave", reduced timetables or into alternative schooling as a means of removing them.
One impact assessment – on the Priors School, in east Warwickshire, a former private school that became a state-funded free school in September 2011 – warned of local concerns about "surplus places, pupil numbers and sustainability, consultation, use of taxpayers' money, standards, premises and parental choice".
Study author Tammy Campbell said: "If teachers place younger pupils early in their school career in lower ability groupings, and older pupils in higher groupings, this hasty (and potentially premature) sorting may have a significant impact on subsequent differences in educational attainment".
These conversations should not just take place between pupils and teachers.
Sue Cox School of Education and Lifelong Learning, University of East Anglia We are concerned about plans to place all pupils in a league table ranked according to ability.
Its head, Nathan Atkinson, took over in 2014 and, while he says it's "an amazing place" with pupils speaking 48 languages, nothing he tried seemed to be working.
In this case, the blast took place as pupils were leaving school for the day in a Sunni area of the city.
The issue is one of a number raised in the annual report by Dr Passmore, the Chief Schools Adjudicator, which also criticises schools which refuse a primary school place to pupils because they did not attend the right nursery.
