There was a “large increase” in the number of pupil suspensions and exclusions in the last autumn term, a new analysis suggests.
The analysis of attendance registers, carried out by FFT Education Datalab, finds that suspensions and exclusions have continued to rise this academic year - and that there was a notable increase in the autumn of 2023 compared with the same period in 2022.
FFT said it is “disconcerting” to see this large increase and has warned that “increases in suspensions and exclusions of six days or more will put additional pressure” on alternative provision.
Suspension and exclusion rates rise
Last year, Department for Education data showed that pupil suspensions had soared to more than half a million in 2021-22.
There were 578,300 suspensions from English schools over the course of the academic year - the highest figure recorded in published government data stretching back almost 20 years.
The new analysis completed by FFT suggests suspension and exclusion rates are continuing to rise.
Official data for the autumn term of 2023-24 is yet to be published and the government’s annual official figures for 2022-23 will be published this summer.
FFT has now investigated what is happening in the current academic year through analysis using its attendance tracker, collecting data from almost 10,000 schools.
Pupils that remain on the school roll but are suspended or permanently excluded are recorded in the school attendance register using code “E”.
The analysis has been produced based on absences that have been recorded using this code. However, this does mean that FFT cannot “distinguish between spells that are due to suspension and spells that are due to exclusion”.
Its analysis suggests that the rate of suspension and exclusion for Year 9 students increased to 11.7 per cent last term, up from 8.3 per cent last year - a 40 per cent increase in the number of suspensions and exclusions.
For Year 7 students, there was a smaller absolute increase - from a lower base - of 1.8 percentage points but this was a larger relative increase of 55 per cent increase in suspensions and exclusions.
‘Disconcerting’ increase
In a blog post published by FFT today, it said that its findings are only provisional and that the DfE will publish its official figures for the 2023-24 autumn term “eventually”.
The post by Dave Bibby and Dave Thomson said: “It is always disconcerting to see a large increase in a regularly measured outcome.
“We know that our figures for 2022-23 were very close to those ultimately published by DfE and we have adopted the same methodology this year.”
Last month, a Tes investigation found that the majority of alternative provision providers who took part in a survey said their setting was full by 6 December last year.
Providers cited rising exclusions and difficulties returning pupils to mainstream settings as driving this places crisis.
For the latest education news and analysis delivered directly to your inbox every weekday morning, sign up to the Tes Daily newsletter
