Exclusions for racist, homophobic and disablist abuse on the rise in Suffolk's schools

Between Autumn term 2020-21 and Spring term 2024-25, Suffolk's state-funded primary, secondary and special schools recorded 908 mentions of abuse linked to race, disability, sexuality or gender identity among the reasons for permanent exclusions and temporary suspensions.

The figures, drawn from Department for Education data and analysed by the BBC Shared Data Unit, set the local picture against a national one in which mentions of this kind of abuse rose by 68% across England between Spring term 2021-22 and Spring term 2024-25.

Schools can record up to three reasons for each exclusion or suspension, so the figures do not represent individual incidents or individual children. But they offer one of the few available windows on how often prejudicial abuse is being formally logged inside the school gates.

A government spokesperson described the national figures as "shocking" and said discrimination had "absolutely no place in our schools".

What the Suffolk figures show

The 908 mentions in Suffolk break down as follows:

• 718 linked to racist abuse
• 163 to abuse over sexuality or gender identity
• 27 to abuse over disability

The overwhelming majority were tied to temporary suspensions rather than permanent exclusions:

• 714 of the racism-linked mentions
• 161 of those linked to sexuality or gender identity
• All 27 of the disablist mentions were suspensions

A small number of racism-linked cases and a small number of sexuality or gender identity-linked cases — between one and four of each, suppressed in the data to avoid identifying individual children — led to permanent exclusion. None of the disablist mentions did.

The figures sit within a wider total of 65,025 suspensions and permanent exclusions recorded in Suffolk schools over the five-year period – a total of 4,570 suspensions per term. If you were to exclude the three pandemic-affected 2020-21 terms, when there were less suspensions due to lower attendance figures, then the average would 5,816 suspensions per term. Not a small number.

By school type, 76% of the prejudice-linked mentions in Suffolk were recorded in secondary schools (687), 21% in primary schools (188) and 3.6% in special schools (33). The primary-school share is meaningfully higher than the national figure of 11%.

The data covers Suffolk County Council's area as a whole. The Department for Education does not publish a breakdown for Ipswich separately from the rest of the county.

"The tip of the iceberg"

Charities working in this area caution that exclusion figures, while significant, only capture a fraction of the picture.

Martha Boateng, director of the Anti-Bullying Alliance, said the data made clear that "identity-based bullying" was affecting large numbers of children.

"When bullying targets someone's identity, it really gets to the core of who they are," she said. "That can have a massive impact on self-esteem, mental health and overall well-being well into adulthood."

Laura Mackay, a former headteacher and chief executive of LGBT+ charity Just Like Us, was more blunt. "The exclusion data is the tip of the iceberg," she said. "That's just where it's become so serious that it's led to an exclusion."

"In the playgrounds, in the corridors, in the classrooms at schools you would often hear young people using 'that's gay' as a derogatory term," Mackay said. "Quite often they will pick up on language and use it and not mean it to be homophobic, but — as I know personally from when I was at school — it really hurts when something like that is used to describe something negative."

She said the current climate for LGBT+ young people, "specifically trans people, is very, very challenging".

"The community feels like it's being used like a political football and the anti-LGBT rhetoric, through the adults around them or social media, that filters down to children."

What the figures cannot tell us

A central problem, according to those interviewed, is that schools in England are not legally required to record incidents of bullying at all — leaving the picture incomplete by design.

A spokesperson for the Equality and Human Rights Commission said: "There's currently no legal obligation on schools to record pupil-to-pupil bullying but bullying because of a protected characteristic should be dealt with very seriously and schools are required to ensure they do not discriminate in the way they deal with it."

The commission has previously recommended improvements to the data on bullying in schools. "More regular collection and monitoring of this data — broken down by protected characteristics — would help schools ensure that every pupil is safe, supported and protected from discriminatory bullying," the spokesperson said.

The European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance has also said that the failure to collect robust data centrally was making it "difficult to develop policies to tackle bullying in a concerted manner".

Boateng said the absence of a recording duty meant some schools simply did not know what they were dealing with. "It might be that some children are experiencing bullying more than others — disabled children, children from ethnic minorities, particular sexes — if schools don't have a requirement to capture that data, they won't have a good handle on how they can tackle that bullying."

The Anti-Bullying Alliance is among those calling on the government to introduce a duty for schools to record levels of bullying, to incorporate mandatory bullying awareness in teacher training, and to appoint bullying leads in schools.

Funding cuts and lost contracts

Several charities and education specialists pointed to a decade of cuts to anti-bullying and anti-discrimination work as a contributing factor to the national rise.

James Kingett, of Show Racism the Red Card (SRTRC), said the charity had lost local authority contracts as councils repurposed funding under austerity. "A decade ago, it was not uncommon for SRTRC to have service-level agreements with the majority of local authorities in the areas we serve, enabling schools to engage with services free at the point of access," he said.

"While some local authorities have remained steadfast in their commitment to ensuring the continuation of this kind of provision, many have been forced to repurpose funding to other areas, as a result of austerity."

The charity has not been able to secure central government funding since 2019.

Dr Greg Stride, principal researcher at the Local Government Information Unit, set out the wider council finance picture. "Council funding is around 18% lower per person than it was in 2010, meaning much more of the money councils have remaining is going on the services they legally have to provide, such as adult social care, homelessness and SEND," he said.

"This leaves less resource for valuable work that isn't legally required, such as outreach or prevention programmes either provided directly by the councils or working in partnership with local community sector organisations. Councils' hands are tied."

The Anti-Bullying Alliance itself has been affected. The organisation once reached tens of thousands of teachers a year with its training resources, but now reaches a fraction of that after introducing charges to meet costs.

"Schools simply don't have the funding to be able to pay for the training themselves," Boateng said.

A Local Government Association spokesperson said: "The partnership between councils and the voluntary and community sector is vital in delivering essential services, strengthening our communities and supporting the most vulnerable families. As part of this partnership, councils support the VCFSE sector with more than £7bn of funding per year. Local government continues to face funding pressures with difficult decisions on a range of spending, including grants, having to be made."

The local context in Suffolk is one of significant political and structural change. Reform recently took control of Suffolk County Council in the May 2026 elections, and the county is also moving towards a reorganisation into three unitary authorities by 2028. It is unclear how – if at all – this may impact funding and strategic focus to address the rise in prejudicial exclusions across the county.

A wider problem in the playground

Beyond funding, those interviewed pointed to a society-wide drift in tone that they said was finding its way into classrooms.

Pepe Di'lasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said schools only exclude or suspend pupils as a "last resort" but would not tolerate discriminatory behaviour.

He highlighted "inflammatory" social media content and "divisive rhetoric from some politicians and commentators" as factors. "The problems we are seeing are huge societal issues which cannot be solved solely in the classroom. It feels as though we are living in an increasingly abrasive era."

Boateng made a similar point about adult behaviour online. "We know children are exposed and see the behaviour adults post online — if we're posting things that are racist, sexist, homophobic, children are going to be watching and seeing that, whether we like it or not."

"Children are seeing this rhetoric and therefore it's likely that it will trickle down into school life."

Dame Rachel de Souza, the Children's Commissioner, said schools "should be environments free from prejudice, but they do not exist in isolation".

"Children need high quality, age appropriate RSHE that starts early and evolves as they mature, so they understand how to treat each other and set clear boundaries both online and offline," she said.

Kingett noted that Show Racism the Red Card was now receiving more requests from primary schools where children were using racist language with increasing frequency. He said this often came from a "lack of understanding and without intention to offend" but reflected the "normalisation of the use of such language within some households and local communities".

The figures, he added, could be read in more than one way: they showed both that prejudicial abuse was on the rise and that schools were taking it seriously enough to act.

The government's response

A Department for Education spokesperson said: "These figures are shocking. Racism and discrimination have absolutely no place in our schools. Every child deserves to learn in a safe and calm classroom, and we are providing new, expert support to turn things around in hundreds of schools with the biggest behaviour challenges."

The spokesperson said the government was taking steps including free breakfast clubs, improved teacher training and "clearer guidance on the use of suspensions" to make sure all teachers had "the clarity and confidence to act swiftly when they need to".

The Department for Education has also launched a procurement for an "expert and evidence-led review into best practice on managing pupil behaviour, reducing preventable exclusions and tackling and preventing bullying", and has set out a programme of behaviour support in its recent Schools White Paper.

The bottom line

The Suffolk figures, like those across England, are not a complete picture. Schools record up to three reasons per exclusion, the numbers count incidents rather than children, and — as the country's own equality regulator concedes — there is no legal duty to record bullying in the first place.

What the figures do offer is a partial map of what is being formally logged in Suffolk's classrooms, corridors and playgrounds, and the map is not flattering. With anti-bullying charities reaching fewer schools, council budgets squeezed, and a wider public conversation that those working with young people describe as increasingly abrasive, the question for Suffolk's new council administration, its MPs and its school leaders is what they intend to do about it – a question we hope to answer in a follow-up piece.

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