A school advisor in Bedfordshire has begun a program to help black pupils after finding they are twice as likely to be excluded in schools in the East as their white counterparts.

Deborah Thompson now mentors a group of African and African-Caribbean pupils at Challney High School for Girls in Luton, Bedfordshire.

She said: "Somebody needs to take responsibility for this; this can't be a silent catastrophe."

Ms Thompson said she was shocked to find a promising former pupil had been excluded.

Deborah Thompson with former pupil Stephan Gardner

"I don't understand how in two years, a bright, young, articulate, God-fearing well-brought-up young man - how his life can be reduced to three days of education."

Stephan Gardner,15, was removed from school for fighting and spends days he is not in the part-time exclusion unit hanging out with older friends.

Stephan told BBC Look East: "I feel like an outcast prisoner.

"I feel like I've been convicted to hell."

Luton councillor David Lewis said that pupils like Stephan may act up because they do not receive help for academic difficulties in school.

Academic help

He said: "Behaviour is a symptom; we have to look at the cause.

"One of the causes we are addressing is the whole business of low reading competencies - it's almost inevitable that this is going to have an impact on behaviour."

He said the council has introduced initiatives to help pupils, including a reading program, day trips to universities, and courses on the building trades.

Ms Thompson said many of her pupils were set for permanent expulsion, but many of the girls now look forward to attending university.