Proposals to make it easier for young offenders to return to school on release from custody could have the opposite effect, ministers have been warned.
Stephen Mason, president of the National Association of Social Workers in Education, said more young offenders could be struck off school registers as a result.
Under the plans, schools gain the discretion to strike pupils off if they are serving a custodial sentence of more than two months, even if they are receiving an education during that time.
This is intended to prevent young offenders on long sentences "blocking" places for other pupils.
Currently, schools are forced to remove pupils from their registers if they are serving a custodial sentence and have been absent for four weeks. But if schools receive confirmation they are being educated in custody then they are marked present and cannot be struck off.
The proposals, unveiled by the government last week, purportedly respond to difficulties young offenders have faced in returning to education by ending the compulsion on schools to remove pupils after the four-week absence elapses.
A spokesperson for the Department for Education and Skills said the government assumed that schools would not strike off a child who had been attending education in custody.
However, Mason said that many schools would not want to take back young offenders.
"There is a possibility that [the proposals] could make it worse and some schools begin to consider that they could take them [the children] off role," he said.
Lisa-Jayne Woolley, an in-house training manager for rehabilitation agency Nacro, called the DfES's assumption "dangerous" and said it placed young offenders' ability to return to school at risk.
"There needs to be some kind of independent body or process to make sure that the decision to strike them off the admissions register is in the best interests of the child," she added.
Sue Kirkham, president of the Secondary Heads Association, said the change would make little difference as schools would act in the best interests of young people's education.
