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The UCL exclusion evidence and attachment-aware practice point to the same conclusion, and to what an inclusive transition platform must do to close the gap.
By Brendan Nel — Founder CEO at Pupil Pathways
Every teacher who has supported a vulnerable child knows the feeling of watching a transition undo months of relationship-building. A child who was settled and known in Year 6 arrives in Year 7 as a stranger, and while trust is rebuilt from nothing, they are at their most exposed. Attachment and trauma-aware practitioners have understood this for years. New whole-population evidence now shows why it matters so much and why the system keeps failing the children it already knows are most at risk.
A UCL-led whole-population study of more than a million children in English secondary schools reframes exclusion as a predictable outcome, not a rare event. Around a third of children with any social care history in the primary years were excluded at least once during secondary school. For children who had a child protection plan or were looked-after, the figure rose to roughly 40 per cent, and to around 46 per cent where a child protection history and a history of SEND services overlapped.
These are not children who slip through unseen. Their names already sit on a caseload; the local authority and the receiving school already hold their files. The data exists. What fails is converting it into early, coordinated support before the crisis. The researchers add that these figures likely understate the problem, since they exclude illegal exclusions and off-rolling.
The most important part of the UCL work is its conclusion: it calls for inclusion-aware policy backed by trauma-aware practice and warns that zero-tolerance behaviour policies escalate minor incidents into exclusions, with trauma-affected children most likely to be caught. This is the truth ARC has championed since 2017: behaviour is communication, relationships are the mechanism of change, and a child’s sense of safety must be rebuilt before they can learn. The research now puts a national dataset behind that principle.
But there is a corollary. Trauma-informed practice depends on relationship and context, the very things our systems throw away at every transition. A receiving school cannot respond to a child’s history with attachment-aware care if that history never travels with the child, or arrives as an unread PDF in week three. Good intentions cannot substitute for the information a practitioner needs on day one.
The evidence, alongside three years of delivery across multiple local authority areas in Greater Manchester and London, points to three failures, none of them about training or willingness. Late identification: known vulnerability is not converted into timely support. Transition resets: safeguarding flags, SEND identifiers, risk context and belonging all destabilise in the weeks after a move, the reset trauma-aware staff spend the autumn firefighting. Unauditable practice: schools are expected to evidence defensible decisions yet still rely on spreadsheets and email chains. Standards reduce variation only when an operating model underneath them can carry context from one setting to the next.
This is the gap Pupil Pathways was built to close. It is not a filing tool bolted onto practice; it is the infrastructure that lets attachment-aware practice survive a transition. That means a single Pupil Passport; a portable record of a child’s needs, context, pupil voice, safeguarding history and attendance, that travels with the child from Early Years to Post-16. It means transition modules that move context into the receiving setting months before a child arrives, and a multi-agency case-flow that turns “we know this child” into “we acted in time”, with the audit trail statutory oversight now demands.
The UCL study found substantial variation between local authorities, which means outcomes are not fixed. Barking & Dagenham bears this out: operating a structured, school-led, multi-agency case-flow, it achieved a 95 per cent twelve-week reintegration rate for pupils in alternative provision, with exclusions for its most vulnerable cohort held below national averages and Inclusion Team time redirected from spreadsheets into early conversations with families and schools.
The UCL evidence and the ARC mission tell the same story from two perspectives. The research shows the children most likely to be excluded are known early and failed late; trauma-aware practice shows what they need instead. What has been missing is the infrastructure that lets one become the other, so trauma-informed intention becomes trauma-informed action on day one. The children in these figures are already known to us. The task now is to make sure knowing them early finally means protecting them in time, and it is a conversation we would welcome with the ARC community.
This article draws on the UCL-led whole-population study “Risk of school exclusion among adolescents receiving social care or special educational needs services” (Child Abuse & Neglect) and on Pupil Pathways’ delivery evidence from the London Borough of Barking & Dagenham.
About Pupil Pathways
Pupil Pathways is a digital system that helps local authorities, multi-academy trusts and schools carry a child’s needs, context and interventions across every transition from Early Years to Post-16. It is in use across Local Authorities in their schools in Graeter Manchester and London. Pupil Pathways is a Crown Commercial Services supplier, ISO 27001 certified, Cyber Essentials accredited and a BESA member.
Brendan Nel, Founder CEO
brendan.nel@pupilpathways.com
www.pupilpathways.com
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