Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she is taking steps to improve (a) monitoring and (b) oversight of school exclusion rates.

The Department collects data on suspensions and permanent exclusions from all state funded schools through the termly School Census. Schools must provide information on the type and reason for the exclusion for the previous two terms.

Prior to the 2021/22 academic year, data was published on an annual basis covering the whole academic year. Since November 2022 the Department has published the data on a termly basis.

This fulfils the Department’s commitment to the 2021 report ‘Strengthening Home Education’, where the Education Select Committee suggested that only having an annual statistical release on exclusions may prevent the identification of illegal exclusion practices.

To further improve the monitoring and oversight of school exclusions, the Department has taken further action by capturing the information directly from schools as part of the Daily Attendance Data Collection. This collects daily attendance data on schools' management information systems. Data is published fortnightly at Local Authority, regional and national level, allowing for more real time data on the use of the attendance code for exclusions (Code E).

To ensure Local Authorities receive real time data on all suspensions regardless of length, the Department took action through the School Discipline (Pupil Exclusions and Reviews) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2022 requiring all schools since September 2022 to share suspension data with Local Authorities ‘without delay’, to assist Local Authorities and safeguarding agencies to successfully support the most vulnerable pupils.

The Department is investing over £50 million to fund specialist support in mainstream and Alternative Provision schools in the areas where serious violence most impacts pupils.