Preventing School Exclusions

School exclusions are a social justice issue.

As systemic factors continue to exacerbate barriers to inclusion, England has seen a more than 20% school exclusion increase in the past year. Answers rest on a renewed focus on trusting, reciprocal relationships, and greater multiagency collaboration between schools and local services, making local education systems more inclusive to reduce preventable exclusions.

Our latest action research in education concludes a three-year project working with three localities across England - East Sussex, Oldham and Worcestershire - to facilitate greater multiagency collaboration to make local education systems more inclusive to reduce preventable exclusions.

The project builds on the findings of our Pinball Kids research (2020), which showed how a renewed focus on trusting, reciprocal relationships between schools and local services can identify and respond early to pupils’ needs and help reduce exclusions. It finalises the work outlined in our interim Collaborations For Change report (2023), which noted the progress of our Preventing School Exclusions project.

We RSA partnered with the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, Porticus, and Treebeard Trust to explore how methods of collaborative working can reduce and remove barriers to inclusive education.

Preventing School Exclusions: our research then and now

In the first stage of this project, we worked with a range of professionals and agencies to understand the local factors that drive or hinder multiagency collaboration. We also spoke with pupils with lived experience of exclusions and their families to capture their perspectives. Engaging with practitioners and beneficiaries in this way helped us create detailed maps of local systems and their dynamics, that informed an RSA-led process in which local stakeholders co-designed improved approaches to collaboration. Findings from this stage of the project are detailed in our Collaborations for Change interim report.

For the final stages of the project, we’ve supported the local collaboratives in implementing their plans to minimise and remove barriers to school inclusion, gaining useful, transferable insights on how to support multiagency collaboration to foster inclusion and reduce preventable exclusions. Representatives from each regional collaborative will share the work they’ve done at an online event on the 9 October 2024, live-streamed from RSA House.

These regional representatives will discuss the new approaches they’ve trialled in East Sussex, Oldham, and Worcestershire that reduce and remove barriers to school inclusion. Together with the RSA’s Head of Policy and Participation Hayley Sims, they’ll share local successes and learnings from the project as well as recommendations for other education professionals at the front lines of reducing preventable exclusions. 

Funders and partners