Upcoming Education & Skills

Secondary school exclusion and alternative education provision: unraveling connections with mental health and offending in adolescence, and mortality

Funder ESRC (part of UKRI)
Recipient organisation King's College London
Funding Not disclosed
Period Mar 2028 — Mar 2028

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

A child is excluded from a UK secondary school roughly every four minutes. The United Kingdom has one of the highest school exclusion rates in the world, yet no one has systematically tracked what happens next to these young people—whether they end up in alternative education provision, and how that path connects to their mental health, criminal offending, and risk of dying young. This PhD project will be the first to link three large administrative datasets to answer those questions directly. It will examine whether exclusion and alternative education are associated with mental health diagnoses, prolific juvenile and adult offending, and early mortality, and whether the patterns differ for boys versus girls or for children in social care. If the research succeeds, it will give policymakers and educators concrete evidence on where to intervene. Rather than waiting for a crisis—a hospital admission, a court appearance, a death—schools, health services, and care systems could target support earlier, based on a clear understanding of which children are most at risk and why.

View original technical description
The United Kingdom has one of the highest exclusion rates globally. While primary school exclusion is rare, secondary school exclusion often prompts engagement with alternative educational provision (AEP). This proposed PhD project will be the first to explore associations between secondary school exclusion and AEP, in relation to mental health, offending in adolescence, and mortality in young adulthood. The project poses three research questions: (1) What is the association between exclusion during secondary school/AEP and mental health diagnoses? (2) What is the association between exclusion during secondary school/AEP and prolific offending as a juvenile and as a young adult? (3) What is the association between exclusion during secondary school/AEP and early mortality? To address these questions, the research leverages three linked administrative datasets using advanced quantitative methods. This research aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of young people's mental health needs, considering differences in results for relevant sub-groups such as gender and social care. Beyond academic significance, the findings offer practical insights for policymakers and educators, guiding early intervention strategies through education, health and care services.

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Researchers

Angeliki Evripidou (Student)

Related Research

Grants with similar aims, by meaning.

The trajectories of excluded school pupils into (and out of) the criminal justice system
Mental health and educational achievement in UK adolescents
The political economies of school exclusion and their consequences (Excluded Lives)
The mainstream's edge: students at risk of exclusion and systems they inhabit
A Narrative Analysis of Young People with Experiences of Trauma, Poverty and Turbulent Educational Journeys

Original classification

Studentship

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