Statistics mask the reality of school exclusion rates

The National

17-06-2025

Who Cares? Scotland has this week raised the alarm about the widespread 'informal exclusion' of care-experienced children, suggesting the practice is masking schools' failure to uphold policies that were put in place in 2020.
The pledge that 'Scotland must not exclude care-experienced children from education or reduce their timetable to such an extent that they are denied their rights to education' formed part of The Promise, which was drawn up following an extensive Independent Care Review that asked care-experienced people and their families about the care system they had been forced to negotiate and learn what they wished had been different.
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School was identified as of particular importance to children whose home lives were unsettled, with school exclusion being a key area of concern.
When the Scottish Government published its report on Education Outcomes for Looked After Children last August, the picture was gloomy. The rate of exclusions for 'looked-after' pupils had risen from 78 cases per 1000 pupils in 2021-22 to 97 in 2022-23.
This exclusion rate was almost six times that for the general pupil population, and while the gap between these rates was smaller than a decade earlier, it had widened over the previous 12 months.
These figures were already cause for concern, but Who Cares? Scotland believes the true picture is worse. Attendance rates for looked-after children had dropped from 88% to 84%, and its report says its advocacy workers are reporting 'a sharp increase in informal exclusions and a change in language around exclusions to circumvent new exclusions policies stemming from The Promise'.
Examples of this included 'exclusions often recorded as authorised absences, or drastic part-time timetables offering as little as 30 minutes of education a week'. One worker stated that this amounted to 'exclusion labelled as support'.
(Image: PA Media)
Another described this practice as 'improving the school's statistics at the detriment of the needs of the child'. The child referred to here is, of course, the one on the drastically reduced timetable, but this comment obscures the reality that no headteacher wants to be excluding pupils – officially or otherwise – and such decisions must take into account the needs of the entire school community.
Who Cares? Scotland quite rightly advocates for the best interests of care-experienced pupils, who so often have decisions made for them by others – whether relatives, teachers, social workers or children's panel members – and can feel like they have almost no control over their own lives.
This disempowerment comes through in many of the testimonies included in the report, such as when a child says: 'I'm struggling quite badly in some subjects but nothing is being done about it.
'I've spoken to my guidance teacher about it but they're busy and I don't know what they could do about it.'
Focus groups run by the charity found that many young people felt they had been branded a 'problem child' or a 'bad pupil' and as a consequence would be unfairly blamed for things they did not do, or subjected to what they perceived as a harsher interpretation of school rules.
There's little in the report about specific reasons for exclusions, although one quote from an advocacy worker provides hints, referring to 'behaviour and incidents' and the school saying 'the aim is for [the pupil] to be back at school when they feel everyone will be safe'.
Schools must acknowledge that care-experienced pupils are at a disadvantage, and they have an obligation to provide the necessary support to allow them to be educated and achieve their full potential.
By law, looked-after children must be considered to have additional support needs unless the local authority is able to demonstrate otherwise. Who Cares? Scotland wants to see all local authorities adopt a 'whole-school approach' that involves staff training, drop-ins for care-experienced pupils and lesson inputs that challenge the stigma looked-after children can face.
It also wants to see greater use of virtual headteachers and online schools to keep these pupils engaged with learning.
These are not unreasonable asks, especially when the costs of young people disengaging from education are so high, and potentially devastating. However, it must also be acknowledged that schools and their staff cannot solve all of society's problems.
Yes, more can always be done – whether to provide support in school or virtually, or to tackle prejudice in the classroom and the wider community – but can exclusions ever be avoided altogether?
And is The Promise likely to be met if schools are finding ways to obscure the reality of the decisions they are taking to keep everyone safe?