PUPIL suspensions and exclusions have soared to record highs in England amid unions’ warnings of a Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (Send) crisis, widespread child poverty and failures to reintegrate children after the pandemic.

Department for Education data published today revealed suspensions rose by 36 per cent in a year to the “highest ever” 786,961 in the 2022-23 academic year in England.

Permanent exclusions also hit a record high after rising by 44 per cent to 9,376 that year, it said.

Education minister Stephen Morgan described the figures as a “wake-up call about the problems that have grown in our schools in recent years” adding the government is “determined to get to grips with the causes of exclusions.”

National Education Union general secretary Daniel Kebede said that the previous government’s “inadequate and ineffective” recovery programme failed to effectively reintegrate pupils back into school life after the pandemic.

“The only way out of this downward spiral is significant reinvestment in schools,” he said.

He said that suspension rates were up to four times higher for unsupported children with special educational needs as well as children eligible for free school meals amid “unacceptably high levels” of child poverty.

Schools and colleges have been left with “totally inadequate levels of funding” to provide the Send support or pastoral care “necessary to effectively address the daily barriers and challenges that Send students face,” he said.

He urged the government to go further than its plans for universal breakfast clubs and introduce universal free school meals, adding it was “also imperative that the government listens to the increasing number of calls, including from their own MPs, that the two-child limit must be dropped.”

Association of School and College Leaders general secretary Pepe Di’Iasio said: “Behavioural issues are often a result of poor mental health or unmet special educational needs.”

Paul Whiteman, general secretary at school leaders’ union NAHT, said that schools “cannot be expected to address the full range of complex root-causes that can often lead to disruptive behaviour in the classroom.”

Beth Prescott, education lead at the Centre for Social Justice think tank, said: “Combined with the crisis in school absence, with so-called ‘ghost children’ at near-record levels and one in five kids persistently absent, there is a pressing and immediate emergency unfolding across our schools.”