Students’ accumulation of disciplinary school exclusion experiences over time: Prevalence, patterns, and correlates in an Australian population cohort

Schools often manage problem behaviours by enacting exclusionary school discipline policies that remove students via suspension (fixed-term exclusion) or expulsion (permanent exclusion). Evidence has linked these practices to a range of adverse educational, social, mental health, and criminal consequences. However, cross-sectional studies from the United States dominate the field, with knowledge of the extent of the problem currently limited by a lack of longitudinal investigations of the prevalence, patterns, and correlates of exclusionary experiences accumulated by individual students over time. This study characterises exclusionary school discipline practices in a representative, longitudinal, population-based cohort of 71,955 students attending New South Wales public schools in Australia. By Year 12 (age ∼ 18 years; 2021), almost one in five (19.5 %) students had been suspended or expelled from school, most (61.1 %) on more than one occasion. The accumulation of exclusionary experiences started early, during primary school, for almost one in 20 students (4.6 %), and accelerated in junior secondary school. The most common categories of exclusion used were ‘aggressive behaviour’ and ‘continued disobedience’. The greatest risk of exclusion was observed among male students, those from the most socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds, and those living in remote/very remote areas. These associations strengthened with the number of exclusion experiences, as these groups became increasingly overrepresented at higher cumulative exclusion frequencies. These findings indicate that suspending and expelling children does not address problem behaviour, highlighting a need for more effective behaviour management approaches and socio-emotional behavioural skills promotion through the primary and secondary school years.