School exclusion, child imprisonment and a state of punishment

A psychologist, who has worked with children in Bristol’s secure estate and pupil referral units, says the way England treats struggling children makes them believe they’re destined for failure.

Illustration: Chris Bagley

Opinion 19th February, 2025

Chris Bagley

Imagine this: a student – let’s call him Mark – starts finding school hard to navigate.

Maybe it’s the curriculum or academic pressure. Or social challenges, mental health, an unstable home environment, poverty, trauma, abuse.

It’s often multiple adverse factors, having a cumulative impact on a child’s capacity to cope. 

Mark needs help. He starts ‘acting out’ by avoiding class, refusing to follow instructions or engaging in ‘persistent disruptive behaviour’.

But instead of finding out why he’s struggling and co-constructing ways forward, the school doles out ‘consequences’: detention, isolation, suspension or exclusion. There is another context where these terms are routinely employed – prisons. 

Young people like Mark are often subject to sanctions increasing in severity, eventually leading to permanent exclusion. This ostracism can be more harmful and long-lasting than a physical injury and might limit Mark’s conception of who he is and what he can be. He begins to believe he’s a ‘bad kid’ who can’t learn and is destined for failure. 

I’ve witnessed this deeply upsetting scenario countless times. 

Exclusion disproportionately affects poor children, those living in care and children from Black Caribbean, mixed white Caribbean and Gypsy, Roma and Irish Traveller backgrounds. 

Exclusions have soared in Bristol – and elsewhere in England – in recent years, with children as young as five kicked out of school. 2022/23 saw record levels of school suspension in England – 787,000, an astonishing 1 in 10 pupils – with 9,400 permanently excluded.

And this doesn’t account for hidden forms of exclusion such as ‘off-rolling,’ where children are sent to ‘alternative’ schools or ‘unregistered’ provisions – illegally and under the radar.

Off-rolling occurs when young people are perceived as a ‘problem’. Parents are often pressured to move their child under threat of exclusion and most teachers report that the aim is not to support the child, but to ‘fix statistics’ and improve the school’s league table position. 

Exclusion: ‘a preparation for prison’

There is an extremely close correlation between school exclusion and child imprisonment; an issue I’ve observed for many years. 

English children are not uniquely challenging or ‘hard to manage’, but approaches to youth justice are exceptionally punitive compared with our neighbours. Around 420 children and young people currently live in the ‘secure estate’ (child prison) in England whereas in Scotland and Belgium, no children are incarcerated.

The prison population rate has long been higher in the UK than any other western European nation. The age of criminal responsibility here is 10, despite ongoing criticism from the United Nations. In most of Europe it’s 15. 

Those who struggle most in school in England are far more likely to end up in prison. 

After months or years of detentions, isolations – and finally, permanent exclusion from school – a child needs to find a sense of belonging elsewhere. They might seek others who feel alienated, disaffected and angry. Belongingness is a fundamental human motivation and where children are ostracised from mainstream society and with few other options, they might build a sense of identity alongside those with similar problems. 

As Dr Karen Graham, a lecturer in criminology at City, University of London, puts it: “Schooling on the margins can serve as a preparation for prison.”

Children forcibly subjected to a ‘disciplinary career’ in school spend years in an environment mirroring prison: detention, isolation from peers, removal from class, escorts between rooms, placement alongside other ‘delinquents’ with little meaningful activity to occupy them. F

or children like Mark, this life can start to feel like the only one they should expect, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy that makes long-term criminality and incarceration feel both normal and deserved.

Relationships and collaborative solutions

We need only look north of the border for alternative, more successful approaches.

In recent decades Scotland has undergone an ideological shift and permanent exclusions have decreased from 44,794 in 2006/07 to 11,676 in 2022/23. Their education guidance around supporting child behaviour and wellbeing is grounded in psychological theory, focusing on building relationships, developing solutions collaboratively and taking a curious, nurturing approach. 

But English guidance ignores social science entirely and suggests responding to ‘poor behaviour’ with ‘reasonable force’, detention, suspension and exclusion. 

Evidence shows that promoting positive behaviour and wellbeing in schools works better in a climate of belongingness, where children feel seen and heard, can work with adults to think about what works for them and have some autonomy around how they learn. This is hard to actualise in English schools championing rigid standards, set curricula and inflexible behaviour policies. 

Exclusion and child imprisonment are not inevitable facts of life. They’re a consequence of ideologies that fail to acknowledge differences or flex to meet the needs of young people. 

A paradigm shift is needed. If we continue to coerce, punish and exclude, we’ll see a continuance of the norm – a society where those who most need help are deliberately pushed to the margins and blamed for being there.