Excluded pupils twice as likely to commit serious violent crime

Study highlights how system fails troubled teens, say campaigners

- Anna Fazackerley

Teenagers who are permanently excluded from school are twice as likely to commit serious violence within a year of their expulsion than those who were merely suspended, a large-scale new analysis of police and education records has shown.

London's Violence Reduction Unit (VRU), set up to tackle the number of teenagers dying as a result of knife crime in the capital, said the new research is the first direct evidence of "a clear link between children being excluded from school and involvement in violence".

It will lend new weight to calls by youth charities, lawyers and other experts for schools to rein in the soaring numbers of exclusions.

Government data released in November last year revealed that there were 4,200 permanent exclusions in the autumn term 2023-24, an increase of more than a third on the same term the year before.

The study, published in the British Journal of Criminology by researchers at Hull University and Bristol University, followed more than 20,000 young people who were excluded from secondary school.

They were matched with a set of 20,000 children chosen because they had the same educational experience, ethnicity and social background, and had been suspended the same number of times but were never excluded.