Including the Excluded: Education and Wellbeing in a time of COVID

This project brings urgent attention to the circumstances of secondary school pupils who have experienced fixed-term or permanent exclusion from mainstream schooling in Bristol within the last 12 months during the pandemic context. School exclusion rates reflect wider structural inequalities in the education system in England. Black Caribbean pupils (alongside those who are of Black Caribbean and white heritage) continually experience exclusion in the largest proportions (Demie, 2021; DfE, 2021). Young people living in areas of high deprivation as well as those with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) also experience disproportionate rates of exclusion (Daniels et al., 2020). Arguably the systematic exclusion of pupils from schooling in England is itself a pandemic, but also, it is a structural inequality which we would expect to see exacerbated during the coronavirus pandemic and associated school closures. Recent reports have highlighted the additional problematics illuminated for young peopl