Suspensions and exclusions across all schools in England are predicted to have risen by more than 20 per cent last year compared to the previous year, up to 625,000 incidences, according to a new report. This report was published by IPPR and produced on behalf of the Who’s Losing Learning? Coalition; a group of charities who are committed to improving the outcomes of disadvantaged children, Mission 44, The Difference and Impetus.

Researchers additionally compared the first two terms of 2022/23 with a sample from the same period in 2023/24 and found that the suspension and exclusion rate for secondary school children increased from 14.3 per cent to 17 per cent, also a rise of one fifth. Further new analysis of 2022/23 data also reveals that a record 32 million days of learning were lost by pupils of all ages, due to a combination of unauthorised absence and exclusions. That number is 72 per cent higher than in 2018/19 (the last full school year before the pandemic) and is the equivalent of every pupil in two cities the size of Liverpool missing school every day for a year.

This new report reveals that many widely-used estimations of exclusions and absences have failed to capture the full picture of children losing learning nationally. It introduces an ‘exclusions continuum’ covering 14 types of ‘losing learning’ (including exclusions, suspensions and unauthorised absences) and finds that the most vulnerable children are most likely to miss out across this continuum.

Poorer children, children known to social services, those with school-identified special educational needs (SEN) and/or mental ill health, and children from ethnic minority backgrounds disproportionately experience missed learning. The report found:

• The poorest students – those who get free school meals – are nearly five times more likely to be permanently excluded and four times more likely to be suspended than their peers.
• The poorest areas of England have the highest rates of lost learning through unauthorised absences and suspensions. Middlesbrough has a suspension rate of three times the national average (28.18 per cent compared to the national average of 9.33 per cent)
• Children from some ethnic minority backgrounds are disproportionately being placed in alternative provision (AP) away from mainstream schools. These include children from Black Caribbean (2.5 times more likely than average), Romani (Gypsy), Roma and Irish Traveller (four times more likely), and children with mixed Black Caribbean and white heritage (2.5 times).
• Children with mental health needs are three times as likely to have to move schools than their peers; and those with mental health needs so severe that it is classified as a SEN are 17 times more likely to be educated in AP schools serving excluded pupils, than they are to appear in the general population.
• Children interacting with social services because their lives are unsafe are permanently excluded at eight times, and severely absent from school at over five times, the national rate.
• Children with school-identified SEN are five times more likely to be permanently excluded than their peers without SEN.

The report also highlights the long-term consequences of lost learning, including the economic and social costs.

A new Who’s Losing Learning? Solutions Council has been set up by the Coalition of charities to set out how the education sector should respond to this challenge. Chaired by Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of ASCL, the council brings together experts from across civil society, including multi academy trust leaders Sir Dan Moynihan and Liz Robinson; professors of mental health and social work, Peter Fonagy and Carelene Firman; Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza; and the Bishop of Dover, Rose Hudson-Wilkin.