Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department has taken to estimate the number of children in England who were permanently excluded from a school and did not return to full time education in in the academic year 2017-2018.

The information requested, regarding statistics showing excluded pupils who did not return to full-time education, is not held centrally. Local authorities are responsible for arranging suitable full-time education for permanently excluded pupils, which must begin no later than the sixth day of the exclusion.

Statistics on exclusions in academic year 2017/18 are not yet available. Exclusion statistics covering 2016/17 are available in the National Statistics release 'Permanent and fixed-period exclusions in England 2016 to 2017'.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/permanent-and-fixed-period-exclusions-in-england-2016-to-2017.