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The GCSE attainment gap: assessing the influence of permanent school exclusion

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Hills, Stephen, Walker, Matthew, Guinn, James and Kent, Aubrey (2025) The GCSE attainment gap: assessing the influence of permanent school exclusion. British Educational Research Journal. ISSN 1469-3518 (In Press)

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Abstract

Permanent school exclusions continue to be a topic of keen interest to UK schools and policymakers. The debate over the practice has recently intensified due to the perceived negative outcomes resulting from the exclusion event. Research has shown that pupils who have been permanently excluded are at a greater risk of negative life outcomes when compared with their non-excluded peers. However, the idea that disadvantaged groups are disproportionately represented amongst those excluded has not previously been tested in prior work. Accordingly, previous measures of the influence of permanent exclusion may have over-estimated its negative consequences. This is a critical limitation of the research due to the influence of confounding variables and sample selection bias. Using the National Pupil Database and a full cohort of UK pupils (N=590,092), our analysis tracked a sample of 1,490 pupils permanently excluded in year 11 of the English education system in 2018/19. Using capped GCSE points as the academic attainment variable, we find that permanently excluded pupil scores were nearly 25 points lower than their non-permanently excluded peers. However, when controlling for disadvantageous pupil characteristics, this difference was cut roughly in half. We conclude that permanent exclusion is neither the catalyst of disadvantage nor a continuation of disadvantage on the same trajectory, but rather an accentuation of existing disadvantage. In other words, the existing trajectory of disadvantage gets steeper following the permanent exclusion event. Therefore, considering that the GCSE attainment gap found is equally attributable to both permanent exclusion and disadvantageous pupil characteristics, policymakers should both limit permanent exclusion to being a last resort and provide additional support for pupils at risk of being permanently excluded. Including a permanently excluded pupil’s GCSE attainment in their former school’s academic league table data incentivises schools to act in the best interest of these highly disadvantaged and vulnerable pupils.

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