An IT outage has stymied calls for action on Lewisham’s “abnormally high” school exclusion rates, after councillors did not have enough time to read the report.

Lewisham’s school exclusion rate is decreasing, but has been as much as double other inner London boroughs.

But a first draft of a report on the issue “vanished” as a result of an IT outage, which was ongoing over the Easter weekend, Lewisham’s children and young people select committee heard.

This meant councillors did not have enough time to read the report ahead of Tuesday night’s meeting where they were expected to approve the report and make recommendations to the mayor and cabinet.

Permanent exclusion is the most serious sanction a school can give if a child does something that is against the school’s behaviour policy, and means that the child is no longer allowed to attend the school.

The committee decided it would review exclusions with a focus on parent experience, early intervention and the higher proportion of black and black Caribbean exclusions, in June last year.

“It was initiated because we acknowledged a couple of years ago that the exclusion rate was abnormally high compared to the national levels and to our neighbouring boroughs,” committee chair, Cllr Luke Sorba said.

But councillors said they hadn’t had enough time to read the report and agreed to make recommendations at their next meeting.

They also raised concerns some of the 22 recommendations in the report were things that are already taking place.

Cllr Jacq Paschoud said they needed to “carefully check” the recommendations “some of which people are obliged to do and would be doing anyway.”

Cllr Sorba said the recommendations would be “reordered and reshaped”.

There were 43 exclusions across Lewisham schools in the year ending April 2018, a drop from the 63 the previous year and the 78 in the year ending April 2016.

Black Carribean students accounted for 42 per cent of all permanent exclusions in the year ending April 2018, while White British students were 21 per cent, and mixed White and Black Carribean were 12 per cent. The rest of the students were of mixed, other white or unknown ethnicities.