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

Permanent school exclusions continue to be a topic of keen interest to UK schools and policymakers. The debate over the practice has recently intensified owing to the perceived negative outcomes directly resulting from the exclusion event. Research has indeed shown that pupils who have been permanently excluded are at a greater risk for a variety of negative life outcomes when compared with their non-excluded peers. However, that disadvantaged groups are disproportionately represented among those excluded has not been accounted for in empirical testing. Accordingly, previous measures of the influence of permanent exclusion may have over-estimated its negative consequences because they have not controlled for disadvantageous pupil characteristics. This is a critical limitation of the research owing 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 1490 pupils permanently excluded in year 11 of the English education system in 2018/2019. 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. As such, 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 interests of these highly disadvantaged and vulnerable pupils.