A total of 51 badly behaved pupils were suspended from Sussex schools more than ten times in a year.

The children are repeatedly returning to the county’s classrooms because the Government has made it hard to expel them, the Tories have claimed.

The party published statistics showing record numbers of children are being suspended more than 10 times in a single year.

The data, obtained from Freedom of Information requests, revealed at least 867 children across England were repeatedly suspended, including 51 across Sussex, in 2007/8.

They included 15 pupils in Brighton and Hove, 21 in West Sussex and 15 in East Sussex.

Shadow Schools Minister Nick Gibb said the numbers had trebled in four years, since in 2003/4 310 children in England were suspended more than 10 times.

The MP for Bognor and Littlehampton said teachers had to “battle against Government rules discouraging them from expelling violent and disruptive pupils”.

Mr Gibb said: “Teachers want these pupils out of their classroom so other children can learn, but the Government’s restrictions on expulsions have caused this phenomenon of endless suspension. Suspending a child from school over and over again does them no good at all.

“If a child has been seriously disruptive or violent they should be properly removed so they can get the specialist help they need to return to mainstream education.”

However, Children’s Minister Delyth Morgan said the schools inspectorate Ofsted had found behaviour in the classroom was generally good and improving.

She said: “Temporary exclusions or ‘suspensions’ can be used as a quick shock to turn around behaviour before it gets worse.

“Schools also have firm powers to permanently exclude pupils where needed, even for a first offence. We have repeatedly stated that a teacher’s authority must be absolute in the classroom and support heads where they take the difficult decision to exclude.”

Baroness Morgan said it was right that independent panels considered exclusions, as they gave parents a fair right of appeal and meant that head teachers did not get dragged through the courts to defend their decisions.

But she stressed the vast majority of cases did not go to appeal, and exclusions were overturned and a pupil reinstated on only 1% of occasions.

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