Special Educational Needs

(asked on 22nd January 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if his Department will make an assessment of the proportion of pupils removed from the school roll without an exclusion with special educational needs.


Answered by
Nick Gibb Portrait
Nick Gibb
This question was answered on 31st January 2020

A pupil’s name can lawfully be deleted from the admission register on the grounds prescribed in Regulation 8 of the Education (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2006 as amended.

All schools must notify the local authority when a pupil’s name is to be deleted from the admission register under any of the grounds prescribed in Regulation 8, as soon as the ground for removal is met and no later than the time at which the pupil’s name is removed from the register. The Department does not hold information centrally on the reason pupils are removed from the school register.

The Department has made clear the practice of off-rolling, whereby children are removed from school rolls without formal exclusion in ways that are in the interests of the school rather than the pupil, is unacceptable. Informal or unofficial exclusions are unlawful and we have previously written to schools to remind them of the rules on exclusions. Any school off-rolling on the basis of academic achievement is quite simply breaking the law.

We are continuing to work with Ofsted to tackle the practice of off-rolling. Since September 2019, Ofsted’s new education inspection framework details that where inspectors find off-rolling, this will always be addressed in the inspection report, and where appropriate, could lead to a school’s leadership being judged inadequate.

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