Autonomous Schools and Strategic Pupil Exclusion

Abstract

This article studies whether pupil performance gains in autonomous schools in England can be attributed to the strategic exclusion of poorly performing pupils. England has had two phases of academy school introduction—the first, in the 2000s, being a school improvement programme for poorly performing schools and the second a mass academisation programme from 2010 for better-performing schools. Overall, exclusion rates are higher in academies, with the earlier programme featuring much higher rates of exclusion. However, rather than functioning as a means of test score manipulation, the higher exclusion rate reflects the rigorous discipline enforced by the pre-2010 academies.