While the numbers may change, the trends are largely the same: young people from certain minority ethnic groups, those who receive free school meals, those who are care-experienced or who are identified as having special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are all statistically more likely than their peers to be excluded from school in England (DfE, 2021). In this way, school exclusion both highlights and perpetuates these social inequalities. Being excluded from school can have various and potentially long-term impacts on life chances (Gill et al., 2017; Timpson, 2019). Thus, those young people from often already marginalised groups may become further marginalised by their removal from school.
A glance at the BERA website shows an education profession keen to improve the school experience, and in fact the UK government has recently announced intentions to ‘level up’ schools (DfE, 2022a) and to offer better support to those with SEND (DfE, 2022b). With the inequalities reflected in whom we exclude so stubbornly consistent, will the proposed changes be enough?
