Archived decisions

Item 5b(ii)

Data on Annual School Exclusions

Jack Cawthra

Commentary on Exclusions statistics for academic year 2005-6.

The slightly disappointing news is that, overall, permanent exclusions rose by 2.4% in that year (from 162 in 2004/05 to 166). This is almost entirely accounted for by the significant rise in secondary permanent exclusions in Area 1 (from 22 to 36, a rise of 61%) and Area 7 (from 24 to 33, a rise of 37%). Apart from a small overall rise in Area 4 all other areas either reduced or maintained levels of permanent exclusion. In Area 6 the total number of permanent exclusions was only 5 which is the lowest Area total ever.

The very good news is that primary exclusions fell yet again, from 12 to 8. Four of the seven Areas had no primary exclusions at all and Area 6 (again) have not had a primary exclusion for 4 years. Considering that we have a primary phase school population of more than 100,000 children, these are very small figures indeed. Special school exclusions stayed at last year's very low rate of 2.

The further good news is that, after 6 years of successive rises, fixed-term exclusions also reduced, both in actual numbers of exclusions (from 12,152 to 11,823 a reduction of 2.8%) and in numbers of days lost (from 40,533 to 38,198 a reduction of 5.8%).

There is some cause for concern that the number of Looked After Children permanently excluded rose from 10 in 2004/05 to 13 last year. The number of pupils from minority ethnic backgrounds reduced from 6 to 4.