Schools accused of blacklisting disruptive pupils The comments - in a speech to a conference in central London - follow the introduction of tough new targets by the Coalition. Schools with consistently poor English and maths results can be turned into independent academies under new leadership. Addressing the Westminster Education Forum, Mr Utton said: ""This is what some of my colleagues do across the country. Basically they don't let them in. And there are different ways of not letting them in. One head teacher I know of puts Post-It notes on her wall. She goes round the nurseries finding out which are the disruptive children and puts their names up on her wall, and those children don't get into her school. All schools must abide by national rules on fair admissions. But it was claimed that the head of the unnamed primary attempted to stop parents applying in the first place by giving them a "bad view" of the school. Mr Utton, who said his own school took pupils with a range of needs and abilities, claimed that another common ruse was to "alienate" parents at open days. "When a parent comes and looks round your school, you are rude to them so they don't go to your school, they go to the school down the road," he said. Mr Utton, chairman of Heading for Inclusion, a group of education leaders dedicated to a system in which all children learn together, said a further strategy was to "denigrate" parents according to their jobs. "A parent was sent to me, a lorry driver," he said. "He was told by the head teacher of an outstanding school, "your child coming to our school would be an equivalent of asking you to be a brain surgeon." This is a real example from this year. The kid came to my school. It was also claimed that other schools were abusing policies on expulsions by excluding pupils "by the back door." Dr Maggie Atkinson, the children's commissioner for England, told the forum that some schools were still illegally excluding pupils by "informally" advising pupils to move elsewhere. "We know, and we have known for a very long time it seems to me, that some schools, albeit a minority, exclude illegally," she said. Informal exclusion is illegal, no ifs, no buts, informal exclusion is against the law. Dr Atkinson said that action needed to be taken against those schools that would "rather pull up the drawbridge and let children fail." "We have to do something about that," she said. "We have to do something about the, "well, Mrs Bloggs, we don't really do very well with your child's needs at this school but they do round the corner, so why don't you get him in there?' at admissions time."