4k local pupils suspended
OVER four thousand pupils were suspended from schools across the Western Education and Library Board (WELB) over the past five years, the Education Minister has revealed.
He was unable to provide a breakdown of the number of expulsions by board area but across Northern Ireland as a whole 145 pupils were expelled between 2007 and 2012.
He provided the information in response to an Assembly Question but said: “It is inappropriate...to publish the expulsion statistics in any more detail since the risk of individual pupils being identified is unacceptably high, due to the small numbers involved.”