Almost one in five disadvantaged students in Years 9 and 10 were suspended or excluded at least once in the past academic year, according to an analysis of school attendance registers.
The analysis, by FFT Education Datalab, suggests that exclusions and suspensions have increased again in 2023-24 year on year - and were most common in Years 9 and 10.
Some 19 per cent of disadvantaged students in these year groups had been suspended or excluded at least once.
The overall rate across all year groups also increased in the past academic year, according to a post today by FFT Education Datalab.
FFT Education Datalab told Tes that for compulsory-aged pupils, from reception to Year 11, the combined exclusion and suspension rate for 2023-24 was 11.2 per cent - up from 9.4 per cent the previous year.
The percentage of pupils with one or more exclusion or suspension in the 2023-24 was 4.2 per cent - up from 3.7 per cent in 2022-23.
The findings come after the government described the number of suspensions in the 2022-23 academy year as “shocking”.
Rise in suspensions and exclusions
The latest official data from the Department for Education, published in July, shows that suspensions hit a record high in 2022-23, with temporary removals from classrooms increasing by a third.
DfE figures for 2023-24 will not be published until next summer.
But FFT Education Datalab has been able to produce an analysis for 2023-24 using data supplied by 10,000 schools subscribing to its attendance tracker.
One in 10 students in Years 9 and 10 had at least one suspension or exclusion in 2023-24, according to this analysis.
Year 10 had the highest proportion of students who had at least one suspension or exclusion - 10.3 per cent in 2023-24, compared with 9.5 per cent in 2022-23.
Year 9 had the highest rate of suspensions and exclusions, at 28.6 per cent - up from 25.6 per cent a year earlier.
The suspension and exclusion rate is the number of suspensions and exclusions divided by the number of pupils in the cohort.
Published DfE statistics for the 2022-23 academic year showed that suspensions had reached record levels.
However, Dave Thomson, FFT Education Datalab’s chief statistician, points out in his post today that suspension data has only been collected at scale nationally since 2006-07.
He adds: “It may well have been the case that, had they been measured prior to that, we would have seen them fall from higher levels.”
The number of suspensions rose to almost 787,000 in 2022-23, compared with 578,300 in the previous year, according to the DfE data.
Minister Stephen Morgan said at the time that the figures ”put into sharp focus that too many pupils are being held back by their background and that our education system is failing to meet the needs of children with additional needs”.
Last week Ofsted chief inspector Sir Martyn Oliver told the Confederation of School Trusts’ annual conference that the watchdog’s new focus on inclusion will not “penalise” schools that use suspensions and exclusions “legitimately”.
Ofsted is set to look at inclusion in its new framework for inspecting schools, which will be launched next September.
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