FEWER children are being excluded from Glasgow schools, latest figures show.

Since a peak in 2006/07, there has been an 87 per cent drop overall in children being barred from class for their behaviour.

Education bosses said a "determined effort" to support pupils' individual needs was to thank for the progress.

A Glasgow City Council spokeswoman said: "It’s simple, if children and young people are not in school they are not learning and we must do everything in our power to get it right for every child.

"There’s been a determined effort in all our schools to improve and increase attendance and reduce the number of exclusions by targeting the individual needs of our pupils.

"There’s been an 87 per cent reduction in our exclusions overall since 2006 and this is a very welcome statistic."

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From the previous year, there was a significant 34 per cent decrease in exclusions across primary, secondary and ASL schools in the city.

There has been a further 40 per cent reduction in the number of half days lost to exclusion from 2017/18 to 2018/19.

Only one per cent of all pupils in the city have been excluded from school, a reduction from the 2017/18 figures of 1.33 per cent.

And education chiefs hailed the fact that 75 per cent of those who had been excluded were excluded only once, an increase from 69.2 per cent in 2017/18.

The report reads: "The greatest rate of decrease in the longer term has been in the secondary sector.

"A number of secondary schools have made considerable progress in reducing exclusions due to the use of positive behaviour approaches such as restorative justice techniques and nurture.

"These allow staff and young people to explore the causes of poor behaviour as opposed to only focusing on the outcomes of the poor behaviour."

Statistics also showed that pupils from a "white Scottish or white other" background were more likely to be excluded from school than any other ethnicity.

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Boys were also significantly more likely to be excluded than girls.

School attendance rates have stayed static across the city with a 93.3 per cent attendance rate at primary and 90.6 per cent for secondary level.

Attendance rates are plotted for the 30 secondary schools against the rate of children coming from the most deprived postcodes.

The same has been done for Glasgow's 138 primary schools.

For each the figures show a slight link between deprivation and lower attendance rates.

The report reads: "Attendance has remained at the same rate as 2017/18.

"We will continue to work with our schools and with Parent Councils and Forums to improve attendance."

National attendance statistics are published every two years.

The last statistics were published in March 2018 and were based on 2016/17 figures.

Primary school attendance ranged from 93.7 per cent in Glasgow to 96.5 per cent in East Renfrewshire with an average of 94.9 per cent.

Secondary attendance ranged from 88.3 per cent in West Dunbartonshire to 93.9 per cent in East Renfrewshire with an average of 91.2 per cent.