There is evidence of a growing use of opaque practices such as off-rolling, internal isolation and off-site direction that are removing tens of thousands of pupils from mainstream education with minimal scrutiny or accountability, according to a new report published today by Coram Children’s Legal Centre (CCLC).
Today’s report from CCLC, Fairness in school exclusions: A roadmap for change, draws on CCLC’s legal casework representing children facing exclusion, alongside case studies from Coram’s Child Law Advice Service. It highlights how children with the greatest level of need can lose access to education through informal exclusionary practices with little transparency or independent scrutiny.
Informal practices with life-changing consequences for children
CCLC’s casework reveals a range of informal mechanisms with significant and often unchecked consequences for children:
- Off-rolling: the removal of a pupil from the school roll without a permanent exclusion, often linked to a school’s academic standing. CCLC found evidence of explicitly banned practices such as ‘coercive exclusions’ whereby parents are encouraged to off-roll their child rather than face a permanent exclusion.
- Off-site direction: intended as a temporary, supportive measure to improve behaviour, this involves pupils attending another setting. However, CCLC’s casework demonstrates that off-site direction is being misused and is resulting in de facto exclusions. This was found to be particularly detrimental to pupils with SEND when the receiving school lacked the necessary provision and expertise.
- Managed moves: designed to offer pupils at risk of exclusion a fresh start through a permanent transfer to another mainstream school, these require parental consent. However, CCLC found evidence of coercive practices and parents being pressured to agree under the threat of permanent exclusion.
- Cancelled exclusions: exclusions can be cancelled by the head teacher before the governing board has met to consider whether the pupil should be reinstated. Appropriate use ensures that exclusion is a measure of last resort. However, CCLC has identified cases of cancelled exclusions that are immediately followed by off-sight direction for the pupil with no timeframe for return and no independent scrutiny of the school’s actions.
- Internal isolation: also known as removal, is used when a pupil is required to spend a limited period outside the classroom as a sanction. CCLC routinely encounters cases of children who are removed for prolonged periods, where the quality of education is poor or non-existent, and where children with SEND are disproportionately affected.
The report also finds serious shortcomings in review mechanisms including a lack of independence, long delays and powerless independent review panels (IRP).
Ahead of the Government’s upcoming inclusion reforms, the report calls for clearer national guidance on exclusionary practices operating outside, or on the margins of, the statutory framework and sets out a series of recommendations to ensure strengthened IRPs and greater transparency and accountability across the exclusions system.
Key recommendations for reform
- An overhaul of governing body review, both of permanent exclusions and of other exclusionary measures, which has long been flagged as insufficiently independent or rigorous.
- Strengthening managed moves through new and comprehensive national guidance.
- Preventing abuse of process through careful consideration and scrutiny of a child’s outcomes where a permanent exclusion is cancelled.
- Greater oversight across all in-school practices that remove pupils from the classroom, to mitigate the risk of these practices being used as informal exclusions and to measure the efficacy of inclusion reforms.
- Accountability for the disproportionately higher exclusion rates for certain children, requiring governing boards and IRPs to interrogate exclusion data based on protected characteristics during review hearings.
- Giving IRPs the power to reinstate pupils to redress acute systemic power imbalance.
Marianne Lagrue, Policy Manager at Coram Children’s Legal Centre, said: “A truly inclusive education system is accountable to the children, young people and families who most struggle to access it. Post-covid, amidst a newly digitised childhood, and with a quarter of UK children living in material deprivation, children’s needs are not going away. Classrooms and schools can be made more inclusive, and the interlinked crises of behaviour and unmet need can be addressed head-on, but without sealing the cracks through which children fall, these changes will continue fail those in greatest need.”
Edward Timpson CBE KC, former Children’s Minister and author of the May 2019 Timpson Review of School Exclusions, said: “When I published my review of school exclusion in 2019, the central message was clear: exclusion should be a last resort, not a convenient response to complexity. It should follow a process that is fair, transparent and rooted in a proper understanding of a child’s needs. Most importantly, it should never become a proxy for unmet need, nor a pathway to poorer life chances. In recognising where commitments and progress have been made since then, this report from Coram Children’s Legal Centre shows, with clarity and conviction, how far we still have to go.”
Kiran Gill, CEO of The Difference, said: “This report from Coram emphasises the multiple ways children in England are losing learning, and without route to redress if these experiences are unfair. Yet again we see in the data that the children most likely to be excluded are the children facing the toughest time in childhood: experiencing poverty, safeguarding threats, special educational needs and racism. While permanent exclusions and suspensions have visibility, governance structures and a formal route for legal challenge when things go wrong, the proliferating challenge of other types of ‘lost learning’ do not. Our system needs to evolve to create transparency and accountability on these experiences. The commitments in February’s Schools White Paper are a real chance to get some of this fixed, so more children can be where they belong: in school.”
Ellie Harris, Principal Research Fellow and Head of children and young people’s policy at IPPR, said: “The rising number of school exclusions is a warning sign of deeper challenges in our education system. As more and more children struggle, teachers become over stretched, and schools respond with the tools available to them. Education in England is at crossroads. The recent White Paper set out a path towards greater inclusion, but this must now be delivered in partnerships with schools – so that the children who need school the most stop being sent away.”