Children as young as five are being permanently excluded from Dorset schools because of their poor behaviour – including attacking staff.

In the last academic year (2017-18) there were 73 permanent exclusions in the county, although 14 of these were later rescinded.

The most common reason is persistent disruptive behaviour although drug and alcohol issues are becoming more frequent reasons for exclusions.

A report to the county’s safeguarding scrutiny committee says that most excluded children spend some time in a learning centre before being reintegrated into a new mainstream school.

But not all exclusions are justified, according to advisor Sylvia Lord – and those which appear to fail to meet the criteria are challenged both by the exclusions officer and via requests for an investigation by Independent Review Panels by parents or carers. Ofsted is also now focusing its attention on schools who have high exclusion rates.

“Permanent exclusion should be seen as a last resort in all schools. It is therefore reasonable to assume that a permanent exclusion will be a symptom of other issues or problems in a child’s life. Since June 2018, every child who has been permanently excluded has been discussed at a multi-agency group to identify what other factors may need addressing,” she said.

Wey Valley School in Weymouth is the school to exclude the most pupils in the Dorset County Council area with eight being permanently excluded in 2017-18. Several schools excluded six pupils – Atlantic Academy (previously IPACA); Budmouth, the Grange School; Highcliffe and Queen Elizabeth’s.

A total of 37 exclusions across the county were for persistent disruptive behaviour; 7 were drug and alcohol related; 7 for assault on an adult; 6 for assault on another pupil and 3 for verbal abuse or making threats to an adult.

The majority of the cases were amongst older children, years 9 and 10 accounting for 40 of the 73 cases, although there were two cases of permanent exclusions for Year 1 pupils and three for Year 2.

Weymouth councillor Kate Wheller said she was concerned to hear that exclusions because of drug involvement was increasing and that young children were being excluded from education in mainstream schools: “I find it quite appalling that we have got primary children who are out of control,” she said.

Director of children’s services Nick Jarman said the county has “a handful” of children who were out of school and not attending learning centres because their behaviour was so disruptive that specialist learning centre staff also struggled to cope with them.

He said that some had opted for home tuition.

“For some we need to provide support at an early age before their behaviour becomes dangerous,” he said, “When you see an eight year old who’s extremely violent you have to ask what is going on in the home.”

He said that social services now had better methods of tracking troubled families and was offering support through Family Partnerships Zone initiatives with school also able to help with 20 per cent of their budgets allocated to special needs and pupils with disabilities.

But Cllr Beryl Ezzard said that schools in the Purbeck area were now telling her that reduced funding was causing problems: “In the Purbeck Family Partnership Zone teachers are saying they can’t cope any more and haven’t got the resources.”