Looked after children: education outcomes 2018-2019

School exclusions

• Exclusion rates for pupils looked after within the year have fallen over the last six years
• The exclusion rate for looked after pupils was around seven times as high as for all pupils in 2018/19

In comparison with the general school population, this section presents data on the numbers and rates of exclusions of the 837 pupils who were looked after within the year at publicly-funded schools who were successfully linked to schools data, and who experienced an exclusion. Exclusions data is collected every two years.

Table 4.1 shows the number of exclusions per 1,000 pupils. As children can be excluded more than once per year a single child may be counted more than once in these figures. The rate of exclusions among pupils looked after within the year was 152 per 1,000 pupils in 2018/19. This is around seven times as high as the rate of 22 per 1,000 pupils for all pupils.

The exclusion rate was lowest for pupils looked after within the year in primary school in 2018/19, at 56 per 1,000, compared with 230 per 1,000 pupils for those in secondary school and 309 per 1,000 for those attending a special school.

The rate of exclusion cases for looked after pupils has fallen substantially, from 397 per 1,000 pupils in 2009/10 to 280 per 1,000 pupils in 2012/13 and 152 per 1,000 pupils in 2018/19 (Chart 5). The decrease has been seen across all sectors (Table 4.1). The gap between all pupils and those who were looked after has also narrowed over this period, although the exclusion case rate for pupils looked after within the year remains much higher than for all pupils.

Where Table 4.1 presents data on the number of exclusions, including potential multiple counts of the same child, Table 4.2 presents data on the number of individual children excluded; the number of pupils excluded per 1,000 pupils shown in Table 4.2 are therefore lower than the number of exclusions per 1,000 pupils shown in Table 4.1. 

In 2018/19, the rate of pupils excluded was 74 per 1,000 pupils for children looked after within the year. This is around five times as high as the rate of 16 per 1,000 pupils for all pupils. Because pupils looked after within the year are five times as likely to be excluded compared with all pupils, but the exclusion case rate is seven times as high, pupils looked after within the year who are excluded are more likely to be excluded multiple times than all pupils who are excluded.

Accommodation type and number of placements

As with attendance rate, there is a similar disparity in rates of exclusion according to the type of accommodation in which pupils looked after within the year are placed. Children in residential accommodation and at home with parents tend to have higher rates of exclusions than those looked after in foster care and with friends or relatives (Table 4.3).

(1) Cells containing * represent small numbers that have been suppressed to maintain confidentiality.
(2) Includes supported accommodation and with prospective adopters.
(3) Includes in residential school, in secure care accommodation, and crisis care.

Pupils who were looked after within the year with a greater number of placements tended to have a higher rate of exclusion (Table 4.4). There were 140 cases of exclusion per 1,000 pupils for pupils with only one placement, increasing to 341 cases of exclusion per 1,000 pupils for pupils with four placements. Those with five or more placements had a lower rate of exclusion at 264 per 1,000 pupils, although there were only 14 cases of exclusion in this relatively small group of pupils.