Last month, the Department for Education published statistics on permanent and fixed-period exclusions in England from 2015-16, highlighting that the number of permanent exclusions across all state-funded primary, secondary and special schools had increased to 6,685 from 5,795 in the previous year. In primary schools alone there were 485 permanent exclusions.
Evidence from Coram's Child Law Advice Service (CLAS) suggests the number of children aged three to seven excluded from schools is likely to be significantly higher than this figure as the statistics do not include exclusions by academies, nor unofficial/unlawful exclusions. In the last 18 months, CLAS advised in 81 cases where a child aged three to seven had been excluded (24 permanently and 57 fixed-term). In 30 of these, the adviser concluded that the school may have acted unlawfully either by not complying with the correct procedure, or because it did not adequately consider the child's special educational needs (SEN).
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