In this blog, Marianne Lagrue, Policy Manager at Coram Children’s Legal Centre, highlights the growing crisis of school exclusion in England and the work Coram is doing to tackle it.
Every school day, across England, thousands of children are being removed from their classrooms; some for hours, some for days, and many for good. Behind every exclusion is a young person whose education and future opportunities are suddenly put at risk. For some, the journey begins with a suspension. For others, it ends with a permanent exclusion that can change the course of their lives.
In the 2023/24 academic year alone, schools recorded 954,952 suspensions, a staggering 21% increase on the year before, and 10,885 permanent exclusions, up 16%. Early trends suggest 2025 is likely to see even more children removed from schools. The statistics don’t tell the full story. Hidden behind the numbers are children as young as four, families fighting for support, and communities struggling to navigate a system that too often pushes the most vulnerable to the margins. The impact of exclusion reaches far beyond the classroom: it affects a child’s mental health, sense of belonging, access to future opportunities, and even their risk of homelessness later in life.
A growing crisis and who it affects most
School exclusion does not affect all children equally. Children with special educational needs (SEN), those receiving free school meals, and pupils from minoritised ethnic backgrounds are disproportionately impacted.
Pupils without an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) are four times more likely to be suspended and five times more likely to be permanently excluded than their peers with no identified SEN. Children eligible for free school meals are four times more likely to be suspended and almost six times more likely to be permanently excluded than their more affluent peers.
The Department for Education’s most recent data also highlights regional inequalities: pupils in the North East are more than three times as likely to be suspended compared to their peers in London. In Spring 2023/24, the average secondary school in the North East recorded 121 days of suspensions, compared with 40 days in London.
Perhaps most alarming is the number of very young children being excluded: last year, 686 pupils aged four to seven were permanently excluded from state-funded primary schools. For many of these children, support for their additional needs came too late, or not at all.
Hidden behind these figures are many more children who, while not formally excluded, are being quietly removed from mainstream education. Through mechanisms like managed moves, off-site direction and off-rolling, children are pushed out of the system, often invisibly. Their stories rarely make it into the data, but their futures are no less impacted.
Coram’s response: building tools, raising voices
In response to this escalating crisis, Coram Children’s Legal Centre has launched the School Exclusions Hub: the UK’s largest free online resource dedicated to supporting professionals, community organisations, and families navigating the exclusions process.
Packed with practical tools, the Hub offers step-by-step guides, template letters, and accessible legal advice, empowering families and advocates to challenge unfair exclusions.
Coram Children’s Legal Centre, in collaboration with volunteers from law firms, also runs the School Exclusion Clinic, which offers free legal representation to parents or carers of children and young people who have been permanently excluded from a school in London.
In addition, these efforts were also bolstered by a High Court ruling in a case brought by Coram this year, which means families can potentially access legal aid in permanent exclusion cases involving allegations of race or disability discrimination. It marks a critical step towards ensuring all children, regardless of background or circumstance, can have their voices heard and their rights defended.
Youth at the heart of change
While legal frameworks and policy reforms are essential, Coram believes that the young people directly impacted by school exclusion hold the key to making those reforms as effective, imaginative and child-centred as they must be. Their voices are central to shaping solutions, challenging stereotypes, and driving meaningful change.
Through Voices in Action, Coram works alongside young people aged 16–25 who use their lived experiences to influence policy, inform practice, and support their peers. One example is the “More Than My Exclusion” zine, a striking collection of poetry, spoken word, and visual storytelling created by young people, due to be published in September 2025.
“Being excluded made me feel invisible,” writes one ambassador. “Like my future had been decided for me. But this project helped me reclaim my story — I am so much more than my exclusion.”
Turning stories into solutions
Coram’s education policy experts are driving change by highlighting the urgent need for reforms to protect children’s rights in the face of rising school exclusions.
The policy recommendations, due to be published in October 2025, draw on Coram Children’s Legal Centre’s work representing excluded children. Their work calls for specific transparency, accountability and review mechanisms for permanent exclusions and other processes by which children are removed from schools. It also emphasises the need for collaboration between schools, local authorities, and government to tackle disproportionality that sees so many children with special educational needs, from minoritised backgrounds, known to social care or on free school meals excluded.
As a young person working with Coram, with experience of school exclusion, noted: “The solution, one of them at least, will always be inclusion… it is your job as teachers and authority figures to ensure you give them the benefit of the doubt, as they are your student. Or at least look into what potentially could be the reason they acted like that in the first place, with an open mind, recognising unconscious bias and being mental health aware, trauma informed and aware, LGBTQIA+ aware and lastly, life adversity aware, before ever assuming someone is behaving negatively just to be bad or ‘ruin the reputation of the school’.”
For more information, please visit Coram’s school exclusions hub.