A letter from No More Exclusions to the Education Secretary.

Dear The Rt Hon Bridget Phillipson MP, Secretary of State for Education,

As a collective of organisations and individuals with a vested interest in children, young people (CYP) and education, we are calling on the Department for Education and the Government to implement a moratorium on school exclusions.

We would like this moratorium to take effect immediately so that time, resources and policy can be directed towards developing alternative responses to CYP’s needs and behaviours, rather than continuing to rely on removal. This means understanding CYP’s behaviour in the context of their needs, experiences, and circumstances. It means recognising that behaviour may be shaped by unmet needs, neurodiversity, adversity, bullying, distress, and the ways some CYP try to cope or keep going in school when they do not feel safe, understood or supported. In using the term neurodiversity, we mean both neurodevelopmental and acquired neurological differences. This includes, for example, autism, ADHD, acquired brain injury, and trauma-related differences that can shape how CYP experience school, communicate need, respond to threat, and manage distress.

Recent research has shown how camouflaging strategies may help some CYP manage school environments that feel unsafe or unsupportive, while also making their needs harder for adults to recognise. The same research also highlights how threat responses such as fight, flight, freeze and fawn may be mistaken for deliberate defiance or disruption when adults are not supported to ask what may be driving the behaviour.

We first called for a moratorium during the COVID-19 pandemic and we are renewing these calls at a time of ongoing polycrisis whereby CYP are experiencing increased poverty, worsening mental ill-health, and growing unmet support needs.  Back then, the Government issued temporary statutory changes to school exclusions as a result of the coronavirus – those were unprecedented times – and so are the times we are currently in.

Government and independent bodies now describe serious and sustained pressures affecting CYP’s lives: around 4.5 million are living in poverty; mental health treatment wait times in England were on average nearly six months by the end of 2023/24; a “lost generation” of nearly one million 16-24 year old are out of employment, education, and/or training largely due to the failings of the school system; and Parliament’s own Education Committee has described the SEND system as requiring substantial reform to make mainstream education genuinely inclusive. Moreover, the recent local child safeguarding practice review of Mossbourne Victoria Park Academy demonstrated a clear example of how the mental health of CYP is not only de-prioritised, but actively harmed, in schools; this is a significant concern that has national implications. 

Exclusion is never a single event. It follows a series of experiences that may not have been properly understood or responded to. By the time a child or young person’s behaviour is seen as a problem, there may already have been repeated missed opportunities to recognise what was happening and to put the right support in place, particularly where their needs have not met the threshold for an Education, Health and Care Needs Assessment (EHCNA).

Research with school SENCos has similarly found that CYP with social, emotional and mental health needs may face particular difficulty accessing Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs), especially where need is harder to evidence within systems that remain heavily focused on academic progress. SENCos also reported concern that some CYP appeared to reach a “crisis point” in behaviour before their needs were taken seriously.

We were pleased to see that the recently published SEND reform white paper recognised that the current school system is failing too many CYP and their families. However, the proposal to expand the use of “inclusion bases” alongside the lack of commitment to tackle exclusionary school cultures raises significant concerns regarding how the DfE defines inclusion; particularly as the report also ignores racial injustice by leaving racial disparities in school exclusions, SEND identification, behaviour sanctions, and alternative provision placement unaddressed and unacknowledged. 

At present, there is a post-pandemic surge in exclusions with suspensions and permanent exclusions rising in primary and special provision, and remaining consistently high in secondary schools. In the 2023/24 academic year, there were 955,000 suspensions and 10,900 permanent exclusions in England. CYP – already facing the greatest structural disadvantage – continue to bear the brunt of exclusion.

In 2023/24, pupils eligible for free school meals were permanently excluded at more than five times the rate of pupils who were not eligible (0.33% compared with 0.06%). Pupils receiving SEN support were permanently excluded at a rate of 0.41%, compared with 0.08% for pupils with no identified SEN.

Racial disparities also remain stark. Gypsy/Roma pupils had the highest permanent exclusion rate of any ethnic group, at 0.46%, while Traveller of Irish Heritage pupils and White and Black Caribbean pupils had the joint second-highest rate, at 0.33%. While smaller cohort sizes require care in interpreting some ethnicity rates, the wider pattern of racial disproportionality remains clear. It is clear that the existing approach to responding to CYP’s behaviour is not working – for CYP themselves, for teachers and schools, or for parents and communities. 

CYP, particularly within the groups statistically at greatest risk of suspension and permanent exclusion, will continue to be failed by the system if the Government does not act now. We do not believe that it is enough to rely on schools to apply the ‘last resort’ principle consistently, particularly where behaviour-first interpretations suggest a disciplinary problem rather than a possible signal of unmet need, distress, harm or exclusion from support. 

Research shows why this matters. Some CYP may work hard to camouflage their distress until it can no longer be contained, only for that visible distress to be treated as the problem itself. Many in education know this is not the reality, particularly for schools with zero-tolerance behaviour policies, which can intensify exclusionary pathways rather than addressing what may sit beneath the behaviour. It is clear from the outcomes that these groups face that the current approach to behaviour management is not working. 

The link between exclusion, unmet need and later contact with the justice system cannot be ignored. Department for Education and Ministry of Justice data show that 80% of CYP cautioned or sentenced for an offence had at some point been recorded as having special educational needs, rising to 86% among CYP cautioned or sentenced for a serious violence offence. Further, a prison-based study of 3,035 convicted young men aged 18-25 found that almost two-thirds reported a history of school exclusion. Those who had attended a Pupil Referral Unit were, on average, six years younger at first conviction than those who had never been excluded.

These findings do not mean that exclusion alone causes criminalisation. They do show, however, that removing CYP from school rather than understanding and supporting them can sit within a much wider pattern of harm. They also reinforce the need to look closely at the policies, interpretations and decision-making processes that make some CYP more likely to be removed from education in the first place.

We need a clear Government mandate that schools cannot exclude CYP during the moratorium and instead must support them to avoid exclusion. This would reduce the scope for inconsistency, uncertainty and behaviour-first responses that leave CYP unsupported, and would help ensure that they receive the support they need to remain in education.

During the COVID-19 pandemic the Government demonstrated that it can act quickly to alter the statutory framework on exclusions when circumstances demand it. It now has the opportunity to act again: to intervene before further harm is done, and to secure better outcomes for the hundreds of thousands of CYP suspended and the thousands permanently excluded every single year.

We strongly urge the Government to recognise and embrace the need for a different approach to school exclusions – Scotland has demonstrated that another way is possible. Most importantly, a moratorium on school exclusions would create the necessary space to develop, fund and embed responses that keep CYP safe, supported and connected to education, rather than repeatedly removing them from it.

Now is the time for the Government to show that education really does matter and that CYP should be in school, learning and enjoying the experience. We ask you to support parliamentary scrutiny of exclusion policy, and back calls for a time-limited moratorium while alternatives are developed.

We would welcome the opportunity to meet with you to discuss the evidence in more detail, including the relationship between school exclusion, unmet need and later harm, the risks of behaviour-first interpretive policies, and the practical steps Parliament and the Government can take to support an immediate moratorium and longer-term plan to end the use of school exclusions.

Sign the letter here.