Exclusions in England

This Statistical First Release by the DCSF provides information about permanent and fixed period exclusions from primary, secondary and special schools and exclusion appeals in England during 2006/07. It reports national trends in the number of exclusions together with information on the characteristics of excluded pupils such as age, gender and special educational needs as well as the reasons for exclusion.

Key Points:
- There were 8,680 permanent exclusions from schools in 2006/07, which represents 0.12% of the number of pupils in schools (12 pupils in every 10,000). Compared with the previous year the number of permanent exclusions has decreased by almost 7%.
- In 2006/07 there were 363,270 fixed period exclusions from state funded secondary schools compared with 348,380 in the previous year. This represents an increase of just over 4%.
- The average length of a fixed period exclusion in state funded secondary schools was 3.3 days, for primary schools the average length of a fixed period exclusion was 2.7 days. The majority of fixed period exclusions (almost 90%) lasted one week or less.
- Overall, 61% of pupils who received a fixed period exclusion during 2006/07 were only excluded once, 19% of pupils received two fixed period exclusions.
- In 2006/07 the permanent exclusion rate for boys was nearly 4 times higher than that for girls. The ratio of permanent exclusion between boys and girls has remained stable over the last five years with boys representing around 80% of the total number of permanent exclusions each year. A similar trend is apparent with fixed period exclusions.
- Boys are more likely to be excluded (both permanently and for a fixed period) at a younger age than girls, with very few girls being excluded during the primary years. The most common point for both boys and girls to be excluded is at ages 13 and 14 (equivalent to year groups 9 and 10). Just over 50% of all permanent exclusions were of pupils of this age.
- Pupils with special educational needs are over 9 times more likely to be permanently excluded from school than the rest of the school population.
- The most common reason for exclusion (both permanent and fixed period) was persistent disruptive behaviour. Some 31% of permanent exclusions and 23% of fixed period exclusions were due to persistent disruptive behaviour.