Preventing School Exclusions

Our latest action research in education is a three-year project working with three localities across England - East Sussex, Oldham and Worcestershire - to facilitate greater multiagency collaboration to make local education systems more inclusive and reduce preventable exclusions.

The project builds on the findings of our (2020) Pinball Kids research, that showed how a renewed focus on trusting, reciprocal relationships between schools and local services can identify and respond early to pupils’ needs and help reduce exclusions.

In the first stage of this project, we worked with a range of professionals and agencies to understand the local factors that drive or hinder multiagency collaboration. We also spoke with pupils with lived experience of exclusions and their families to capture their perspectives. Engaging with practitioners and beneficiaries in this way helped us create detailed maps of local systems and their dynamics, that informed an RSA-led process in which local stakeholders co-designed improved approaches to collaboration. Findings from this stage of the project are detailed in our Collaborations for Change interim report. 

We're now supporting the local collaboratives to implement their plans and working with an independent evaluator to understand the contribution the RSA has made. We hope that this action-research will provide useful, transferable insights on how to support multiagency collaboration to foster inclusion and reduce preventable exclusions.

Funders and partners