Chris Evans – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Chris Evans on 2014-03-18.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate he has made of the number of school-age pupils who have been illegally excluded from school in each of the last five years.

Elizabeth Truss

The Department for Education’s statutory guidance makes clear that all exclusions from school must be lawful, reasonable and fair. The guidance sets out schools’ responsibilities in relation to exclusion and includes examples of unlawful use of exclusion. There is no excuse for a school not to adhere to the correct process, and Ofsted takes seriously any evidence that a school has acted unlawfully in its use of exclusion.