Secondary Data Analysis
The aim of this research is to examine the relationship between school exclusion, suspensions and absence, and subsequent offending and violent behaviour.
The existing evidence suggests being in education can reduce the risk that a child will be involved in crime and violence. Despite this, there are limits to what we know. Studies that exclusively rely on administrative data (school, care and offending records) cannot fully control for the range of individual, family, interpersonal and community-level drivers that may also explain the correlation between absence, suspension, exclusion and later violence and offending. Few existing studies also look at the relationships between absence, suspension, and exclusions and later violence using both police-recorded and self-report crime and violence measures.
The aim of this research is to examine the association between school exclusion, suspension and absence, and subsequent offending and violent behaviour.
The main questions this project sets out to answer, are:
This study uses linked data between the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), the National Pupil Database (NPD) and Avon & Somerset Police Data. ALSPAC is a cohort study that recruited pregnant women with a due date between April 1991 and December 1992, living in and around Bristol. Almost 15,000 women were recruited, resulting in a sample of 14,901 children alive at one year of age. These children and their parents have been tracked continuously into adulthood. Suspension, exclusion and absence data (from the NPD) have been matched to the children in ALSPAC who attended state-funded schools in Key Stage 4 (when participants were 14-16 years old).
The main outcomes of interest for this study are self-reported violent behaviour, as measured by questionnaires at ages 17 and 18 years, and police-recorded crime (total and violent offending separately), as measured in official police records in the 24-month period following the end of either Year 10 or Year 11. The research uses logistic regression, testing the relationship between each exposure and outcome pair (e.g. having a police record and having been suspended) and controlling for a range of individual, behavioural, family and school factors.
Please refer to the analytical protocol for more details.
| Being suspended or excluded and being absent from school more than 20% of the time are strongly correlated with self-reported and police-recorded offending | 36% of suspended or excluded children self-reported violence perpetration, compared to 8% of children who hadn’t been suspended or excluded. For children absent 20% or more of the time, this was 24%, and for those absent less than 20% of the time, it was 9%. 21% of children who’d been suspended or excluded had a police record for any offence, compared to 3% who hadn’t been suspended or excluded. For children who were absent for 20% or more school sessions, this was 15%, and it was 4% for those who absent for less than 20%. |
| These associations are still present once individual, household and education factors are accounted for | Initially, the analysis controlled for individual, household and education-related factors. Once these were accounted for, children suspended or excluded were 4.06 times more likely to report perpetrating violence compared to those who hadn’t been. Those who were absent 20% or more of the time were 2.85 times more likely to report violent behaviour. For police-recorded offending, children who were suspended or excluded were 5.16 times more likely to be involved. Those absent 20% or more of the time were 3.10 times more likely. |
| After controlling for behavioural difficulties, absence, and suspension and exclusion are still associated with violence and police involvement. However, these findings are more uncertain | Further analysis included additional controls for behavioural difficulties, smoking behaviours and childhood traumas. Once these factors were accounted for, children suspended or excluded were 2.36 times more likely to report violent behaviour compared to those who hadn’t been suspended or excluded. For those absent 20% or more of the time, it was 2.09 times more likely. Children who were suspended or excluded were 4.68 times more likely to have a police record. For those absent 20% or more of the time, it was 3.47 times more likely. Greater caution is needed with these specific findings, given the smaller sample in this part of the analysis due to missing data. |
| The associations are stronger for involvement in more serious forms of crime and violence | After controlling for individual, household and education factors, children who had been suspended or excluded were 8.05 times more likely to have a police record for serious violence. This compares to 5.16 times more likely for any police record and 4.06 times more likely to self-report violence perpetration. Children absent 20% or more of the time were 4.79 times more likely to have a police record for serious violence, 3.10 times more likely to have a police record for any offence and 2.85 times more likely to self-report violence perpetration. |
This study shows that children who are suspended or excluded or absent for 20% or more of the time are more likely to become involved in violence and offending. This is a well-established finding supported by other evidence. However, what has previously been harder to establish is whether the act of being absent or suspended or excluded is what directly causes later involvement in crime or violence or whether it is just that excluded, suspended or absent children have other difficulties (such as behavioural problems) that make them more likely to offend. While other studies have attempted to control for other factors, this study goes further in controlling for a wider array of risk and contextual factors, including behavioural difficulties. Due to the nature of the study and the limitations around sample size, we cannot conclude that suspensions, exclusions and absences have a causal impact on later involvement in crime and violence. However, this study does provide a strong indication that suspensions, exclusions and absences are key risk factors for later involvement in violence, even once an array of other contextual and risk factors are accounted for.
There are limitations in this study. The size of the sample is too small to explore the relative impact of suspension compared to exclusions or how individual and family factors interact. The dataset exclusively covers children living in and around Bristol and spans education and justice outcomes in the mid-late 2000s. In addition, the study only focuses on absences and suspensions or exclusions in Years 10 and 11. Caution should, therefore, be taken when extrapolating these findings beyond this context. Furthermore, only 5% of the ALSPAC sample is made up of participants from ethnic minority backgrounds. While this aligns with the demographics of the study area at the time of recruitment, this means there were too few participants from these backgrounds to report findings by ethnicity.
Deciding whether to suspend or exclude a child is a difficult decision for a headteacher to make, as they need to balance the needs of individual children with the needs of the wider school community. In addition, schools and policymakers are currently making a concerted effort to improve attendance (following the post-COVID rise in school absence). However, what these findings indicate is that policymakers and schools should continue to target support towards children at risk of suspension and exclusion (attempting to reduce the need for suspension and exclusion), while high-quality support must be provided to children already suspended or excluded and to those who are absent from school. Targeting these children with evidence-based attendance and behaviour improvement interventions and violence reduction strategies could reduce their risk of later involvement in violence and offending.
YEF’s Education Systems Guidance sets out a range of recommendations that, if actioned by government, could provide this support to suspended, excluded and absent children, and help protect them from later involvement in violence and offending.
Please refer to the final report for more detail on these findings, how to interpret them, and their implications.