School Exclusion, Inclusion, and Diversity: Implications for Initial Teacher Education

Disciplinary school exclusion has negative consequences in terms of academic achievement, well-being, mental health, and future prospects. Permanent and temporary school exclusions rates in England are much higher than in the rest of the United Kingdom and disproportionately affect students with special needs, from care backgrounds, living in poverty, and from particular ethnic backgrounds. This chapter argues that looking at the issue of school exclusion is another way of looking at issues of inclusion and diversity in schools and that these are central concerns for initial teacher education programs. The chapter illustrates this argument by reporting some of the preliminary findings from the 4-year ESRC funded project The Political Economies of School Exclusion Across the UK (2019–2023) led by the Excluded Lives Research team at the University of Oxford. The main objective of this research has been to develop a home international multidisciplinary understanding of the landscapes of political economies and the experiences and consequences of school exclusion across the United Kingdom.