Over the past year or so we’ve been working with children’s charity Chance UK on an analysis of primary school exclusions. They wanted to know about the outcomes of children who experience permanent exclusion or suspension at primary school.
Most research into exclusions tends to focus on pupils in secondary schools. And there’s a good reason for that: the majority of suspensions and permanent exclusions take place among older pupils.
In the latest year for which data is available, 2021/22, there were around ten times as many suspensions and exclusions at secondary than at primary (1.42 primary vs 13.96 secondary suspensions per 100 pupils, 0.016 primary vs 0.16 secondary permanent exclusions per 100 pupils).
As a result, we don’t know very much about outcomes of pupils excluded at primary school. This is the gap we aim to address with this research.
