Conference Agenda

The aim of this panel discussion is to discuss the possibilities and contradictions involved in conducting both ‘home-international’ and cross-national comparisons of school exclusion from the perspectives of Australia, the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States of America (USA). We will open up a discussion about the research question: how may we address the methodological challenges involved in home and cross-national studies of school exclusion?

Despite the wide recognition in international human rights law of the right of all pupils to education, increasing numbers of young people in each country are being removed from school through legal (permanent/expulsion and fixed period/suspension) and illegal forms of exclusion such as ‘off-rolling’. This is alarming given the well documented negative short- and long-term consequences of being excluded from school, including various forms of social exclusion, few school qualifications, sexual exploitation and exposure to violent crime and grooming by drug gangs, disengagement from the labour market, long-term psychiatric illness, and being more likely to go to prison (Graham et al. 2019). Each country has also seen a rise in internal forms of school exclusion. The effects of the pandemic have also dramatically increased the number of self excluders, including young people who are experiencing difficulties with school work, relationships with others, who are bored, bullied, or have mental health difficulties (Thompson et al., 2022). School exclusion, in all its forms, is a consequence of disadvantage and it gives rise to inequalities both social and economic. This is an urgent global phenomenon that requires the collaboration of multiple stakeholders across numerous contexts

Researchers from the three continents of Australasia, Europe and North America will highlight the opportunities and challenges from their current mixed methods studies on school exclusion that home-international studies offer for exploring ways in which policy and practice relating to school exclusion varies in local political, cultural and historical contexts. Detailed scrutiny reveals that the political and policy frameworks in a nation state shape the forms which exclusion takes (McCluskey et al. 2019). The three countries share contexts where the education systems have significant national and regional policy influences. The three countries also share high levels of school exclusion that both disproportionately affect young people specific groups e.g. low-income families, from some ethnic backgrounds, or with special needs. Conducting home-international studies, while raising particular challenges, has helped us to understand the distribution of inequalities, explain how different regional educational models and practices contribute to school exclusion or inclusion, and identify targets and priority actions to improve inclusion and inform policy-making. Yet considerable differences in socio-political, cultural, and educational context in different parts of each country substantially changes practices and levels of inequality, exclusion, and inclusion in education. In this context little is known about how professionals, institutional agents, local authorities interpret, design, practice, and discuss educational inclusion policies and practices in their own contexts. Although international comparisons have had some influence on policy making, contextual differences between nations means that there remain challenges in identifying common data sources and language for use across (and between) different nations and regions. We will also argue that while home- international comparisons may provide fruitful sources of practical policy lessons (Raffe 1998, Taylor et al. 2013) there is a need to reconsider what counts as evidence in the understanding of school exclusions (Daniels et al., 2022).