Teachers in England continue to struggle with disruptive and violent behaviour in classrooms and playgrounds, as figures show a sharp increase in the number of pupils suspended or excluded from school.
Ministers described the Department for Education figures for 2022-23 as “shocking”, with a record 787,000 pupils suspended – equivalent to nearly one in every 10 pupils in England being temporarily sent home.
The number of pupils permanently excluded was 9,400, also much higher than in recent years, and an increase of 44% compared with 2021-22. While the bulk of exclusions were in secondary schools, the number of children excluded in primary schools rose from 760 to 1,200 in a year.
The DfE said “persistent disruptive behaviour” was the most commonly cited cause of exclusions and suspensions, while about 3,500 were excluded for violent behaviour towards children or adults.
Stephen Morgan, the education minister, said: “These shocking figures are a wake-up call about the problems that have grown in our schools in recent years. They 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.
“Every pupil deserves to learn in a safe, calm classroom and we will always support our hard-working and dedicated teachers to make this happen.”
He added that Labour had committed to providing access to specialist mental health professionals in every secondary school, introducing free breakfast clubs in every primary school and ensuring earlier intervention in mainstream schools for pupils with special needs.
“But we know poor behaviour can also be rooted in wider issues, which is why the government is developing an ambitious strategy to reduce child poverty led by a taskforce co-chaired by the education secretary so that we can break down the barriers to opportunity,” he said.
School leaders and teaching unions have warned that pupil behaviour has substantially worsened since the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, when schools were closed to most pupils for extended periods. Pupils who began secondary school during the pandemic would last year have been aged 14 or 15, which is often the peak age groups for exclusions.
Pepe Di’Iasio, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said it was “vitally important” to have more investment in education and family support services so that suspensions and exclusions were not the only options left for schools.
“School leaders only ever suspend and exclude pupils as a last resort, and therefore this rise would appear to reflect the increasingly complex needs and challenging behaviour we are seeing in schools and across wider society,” Di’Iasio said.
“Behavioural issues are often a result of poor mental health or unmet special educational needs. We desperately need the new government to work alongside the education profession to put support systems in place that ensure young people get the help they need to stop these problems from escalating.”
While the total number of exclusions was higher than in recent years, the percentage of pupils excluded was lower than 15 years earlier. Last year the exclusion rate was 0.11%, above the 0.10% between 2016 and 2019 but lower than the 0.12% rate in 2006-07.
Data suggests that permanent exclusions were higher in the late 1990s, with 12,700 excluded in 1996-97. But the DfE said that the earlier figures were not comparable with the data collected since 2006-07 and was “based on incomplete pupil level data” collected by local authorities.
