Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether the consultation on the recommendations of the Timpson Review will include (a) socio-economic and (b) ethnic trends in school exclusions.

The Government is taking forward an ambitious programme of action which will respect head teachers’ powers to use exclusion, while also equipping schools to support children at risk of exclusion, and ensuring excluded children continue to receive a good education. As part of this, the Department will make schools responsible for pupils who are permanently excluded and will launch a consultation on how to deliver this in practice.

In designing this consultation, the Department is working with leaders from across the education sector and will consider the findings of the Timpson Review on disparities in exclusion rates between different groups of children. In response to the review, the Government called on the Directors of Children’s Services, governing bodies, academy trusts, and local forums of schools to review information on children who leave schools, by exclusion or otherwise, and to establish a shared understanding of how the data on the characteristics of such children feeds local trends.