"What Is the Link Between Autism, SEND and School Exclusion? What the Research Says and what Schools can do.
Reflections on the DfE's updated exclusions guidance…What does this means for the children most at risk.
Georgiana Koyama, BCBA
Founder, All Behaviour Consultancy
June 2026
📖 6 min read
The Department for Education has released updated guidance on suspensions and permanent exclusions in England. For those of us who work daily with autistic children, pupils with SEND, and families navigating an already stretched system, this guidance arrives at a significant moment.
Exclusion and suspension rates remain considerably higher than pre-pandemic levels. The children most affected are, overwhelmingly, those already carrying the greatest vulnerability: pupils with SEND, those with unmet mental health needs, and young people facing multiple layers of disadvantage.
This is not coincidence. It is a pattern. And updated guidance, however welcome, will only shift that pattern if it is met with the cultural and systemic change that the guidance itself cannot mandate.
What the Updated Guidance Says
The core message of the updated DfE guidance is clear and worth stating plainly:
DfE Updated Exclusions Guidance · Key Principles
What schools are now required to consider:
● Exclusion must be treated as a last resort, not a first response.
● SEND and mental health needs must be actively considered before any exclusion decision is made.
● Informal exclusions and off-rolling are unlawful, regardless of parental agreement.
● Reintegration planning is not optional; it is part of the process.
● All decisions must be lawful, fair, and proportionate.
● Greater emphasis is placed on early intervention, safeguarding, and contextual vulnerability.
There is also, notably, a stronger emphasis on building school cultures where exclusions become less necessary in the first place. That framing matters. It signals a shift from reactive management toward proactive system design.
You Cannot Discuss Behaviour Without Discussing Context
This is something we say often at All Behaviour Consultancy, and it’s worth repeating here: Behaviour does not happen in a vacuum. Every Behaviour a child presents in school is communicating something about that child's experience in that environment.
The children most impacted by exclusion are almost always the children whose needs have gone unmet for the longest time.
A meaningful conversation about school exclusion has to grapple honestly with the conditions that precede it. We cannot meaningfully address challenging behaviour without asking what sits underneath it:
What Behaviour is often communicating
● Unprocessed trauma and adverse childhood experiences
● A sense of not belonging, of not being safe enough to learn
● Psychological unsafety in the classroom or wider school environment
● Unmet communication needs, particularly for autistic pupils and those with language differences
● Lack of access to appropriate support at the right time
● Staff who are stretched, under-resourced, and carrying their own pressures
This is not about lowering expectations of children. It is about being honest that expectations without the right support structures in place are not a Behaviour strategy. They are a set-up for crisis.
What the Most Effective Schools Are Already Doing
It would be incomplete to write about exclusion without acknowledging what is working. Across the country, many schools are doing genuinely exceptional work. They are not waiting for updated guidance to treat their pupils with dignity and respond to Behaviour with curiosity rather than consequence.
1 in 5
autistic pupils in mainstream schools in England have experienced fixed-period exclusion, compared to around 1 in 20 of all pupils. The gap is significant and well-documented.
The schools reducing exclusion most effectively are not relaxing standards. They are building stronger systems around children and staff before Behaviour escalates to crisis point. The question they are asking has fundamentally shifted:
What is wrong with this child?
"What is this Behaviour communicating, and what does this child need?"
How do we manage this Behaviour?
"What support does this child need to be safe enough to learn?"
How do we respond once a crisis occurs?
"How do we build the systems that prevent crisis from becoming the only option?"
The approaches that are making the most difference include relational practice built consistently over time, restorative approaches that repair rather than simply punish, Positive Behaviour Support frameworks grounded in understanding the function of Behaviour, and genuinely inclusive systems built on consistency, clarity, and genuine psychological safety for both pupils and staff.
Guidance Can Shape Policy. Culture Is What Changes Lives.
Updated DfE guidance is important. It sets the legal and ethical framework within which schools operate. It creates accountability. It signals to head teachers, governors, and local authorities what the standard is.
But guidance does not walk into a classroom. It does not sit with a distressed child. It does not support the teaching assistant who has been trained in de-escalation but has no time to implement it because their class has grown and their support hours have been cut.
Guidance shapes what schools must do. Leadership, culture, and everyday relational practice determine what children actually experience.
Inclusive Behaviour systems are built before crisis point. They are built in the conversations between staff. In the way a SENCO is listened to. In whether a child with communication differences has the tools to express distress before it becomes disruption. In whether a school genuinely believes that every child belongs, not in policy, but in practice.
The most effective schools are not asking whether they can maintain high expectations and include vulnerable pupils. They have understood that the two are not in tension. High expectations, properly supported, are how you include every child. Exclusion, in most cases, represents a system that has run out of runway, not a child who has run out of chances.
Where All Behaviour Consultancy Fits In
At All Behaviour Consultancy, we work with schools across London and the UK to build exactly the kind of evidence-based, proactive Behaviour support systems this guidance is pointing toward. Our BCBAs conduct Functional Behaviour Assessments that identify what a child's Behaviour is communicating, design Behaviour Support Plans that give schools a clear, consistent, compassionate framework to respond, and work alongside teachers, SENCOs, and teaching assistants to build capacity from within.
We also work directly with families, because what happens at school does not stay at school, and the children most at risk of exclusion are often the children whose home and school environments most need to be working together.
Exclusion is rarely a solution. It is almost always a signal, that a child needed something earlier, that a system needed strengthening, that the right support did not arrive in time.
Our work is about making sure that support arrives before the crisis does.
Our BCBAs work with schools and SENCOs across London to build evidence-based, inclusive Behaviour support systems, before crisis point. Book a free 20-minute consultation to find out how we can help.
