What yesterday’s DfE statistics reveal about SEND, behaviour, and unmet need in England’s schools.
The Department for Education published its latest suspensions and permanent exclusions statistics yesterday, covering the 2024/25 academic year. Overall numbers are down slightly on the previous year — but look past the headline, and the data tells a familiar and uncomfortable story: children with SEND are still being suspended and excluded from school at dramatically higher rates than their peers.
Nationally, there were 913,000 suspensions in 2024/25 (down 4% on the year before) and 9,900 permanent exclusions (down 9%). On the surface, that looks like progress. But the picture changes sharply once you break it down by need.
Pupils with an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) were suspended at more than three times the rate of pupils with no identified SEN. Pupils on SEN Support were suspended at more than four times the rate. Permanent exclusion rates followed the same pattern: over four times higher for EHCP pupils, and six times higher for pupils on SEN Support. Source: DfE, Suspensions and Permanent Exclusions in England, 2024/25, published 9 July 2026.
To put real numbers on it: the suspension rate for pupils with no identified SEN was 6.78 per 100 pupils. For pupils with an EHCP it was 26.45. For pupils on SEN Support it was 28.86 — meaning almost 3 in every 10 pupils on SEN Support had at least one suspension across the year.
The single most common reason recorded for both suspension and permanent exclusion, by a wide margin, was persistent disruptive behaviour — accounting for 52% of suspension reasons and 40% of permanent exclusion reasons nationally.
This is the point that matters most for families: persistent disruptive behaviour is rarely just “bad behaviour.” For a great many children with SEND, it’s the visible end result of something else entirely — a child who cannot process a noisy classroom, cannot regulate frustration when work is inaccessible, cannot communicate that they’re overwhelmed until it comes out as behaviour. The data doesn’t tell us how many of these incidents had an unmet need underneath them. But given how much more often they happen to children with identified SEND, it’s a question worth asking honestly.
If your child doesn’t currently have a diagnosis, a plan, or any formal recognition of need, this data is still relevant to you. A child who is beginning to struggle — with attention, with sensory overload, with communicating frustration — often shows it through behaviour long before anyone puts a name to what’s underneath it. Persistent disruptive behaviour can be the first visible sign that a child needs help, not just a discipline problem to be managed.
Every exclusion, however brief, is time out of the classroom and away from learning. The data shows that in 2024/25, 94,400 pupils nationally missed the equivalent of more than a full week of school across the year through suspensions alone — and 45,600 of them missed more than two weeks. For a child already behind, that’s a gap that compounds.
Behaviour is communication. The question worth asking isn’t just “how do we stop this” — it’s “what is this behaviour telling us?”
If your child’s school has raised concerns about behaviour — or if you’ve noticed a pattern building at home before school has said anything — it’s worth asking:
Schools have a duty under the SEND Code of Practice 2015 to identify and support pupils with SEN — and understanding what’s driving a child’s behaviour is very often the first step, long before any formal diagnosis is on the table.
Worried about a pattern of behaviour at school, or an exclusion that doesn’t feel like the full story? A free 15-minute call with Lauren is a calm, no-pressure place to talk it through.
Book a free 15-minute call with LaurenA Full Educational Gap Analysis looks beyond the behaviour itself, to what might be driving it — building a clear, specific picture of your child across areas including:
It gives school something concrete to act on — shifting the conversation from managing behaviour to understanding and meeting the need behind it.
“I honestly can’t recommend Education With Lauren enough. She has been absolutely incredible for our son. He struggles with anxiety when it comes to school, but with Lauren it’s a completely different story — he genuinely looks forward to his sessions each week.”
“My son Isaac has been tutoring with Lauren for nearly a year, and she has completely changed his educational journey. Before starting with Lauren, Isaac hated school. Now he comes out happy and confident because he finally understands things. His teacher has even commented on how Isaac now raises his hand, answers questions, and speaks in front of the class.”
A child who feels understood rarely needs to be excluded to be heard.
This article is general information for parents about national suspensions and exclusions data and its relationship to SEND. It is a plain-English summary, not legal advice. If you have concerns about your child’s behaviour or a decision made by their school, a free 15-minute call is a good place to start.
“Behaviour is communication — the question is what it’s telling us.”