School Suspensions and Exclusions Will Rise by 20 Percent, Says Think Tank

An empty classroom at Springfield Primary School in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on March 8, 2021. Liam McBurney/PA Wire

A think tank has predicted that suspensions and exclusions in England will have risen by more than one-fifth in the past year.

Researchers from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) compared sample data from up to the Easter holidays in the 2023/24 school year and estimated that there was an increase of more than 20 percent in the number of permanent exclusions and temporary suspensions on the same period in 2022/23.

It is a trend researchers said had been noticeable in recent years, with the report remarking on the “sharp rise in suspensions post-pandemic.”

The analysis from the think tank, conducted with education charity The Difference, said that 32 million days of learning had been lost through suspensions, exclusions, and unauthorised absences in 2022/2023—up from 19 million days in 2018/2019, which was the last full school year before the COVID-19 lockdowns.

“Children are losing learning at record rates. During the pandemic, there was great concern over lost learning: children were unable to access classrooms, learn in person with qualified teachers, be supported to study for qualifications, and interact with their peers,” the report said, adding that while schools have reopened post-lockdown, “children are struggling in greater numbers to access that learning.” 

According to the IPPR study, children from low-income backgrounds and those with special educational needs or mental health issues were the most likely to miss learning.

Kiran Gill, IPPR associate fellow and chief executive of The Difference, said: “The past four years, post-pandemic, have seen an alarming rise in children losing learning.

“We should all be worried about the social injustice that the most marginalised children—who already have the biggest barriers to opportunity outside of school—are those most likely to be not in classrooms through absence, suspension and exclusion.”

Lost Learning Affecting Life Prospects

The report comes after the government released various data sets showing the poor state of children’s attendance at school.

Figures show that in 2022/2023, there were 786,961 suspensions, up from 578,280 the year before and an increase of 36 percent. Permanent exclusions saw an even steeper increase, rising 44 percent from 6,495 in 2021/2022 to 9,376 the following year.

Disruptive behaviour, verbal abuse, threatening behaviour, and physical assault were some of the top reasons given for schools to exclude or suspend pupils.

Data from the Department for Education (DfE) had also showed that the rate of unauthorised absences in 2021/2022 (2.1 percent) was nearly double that during 2018/2019 (1.4 percent).

The IPPR report highlighted the correlation between lost learning in childhood to adulthood prospects. The report found that half of young people serving custodial sentences had been persistently absent from school and three-quarters had been suspended at least once.

Lost learning also impacted employment, with there being “overwhelmingly poor” outcomes. Excluded children had worse outcomes for GCSEs, including 90 percent of them not achieving a pass in GCSE English or Mathematics.

The Education Policy Institute came to a similar conclusion in their August report on the work and education outcomes of suspended pupils, finding those who were suspended during secondary school were twice as likely to not be in education, training, or employment by the age of 24.

Post-Lockdown Behavioural Issues

The rise in exclusions and suspensions comes after warnings that schools are facing an increase in behavioural issues as a result of lockdowns.

A Nuffield Foundation report from April said that not only did lockdown-induced school closures caused significant and long-lasting damage to learning, but also deprived children of in-person support and social interaction.

The report said that teachers had reported “greater behaviour problems in classrooms since the pandemic,” the think tank adding that by its estimates, there has been a “significant decline in the socio-emotional skills for successive Covid cohorts.”

Last year, the National Governance Association (NGA) said that “aftershocks” from the lockdowns continued to affect schools. School leaders said that behavioural challenges had seen a sharp increase, with 68 percent of respondents to an NGA survey noting an increase in worsening student behaviour over the previous 12 months.

A DfE spokesperson described the rise in suspensions and exclusions as “shocking,” saying they show the “massive scale of disruptive behaviour that has developed in schools across the country in recent years, harming the life chances of children.”

The spokesperson said that the government was committed to providing access to mental health professionals in every school, “But we know poor behaviour can also be rooted in wider issues, which is why the Government is developing an ambitious strategy to reduce child poverty led by a taskforce co-chaired by the Education Secretary so that we can break down the barriers to opportunity.”

PA Media contributed to this report.