This paper offers analysis of the policy drivers and legal frameworks associated with school exclusion in Northern Ireland. This activity is timely given limited analysis in this area in recent decades. The research is an element of an UK-wide, multi-strand, ESRC Large Grant project, examining the Political Economies of School Exclusion and their Consequences across […]

Historically Wales has been regarded as a country with relatively low levels of school exclusion, particularly in comparison with England. This has been used as an indicator of Wales’ commitment to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which foregrounds a rights-based agenda that would argue school exclusion is a consequence of broader […]

Previous evidence has suggested a strong association between school exclusion and health outcomes. However, as health risks are themselves related to the risk of experiencing a school exclusion, it has been challenging to determine the extent to which school exclusion impacts later health outcomes, as opposed to reflecting a marker for pre-existing risks. The aim […]

The COVID-19 crisis has deepened educational and social inequalities and exacerbated different forms of exclusion from education. This article reviews current concerns about formal and informal disciplinary school exclusion in England. Educational policy discourse in England has tended to seek individual reasons for exclusion rather than develop an understanding of exclusion in the wider context […]

Wales is often compared favourably to other countries because of its commitment to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and lower levels of school exclusions. Systematic analysis of policy documents reveals the dominance of a rights-based discourse in approaching the challenge of school exclusions, which are explained in terms of socio-economic circumstances […]

Exclusion from school can be regarded as a seemingly simple but in fact a rather complex intervention in response to the “wicked problem” of behaviour in schools. This manuscript will discuss what counts as evidence that may used to inform policy and judgments on practices of exclusion. The role of evidence, and how this is […]

The interface between mental health and schools has become a major focus of policy and practice. School attendance is important and impacts a range of outcomes, from academic performance, to children and young people’s mental health. In this book, experts from the education and mental health sectors have collaborated to produce a practical guide to […]

Previous research suggests that school exclusion during childhood is a precursor to social exclusion in adulthood. Past literature on the consequences of school exclusion is, however, scarce and mainly focused on short-term outcomes such as educational attainment, delinquency, and mental health in early adolescence. Moreover, this evidence is based primarily on descriptive and correlational analysis, […]

This article draws on the impact of the ongoing pandemic to highlight the failure of the English legal regime to adequately protect children’s right to education, particularly equal access to education by especially vulnerable children. Ifirst outline key domestic and international legislative provisions positioned as securing children’s and parents’ rights in this context. Prior to […]

This article explores the relationship between school exclusion and youth crime and considers what criminological research can add to our understanding. The article first explores the history of the ways in which the criminological implications of school exclusion have been conceptualised, including the link between exclusion and young people’s offending, and the so-called ‘school-to-prison pipeline’. […]

Schools often provide structure and safety to students but particularly for vulnerable children and young people. The Covid 19 pandemic has caused unprecedented upheaval across society as a whole but it is clear that the effects are uneven and that some groups have been more directly and negatively impacted, both in the UK and globally. […]

Across the four UK jurisdictions, there are distinct disparities in exclusion rates of school students. Northern Ireland, alongside Scotland and Wales, has demonstrated over time, lower rates of permanent exclusions and temporary exclusions compared with England. This paper examines these disparities from the perspectives of representatives from various system-level educational bodies and third sector organisations […]

Pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are disproportionately over-represented in official statistics on exclusion suggesting that mainstream schools are failing to meet their needs. We argue for the importance of looking at the cultures of schooling. School belonging (or connectedness) has been widely associated with a raft of positive outcomes although there is […]

Pupils with Social Emotional and Mental Health (SEMH) needs are disproportionately excluded from schools in England. Drawing on data collected from interviews with Local Authority Education Officers in 2017/18 in a project that looked at disparities in rates of permanent exclusion across the UK, this article explores how the influence of perverse incentives in the […]

This paper contributes to our growing understanding of the processes underpinning contrasting rates of school exclusions both within and across the different jurisdictions of the UK. Wales is often compared favourably to its larger neighbour England, where rates of permanent exclusions have risen dramatically in recent years. One explanation for Wales’ lower rates might lie […]

The multiple layers of exclusion that can be experienced by a child at school and the relationship of this to mental well-being is the focus of this paper. The relationship between specific mental health problems and school exclusion is discussed. Data gathered from 1648 English school-aged students in 2019 who participated in the OxWell school […]

This chapter begins by outlining the routes through which children ‘drop out’ of school. It then draws on the failings of the English system to suggest six key ‘lessons’ for other jurisdictions.

Recommendations for policy makers that will support the successful reintegration of children and young people as they return to education in schools, sixth form colleges, further education colleges, special schools and pupil referral units and mitigate the risks of exclusion.

The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed stark inequalities in our society, not least in school education.

As schools get underway with the COVID-19 recovery phase in England, there is growing consensus among practitioners and policy professionals that rebuilding based on pre-COVID specifications will lead to the re-establishment of a previously broken system; a system which saw the most vulnerable children and young people in society slipping through the cracks.

This report looks at potential new and heightened risks for school exclusions caused by the recent Covid-19 pandemic.

When in March 2020 schools were closed as part of the COVID-19 restrictions, the Excluded Lives Research Team were planning surveys of students, caregivers and practitioners about their experiences and understanding of school exclusion. Without access to schools this could not happen and as the period of closure lengthened the team realised that COVID-19 was itself likely to significantly impact children and young people’s perceptions of school and their relationship with education, which in turn could bring new exclusion risks.

A tension has emerged in the United Kingdom over the last 30 years between policies designed to achieve educational excellence and policies seeking to achieve inclusive practice. The introduction of devolution across the jurisdictions of the United Kingdom has led to differences in practices developed from what were originally a common set of cultural and historical values and beliefs.

This article draws on findings from the first cross-national study of school exclusions in the four jurisdictions of the UK. It sketches factors associated with the past research with reductions in exclusions.

This article draws on findings from the first cross-national study of school exclusion in the four jurisdictions of the UK. It casts new light on the crucial aspects of children’s education that lead to school exclusion.

The 1978 Warnock Report made the case in the United Kingdom for a number of actions that, it was argued, would make the integration and support of young people with Special Educational Needs more effective.

Drawing on findings from the Excluded Lives project: ‘An Interdisciplinary View of Permanent Disciplinary Exclusion in Oxfordshire’, this paper will explore the use of Tiki-Toki Desktop Timeline software in plotting the pre and post-exclusion trajectories of 43 pupils who were permanently excluded from school in Oxfordshire in 2012/13. We will describe how this technology enabled us to map data from the Education and Social Care records held by the Local Authority for each of the pupils, helping us to build a detailed picture of their school, exclusion, intervention, and service use histories.

There has been growing concern about the rising numbers of students being excluded from school in England – a trend that is often set against the declining levels of exclusion elsewhere.