Andrew Gwynne – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Communities and Local Government

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Gwynne on 2016-10-19.

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what data his Department holds on the effect of the Troubled Families programme on rates of school exclusions in (a) primary and (b) secondary education in (i) England and (ii) the Greater Manchester authority area in each year from 2012 to 2015.

Mr Marcus Jones

The published independent evaluation of the first programme presents data from local monitoring that shows that 10% of families had at least one child permanently excluded on entry to the first Troubled Families Programme (2012-15) and 28% had at least one child with a temporary exclusion. Where data were available for families at exit, 65% of families saw a reduction in permanent exclusion and 70% of families saw a reduction in temporary exclusions.

Due to time-lags in national datasets, the first programme’s independent evaluation was not able to track school exclusion outcomes in national datasets within its timeframe.

The evaluation of the new Troubled Families Programme (2015-20) will measure changes in school exclusions (both temporary and permanent) using national data held by the Department for Education at both a national and local authority level.