The majority of children excluded from primary school do not pass GCSEs in English and Maths, according to new research.
The charity Chance UK analyzed the long-term impact of excluding or suspending children in primary education school.
The study followed various age groups throughout their school lives and included data from 3.2 million students in England.
They found that 97% of those excluded from primary education had special educational needs or disabilities.
Mary-Anne*’s son has ADHD, before his diagnosis schools struggled to deal with his behaviour.
She said: “My son was permanently excluded at the age of five; they referred him to a school referral unit.
“He would be the only five-year-old in the building. I thought ‘No, let’s not do that’.
“My son was the angry boy. I was saying there must be a reason why he gets so angry and then becomes completely calm – but they [the teachers] they were like ‘no, he’s very naughty’.”
Mary-Anne’s son was excluded when he was just five
More than 22,000 children aged six and under were excluded or suspended from primary schools in England in 2022.
But teaching unions have raised concerns that since the pandemic, behavior in classrooms has worsened significantly, with teachers struggling to cope.
Tom Bennett, a behavioral adviser at the Department for Education, says exclusions are a last resort.
He said: “Exclusions are made in the most extreme circumstances, for example when a child is violent to a teacher or abuses another pupil or persistently disrupts lessons.
“You can’t teach a lesson if someone is throwing chairs at you. Exclusions are incredibly rare; the average primary school excludes one child every 17 years.”
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A charity carried out a study into the long-term impacts of exclusion or suspension at primary school
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Mary-Anne’s son was helped by Chance UK, which matches students with mentors to provide support for children with behavioral and emotional difficulties.
The charity is appealing to the government for additional funding for specialist support in primary schools.
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “For students at risk of exclusion, we have established a new model for alternative education schools to work with mainstream schools and provide targeted support from the outset, helping to improve behaviour, attendance and to reduce the risk of exclusions.”
*Real names have been omitted from this report.
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