Research on school approaches to reducing absence and exclusions
Funded by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and the Youth Endowment Fund (YEF), this study is led by NFER in partnership with The Difference.
Secondary schools' use of internal alternative provision (AP) has seen rapid growth in recent years. This is driven by several factors, including movement away from permanent exclusion, limited access to high-quality external alternative provision, and an increase in pupils' social, emotional and mental health needs.
However, there is considerable variation in the definition, purpose, content and intended outcomes of internal AP and limited evidence of the causal relationship between internal AP and pupil attendance and/or suspension, exclusion and unexplained exit from school.
This study aims to address this gap by identifying the range of internal AP approaches used by secondary schools, the extent to which they can be classified into distinct models, and the features and prevalence of the models observed.
How are we evaluating it?
This project had an initial scoping phase that is now complete. The scoping study ran from June 2022-December 2023 and involved expert interviews with practitioners and education policy advisors, school case-studies and a national survey of maintained publicly funded secondary schools in England. The scoping phase established:
- An understanding of the current use of internal AP in secondary schools.
- The relevance and feasibility of the proposed approach to classifying secondary schools' internal AP practice.
- A typology of internal AP models employed by schools and an estimate of their prevalence.
We are now carrying out an impact evaluation which runs from April 2024-September 2025. This phase will explore the impact of the type of internal AP on the probability of suspension, exclusion and/or unexplained school exits among secondary school students.
Additional context will be provided through the implementation process evaluation, which will involve interviews with senior leaders in 18 schools and 9 school case studies comprising interviews with pupils, parents/carers and other school staff.
What are the timings for the project?
The evaluation will be completed in Autumn 2025. Once the evaluation is finalised, this web page will be updated with a summary of findings and an evaluation report.
How will NFER use and protect the data collected?
No school or individual will be named in any report arising from this work. Where necessary, school-level information will be shared securely between NFER and The Difference. Only anonymised findings will be shared with EEF or YEF and made available publicly in the final report.
The Privacy Notice for the project is available at the bottom of the page.
Who to contact?
To speak to someone about this research, contact the project team at [email protected].
Further information
Project Information Sheets and Privacy Notices for schools
Information Sheets and Privacy Notices for Parents
Parent/carer information sheet: Parent interviews- Parent/carer information sheet: Student interviews
- Parent/carer privacy notice