The Treatment Effect of School Exclusion on Unemployment

Abstract

Objectives: Fixed-term school exclusions are disciplinary sanctions on pupils in response to serious aggressive or disruptive behaviour in schools. It is unclear whether these sanctions aggravate future problems. Here we assess what impact fixed term exclusions have on later unemployment. Methods: We use data from the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (LSYPE), a prospective cohort study of over 15,000 adolescents. We treat school exclusion as an ‘intervention’ and apply propensity score matching to assess whether it has a treatment effect on unemployment. Results: We find a consistent difference between excluded and non-excluded children in their likelihood of being unemployed at aged 18/19. This effect ranges between 6-16 percentage points depending on the methodological approach taken. Conclusions: Our results suggest an independent effect of school exclusion on the probability of being unemployed two years later, over and above numerous baseline individual/family characteristics. To truly understand the effect exclusion has on young people, we suggest that high-quality cluster randomised trials are needed.