From Locked Down to Shut Out: School Exclusion Patterns Pre- and Post-COVID-19 England

This article explores patterns of disciplinary school exclusion before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. It reviews current concerns about formal and informal disciplinary school exclusion and school attendance in England after COVID-19 and develops a cultural historical theoretical understanding of the reasons for rising rates of exclusion. Permanent and temporary school exclusion rates in England were much higher pre-COVID than in the rest of the United Kingdom, and this pattern has increased since the pandemic. School exclusion disproportionately affects students with special needs, in foster care and similar situations, living in poverty, and from some ethnic backgrounds. This paper argues that looking at the issue of school exclusion is another way of looking at issues of inclusion and diversity in schools and raises issues of equity for children and young people who are marginalized in education and society. The paper illustrates this argument by reporting on some of the findings from the Economic and Social Research Council funded project The Political Economies of School Exclusion Across the UK (2019–2024) that has revealed that in England, conflicting policies around educational attainment and inclusion have led to perverse incentives to not meet the needs of some young people by excluding them from school. In this article on exclusion patterns in England, we draw on data from documentary policy analysis, discussions and interviews with professionals from education and other welfare agencies during the lockdown period of COVID-19, as well as interviews with headteachers and other senior school leaders in England. The article problematizes and theorizes questions of the categorization of children after the pandemic in order to understand the motives that drive school professionals in practices of permanent and fixed period exclusions from school.