Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 25 October 2024 to Question 9795 on Pupil Referral Units, if her Department will undertake a manual audit of all children registered at Pupil Referral Units since 1 November 2023 to see how many have previously been excluded from school.

All decisions to exclude a pupil must be lawful, reasonable and fair. Permanent exclusion should only be used as a last resort.

There are legal duties on schools and local authorities to provide suitable full-time education from the sixth day of a suspension or permanent exclusion. Where children are permanently excluded, they are frequently placed in alternative provision schools (also known as pupil referral units) so that they can receive the dedicated support they require to return to a new mainstream school or a sustained post-16 educational destination.

The department does not hold statistics centrally on the number of children registered at pupil referral units who have previously been excluded from school. The department is not currently planning to develop this data.

Our aim is to reduce numbers of preventable exclusions, including by using the expertise of alternative provision schools to support pupils whilst they are in mainstream school, before behaviour issues or other barriers to learning escalate.