Surviving permanent exclusion, returning to education: exploration of three young women’s stories of redemption, resignation and reconciliation

The outcomes for children and young people (YP) who have been permanently excluded from school are bleak, few return to education. Stories of those excluded are primarily negative and focus on the exclusion event. This research focuses on the stories of YP who have returned to education following permanent exclusion from school and explores how they understood, experienced and relayed their stories. Three young women’s narratives were gathered through unstructured interviews, their stories were taken back for further information gathering, exploration and deconstruction of terminology/phraseology where possible. A final meeting was arranged to take back and re-present their stories through drawn representation. The stories were analysed for content and function and found to present three differing typologies of redemption, reconciliation and resignation. Themes, event narratives and meta-narratives/discourses were identified and explored within the stories, including what helped/hindered the participants in accessing education. Commonalties identified across all three stories include descriptions of their actions as ‘naughty’/’good’, personal responsibility/blame for exclusion, a want for education, descriptions of growing up, family and peer influences and educational practices and discourses. The findings are analysed against previous literature and potential implications for child and educational psychologists are discussed.