The exclusion from school of children aged four to seven

The number of children aged seven and under who are excluded from primary schools is very small and comprises a tiny proportion of children of this age from a very small proportion of schools. Nevertheless, some children of this age group are receiving fixed-period exclusions, occasionally leading to permanent exclusion. This survey explored the reasons for this and the ways in which some schools manage to avoid using exclusion. The survey found that what determined a school’s rate of exclusion was a combination of its philosophy, capacity to meet the challenges presented and, sometimes, the response received from the local authority and outside agencies when the school asked for help