The percentage of secondary pupils who have been internally excluded has increased by 160 per cent in three years, according to data from one of the major management information systems used by schools in England. Schools record an internal exclusion when a pupil is taken out of a lesson but remains on the school site. Arbor, which is used by around 13,000 schools, says their data shows that in 2022/23, 5 per cent of secondary students were removed from their normal lessons at least once during the year. By 2025/26
that had risen to 13 per cent, meaning it had moved from around one in twenty students to one in eight. The rise was also fairly steady from year to year – 5 per cent in 2022/23, 7 per cent in 2023/24, 10 per cent in 2024/25 and 13 per cent in 2025/26.
Although these figures only cover those schools which use Arbor, as the Department for Education (DfE) does not collect records on internal exclusion, there are no national figures available. Across all secondary schools using Arbor in 2025/26, 205,195 students were internally excluded at least once, with the full national figure certain to be higher.
Further analysis by Arbor found that the overall increase in internal exclusions was particularly concentrated among disadvantaged students. In 2022/23, 8 per cent were removed from class at least once. In 2025/26 that figure had risen to 22 per cent, compared with 10 per cent of non-disadvantaged students. This represents an increase of 175 per cent in three years, and meant that in the schools using Arbor one in five disadvantaged secondary pupils spent at least part of the last academic year in internal exclusion. The percentage of pupils with an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) was also above the average for secondary pupils overall – 18 per cent of those with an EHCP were removed from their normal lessons at least once in 2025/26, compared to an average for all pupils of 13 per cent.
Speaking to The Guardian about the data, James Weatherill, Arbor’s CEO and co-founder, said: ‘Schools clearly need effective ways to respond when behaviour disrupts learning, and we know from schools that internal exclusion can be an important alternative to sending a pupil home. But the scale of this increase, particularly among disadvantaged pupils, should prompt us to look more closely at what is driving it.’
Also commenting, Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: ‘Internal exclusions are never used lightly but only after other avenues have been exhausted. They are a step short of an external exclusion and are designed to keep the student in school with appropriate learning support.’
The DfE collects data on both formal suspensions and permanent exclusions in schools in England. The most recent data available, for the 2024/25 academic year, shows that both suspensions and permanent exclusions decreased compared to the previous year. A
possible explanation is that schools may be making greater use of internal exclusion as an alternative to suspensions/permanent exclusion, however it is not possible to say whether this is the case from the available data. Both formal suspensions and permanent exclusion come with specific duties for schools around recording and notification, which do not apply in the same way to internal exclusion.
Lily Wielar, a researcher at the Education Policy Institute, commented: ‘Classroom removal has become a deeply embedded feature of behaviour management in England’s secondary schools. We urgently need to know more about how classroom removal is being used, and to ensure that removed pupils have the same legal protections and transparency that apply elsewhere.’
Full details of the data released by Arbor can be found at:
https://arbor-education.com/data-drop-how-many-students-are-being-removed-from-class/