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Hello, I'm Matthew Price with Beyond Today from BBC Radio 4,

where we ask one big question about one big story every day.

Today, who's helping the teachers with tough kids. I know it doesn't look like the nicest place on earth, but at the end of the day everybody here are actually really nice and even though we've all been kicked out for our own reasons and we all look like we're naughty kids and we're not usual kids that you see we're still all human. We still all deserve the education

like everybody else. That was recorded inside a place that you don't normally see and

one of the BBC's investigative teams came to us on Beyond Today

because they managed to get pretty rare access and they were fairly astonished with what they saw.

It's a place that pupils are sent when teachers can no

longer cope with the messing around in class and we're not just talking

about someone shouting out or talking back to the teacher but we're

talking about some pretty serious violence here drug-taking and the like. One

figure stood out to me that the investigation team brought to us.

50,000 children are now in this what's called alternative provision, 50,000 in Britain.

And there's been a massive increase in the last few years. provision, 50,000 in Britain.

And there's been a massive increase in the last few years in teachers who've felt that their

only option is to permanently exclude kids from school.

So we wanted to ask what is going on and who's trying to

support the teachers in all this? Because if the teachers can't manage with the

children then what hope is there for those children in future life?

We spent a week filming in an alternative provision school in North Manchester.

This is Noel Titheridge, and he's one of the BBC's leading producers. He spends months and months digging out stories that we don't often hear about.

It's an old, beautiful old Victorian building that's fallen a bit on hard times. Like many schools

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