Sharing Student Projects

There has been a concern from professionals about the rising numbers of school exclusions over the past decade, with permanent primary school exclusions having risen by seventy percent in the last year alone. Alarmingly, primary school children eligible for Free School Meals are six times more likely to be permanently excluded from school compared with their non-eligible peers. This dissertation examines the literature on what this means for pupils in their future life - in terms of academic attainment, health and life beyond school – to demonstrate that strategies need to be found to curtail these figures. By using a mixed-methods approach of interviewing six teachers and one room leader at a Pupil Referral Unit, and a desk-based literature review, it was able to conclude on, and recommend, a number of strategies that primary school practitioners can effectively use to limit the rate of school exclusions amongst disadvantaged children. Namely, these are: reviewing school policy and its day-to-day enactment; the use of behaviour-specific praise; utilising counselling, communication and language programmes and nurture groups; and providing staff with bespoke training which is tailored to individual school’s needs. Moreover, it is also recommended that the Department for Education review their funding that they allocate schools; particularly considering support packages for schools so that they have the resourcing and staffing to effectively implement evidence-informed strategies, which have the potential to limit school exclusions. These findings suggest that the levels of school exclusions in primary schools in England can decrease, with effective implementation of the aforementioned strategies.

Visual depiction of impact is provided: