The new QUT-led longitudinal study is the first to track individual students’ disciplinary exclusions over time using population data from more than 71,000 NSW public school students.

It found that by Year 12, almost 20 per cent of students had experienced at least one suspension or expulsion, and two-thirds of those were excluded on multiple occasions.

Around one in 20 children were first suspended in primary school, with the rate accelerating sharply during the early years of high school.

Lead author Lauren Piltz, from the QUT School of Psychology and Counselling, says the study shows that exclusionary discipline is both common and cumulative.

“Most children who are suspended once are likely to be suspended again,” Piltz shares.

“For some students, exclusion becomes a pattern rather than a one-off consequence and it often begins very early.”

The most frequent reasons for suspension she says were “aggressive behaviour” and “continued disobedience”, while serious offences such as weapons or drug-related incidents were rare.

The researchers also found strong inequities in who is most affected.

Boys, students from disadvantaged families and those living in regional and remote areas were significantly more likely to be excluded, and to be excluded repeatedly.

The QUT research team, pictured above, from left, Professor Linda Graham, Lauren Piltz, Dr Emma Carpendale and Professor Kristin Laurens, is the first in Australia to track individual students’ disciplinary exclusions over time.

Children of unemployed parents were around 10 times more likely to experience 16 or more suspensions than their peers.

Co-author Professor Kristin Laurens, from the QUT School of Psychology and Counselling and QUT Centre for Inclusive Education, says the findings show that suspensions do not solve problem behaviour and risk entrenching disadvantage.

“This research makes clear that exclusion is not an effective response,” Laurens says.

“It doesn’t improve behaviour, and it disproportionately affects the students who already face the greatest barriers.

“Instead of removing children from school, we need to focus on inclusive, evidence-based strategies that teach social, emotional and behavioural skills from the early years.”

The research findings echo a recent study by Dr Ashley Craig from ANU and David Martin at Harvard University, who looked at the impact of eliminating suspensions for low-level disorderly behaviour and how relaxing strict school discipline policies could lead to better test results and improved school culture.

The pair’s long-term collaborative research focussed in on the New York public school system in 2012, in the midst of major reform where just at the peak of zero tolerance approaches to school discipline, the system relaxed it, providing an opportunity for the researchers to compare two sets of schools and how they evolved over time. 

The results showed improvements in test scores when suspensions were banned.

“We saw a rise in both math and reading scores, particularly in schools that previously had an above-average suspension rate for disorderly behaviour,” Craig told EducationHQ last month.

“And it didn’t just benefit the kids who would have been suspended themselves, because we can predict that quite well – it seemed to benefit other kids too, like everyone,” Craig said.

Something was happening to the classroom dynamic, he shared, and the change in approach to discipline also contributed to an improvement in school culture more generally.

“We found that things like student/teacher respect actually really remarkably improved at the same time in the same schools as an effect of this reform,” Craig said.

“[We found] students and teachers are likely to work harder and learn more when they feel supported and respected.”

Craig said more research is needed in this area in Australia, and that we have much to learn from the more open approaches of some countries.

Professor Linda Graham, co-author from the QUT School of Education and director of the QUT Centre for Inclusive Education, says their study highlights the need for early intervention and whole-school approaches to behaviour management.

“Every suspension represents lost learning and lost connection with school,” Graham says.

“If we want to improve student engagement and wellbeing, keeping children connected to education has to be the goal.”

Read the full paper, ‘Students’ accumulation of disciplinary school exclusion experiences over time: Prevalence, patterns, and correlates in an Australian population cohort’​, published online in the Children and Youth Services Review.