https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3402-556X
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ABSTRACT
Historically Wales has been regarded as a country with relatively low levels of school exclusion, particularly in comparison with England. This has been used as an indicator of Wales’ commitment to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which foregrounds a rights-based agenda that would argue school exclusion is a consequence of broader socio-economic structures than individual actions. However, simple analyses may mask a different picture of school exclusions in Wales. In this article, we study more detailed information on formal school exclusions by looking at ‘instances’ of school exclusion, which considers the frequency and length of formal school exclusions in Wales, and alongside recorded school absence. The article also demonstrates that the pupils ‘at risk’ of formal school exclusion varies by when they experience school exclusion during their educational lifecourse. The article concludes by highlighting that patterns of school exclusion are complex, and that interpretation of these patterns depends on what kind of measure of school exclusion is used. By publishing these results, the article hopes to persuade policymakers and practitioners to re-examine their processes of exclusion to ensure they are commensurate with the law and to prevent unnecessary school exclusions.
6. Acknowledgments
This study was conducted as part of Excluded Lives, a multi-disciplinary collaboration across multiple UK universities. The project employs a range of qualitative, quantitative, and policy-oriented methods to investigate school exclusions across the UK. WISERD Education Data Lab undertakes independent analysis of administrative education data, survey data and data linkage, alongside knowledge exchange and public dissemination of findings to inform national debate on some of the most contemporary and pressing educational issues facing Wales. The statistics used in this study have been approved for publication by SAIL. This does not imply Welsh Government’s acceptance of the validity of the methods used to obtain these statistics, or of any analysis of the results. Rather, they have been deemed to be non-disclosive (i.e., individual pupils cannot be identified).
7. Data Availability Statement
No new data was created during this study.
8. Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Throughout this paper we use the term ‘formal exclusions’ when referring to exclusions that have been officially recorded by schools, local authorities, and Governments. However, it is acknowledged that this does not include ‘informal exclusions’, that is exclusionary practices that go unrecorded officially.
2 All schools were closed for significant periods during 2019/20 and 202/21, so rates of exclusion, permanent and temporary, would be expected to decline over these two years. Official publication of exclusion rates in each of the four nations have continued with the same methodology for calculating exclusion rates: dividing the number of exclusions by the number of pupils. During COVID-19 these exclusion rates could have been adjusted by the number of days schools were closed for to provide a more accurate picture.
3 In our analysis we distinguish between three groups of pupils eligible for free school meals: those who were only eligible once between Year 6 and Year 11, those who were eligible for more than one year but not for all years, and those who were eligible every year between Year 6 and Year 11 (persistently eligible). For these descriptive statistics we can combine the last two categories.