In the 2022/23 academic year, permanent exclusions from schools in England were noticeably higher than in the years before the pandemic. But this is only true for some categories of pupil.
Before I give you any suggestions behind why exclusion rates for girls unusually increased during the 2022-2023 school year, I'd like to say a big thank you for your excellent eye-opening blog. The amount of time and hard work you have put into your Education Battleground blog is outstanding, to say the least, and what makes them so engaging is the amount of knowledge you possess not just about education, but also other subjects, and using that knowledge to challenge the myriad of myths that the British education system has been plagued by. It's your detailed wealth of knowledge that makes you posts so readable and engaging that I knew it's worth paying for subscription to your Substack blog. One post from your Wordpress blog that still makes me chuckle is the "Charlie and the Inclusive Chocolate Factory" satire your wrote, showing that also a bit of common sense is needed to discredit so many myths about education, behaviour and achievement in children. Please keep up the amazing work and I look forward to more posts!
And now back to the topic at hand. My suggestion behind high female exclusion rates may partly be explained through social media. I have noticed that TikTok in particular has a very large young female audience thanks to the large presence and quantity of female influences. Many teenage girls begin to look up to them and start copying their antisocial actions in order to establish an identity among their peers, which never leads to a positive outcome. It's also worth noting that such girls tend to be very sneaky and vengeful via cyber-bullying towards their peers. In other words, TikTok bullying could led to their exclusion. On the other hand, it's been 5 years since TikTok rose in popularity, so we cannot couldn't consider this alone as the largest explanation, but it certainly is a factor.
I did speculate before the figures came out that the "toilet riots" that spread via TikTok that year may have been a factor in the increase in exclusions. However, none of the coverage of that (or anecdotes I heard) mentioned anything about girls being involved to a noticeable degree.
Hello Andrew,
Before I give you any suggestions behind why exclusion rates for girls unusually increased during the 2022-2023 school year, I'd like to say a big thank you for your excellent eye-opening blog. The amount of time and hard work you have put into your Education Battleground blog is outstanding, to say the least, and what makes them so engaging is the amount of knowledge you possess not just about education, but also other subjects, and using that knowledge to challenge the myriad of myths that the British education system has been plagued by. It's your detailed wealth of knowledge that makes you posts so readable and engaging that I knew it's worth paying for subscription to your Substack blog. One post from your Wordpress blog that still makes me chuckle is the "Charlie and the Inclusive Chocolate Factory" satire your wrote, showing that also a bit of common sense is needed to discredit so many myths about education, behaviour and achievement in children. Please keep up the amazing work and I look forward to more posts!
And now back to the topic at hand. My suggestion behind high female exclusion rates may partly be explained through social media. I have noticed that TikTok in particular has a very large young female audience thanks to the large presence and quantity of female influences. Many teenage girls begin to look up to them and start copying their antisocial actions in order to establish an identity among their peers, which never leads to a positive outcome. It's also worth noting that such girls tend to be very sneaky and vengeful via cyber-bullying towards their peers. In other words, TikTok bullying could led to their exclusion. On the other hand, it's been 5 years since TikTok rose in popularity, so we cannot couldn't consider this alone as the largest explanation, but it certainly is a factor.
I did speculate before the figures came out that the "toilet riots" that spread via TikTok that year may have been a factor in the increase in exclusions. However, none of the coverage of that (or anecdotes I heard) mentioned anything about girls being involved to a noticeable degree.