🚨Schools not following this guidance in September should be worried

A practitioner’s guide to the July 2026 exclusions guidance update, and what it means for the children most at risk.

The DfE has quietly published updated statutory guidance on suspensions and permanent exclusions. It replaces the August 2024 version. And while much of it looks the same on first read, there are changes buried in this document that have significant implications for the pupils you and I work with every day, the ones already on the margins.

Here’s what I found, what it means in practice, and what you can do about it before September.

🗓️ The part-time timetable clause

Let’s start with the one that stopped me cold.

The 2026 guidance now explicitly lists placing a pupil on a part-time timetable for behavioural reasons as an example of off-rolling. Not a note in the margins. Not ambiguous guidance. A named example, sitting alongside pressuring parents into Elective Home Education and sending children home without a formal suspension.

For anyone working in SEMH education, you’ll know how widespread this practice is. I’ve seen it used with genuine care, as a way of slowly reintegrating a dysregulated child, of building a positive experience of school before increasing hours. And I’ve seen it used as a way of managing a school’s exclusion data without going through the formal process.

The guidance doesn’t distinguish between these uses. It calls it off-rolling.

This matters because the children most often placed on part-time timetables are the same children who already have the least access to a full education, sometimes those with EHCPs, those known to social care and/or youth justice, those with complex trauma histories.

If your setting is using reduced timetables right now, this is the moment to look hard at whether that practice is genuinely in the child’s interests, properly documented, and agreed with parents and the Local Authority.

If it isn’t, the guidance is now very clear about what it’s called.

⌛ What to do before September:

Pull a list of every pupil currently on a reduced timetable. For each one, ask three questions: Is there a written agreement from parents and the Local Authority (if applicable)? Is there a clear, time-limited plan with a review date? And is the reduction explicitly linked to the childs best interest E.G. educational benefit for that child, not school convenience?

If the answer to any of those is no, you need to act now rather than in September. In the short term, that means a conversation with parents to explain the arrangement formally, a written record of the rationale, and a named date by which you will review whether hours should increase.

If the reduced timetable is being used because a child’s behaviour is difficult to manage, the honest next step is to treat it as what the guidance says it is, a behaviour intervention, and apply the formal processes that come with that.

For children with EHCPs, a part-time timetable almost certainly requires involvement from the LA. If you’re not sure, contact your SEND Local Authority officer now. Don’t wait for an Ofsted visit to surface it.

Next week’s post will exclusively be around part-time timetables and alternative provision. I’m mapping out exactly what schools can do and how they can do it.

❤️‍🩹 A new tool for safeguarding: separation without exclusion

One of the most practically useful additions in the 2026 update is the new section on keeping pupils apart for safeguarding purposes. The guidance now explicitly states that a school can temporarily forbid a pupil from attending premises for safeguarding reasons, and that this is distinct from a disciplinary exclusion.

For DSLs navigating live investigations, particularly those involving child-on-child harm, this has been a grey area for years. Schools have sometimes defaulted to suspension because it was the only named mechanism available, even when the removal was protective rather than punitive. That conflation has always felt wrong, and in practice it creates records that can follow children in ways that affect their futures.

The 2026 guidance gives this a clearer legal basis. It’s not a suspension. It doesn’t count as one. But it must be handled correctly, documented clearly, and not used as a workaround for avoiding the formal exclusion process.

The corresponding terminology update matters here too: the guidance now explicitly clarifies that exclusion means exclusion on disciplinary grounds, and does not include situations where a pupil is sent home for non-disciplinary reasons. The distinction matters, for the child’s record, for their rights to a governing board review, and for how a situation is understood by all the agencies who may be involved.'

⌛ What to do before September:

Brief your DSL on this now, not during a live incident. The worst time to understand a new legal provision is when you’re in the middle of a safeguarding investigation and under pressure to make a quick decision.

Practically, the separation provision needs its own paper trail, separate from suspension records. When a safeguarding separation is used, there should be a written record that names it as such, gives the reason, states the expected duration, and confirms that parents have been informed. It should sit in the safeguarding file, not the behaviour file.

It is also worth having a brief conversation with your governing board before September to make sure they understand the distinction. A governor who sees a child has been kept off-site and assumes it was a suspension, without understanding the safeguarding separation route, could create confusion in a later review.

One thing to be clear about: this provision cannot be used as a softer alternative to the formal exclusion process when the reason is actually disciplinary. The guidance is explicit that exclusion on disciplinary grounds must follow the formal process regardless of how it is framed. Using the safeguarding separation route to avoid recording a suspension would itself constitute unlawful exclusion practice.

🎒 Off-site AP: tightening the net

The expanded off-rolling definition also brings off-site AP placements into scope for the first time in explicit terms. Moving a pupil to off-site provision when it’s not in their best interests is now named as off-rolling.

This is significant. AP referrals have long been used, consciously or not, as a way of managing behaviour without the formal accountability that comes with a permanent exclusion. A child disappears from the school roll into a PRU or an independent AP, no exclusion is recorded, no governing board meets, no IRP is available to the family.

The 2026 guidance is signalling that this is increasingly in scope. For those of us who work in or alongside AP, this is actually welcome, it pushes back against the idea that AP is a dustbin for children schools can’t manage, and towards AP as a purposeful, best-interests placement.

⌛ What to do before September:

Audit every current off-site AP placement before the new academic year. For each child, you should be able to answer: What is the educational rationale for this placement? Has the child and their family been meaningfully involved in the decision? Is there a reintegration plan, or if the placement is intended to be longer term, is that explicitly agreed with all parties including the LA?

The “best interests” test in the guidance is doing a lot of work here. Best interests means the child’s educational and welfare interests, not the interests of the school’s behaviour data. If you cannot articulate why this placement benefits this child specifically, that is a problem under the 2026 guidance.

For any new AP referrals from September, it would be sensible to build a short best interests record into your referral process, a brief written rationale, signed off by the headteacher, that sits alongside the referral paperwork. It doesn’t need to be lengthy. It needs to be honest and child-specific.

📝 Clearer rules around further suspensions

This one is easy to miss but worth flagging for headteachers. The 2026 guidance adds more specific language around when a second suspension can immediately follow a first. Previously, the guidance said this was possible “usually where further evidence has come to light.” The 2026 version clarifies that a further suspension is appropriate where there has been further investigation of the pupil’s misconduct during the initial suspension and the headteacher has determined the initial suspension was not a sufficient sanction.

In practice, this closes a gap that some schools were using loosely, extending the time a child was out of school by issuing a second suspension without a clear evidential basis for doing so.

⌛ What to do before September:

Review your internal process for issuing a second suspension. There should be a clear record of what new information or investigation occurred during the initial suspension period that justified the additional sanction. If your current process doesn’t capture that, add it. This is also worth covering briefly in any staff CPD around exclusions before the new year, particularly for senior leaders who may not be across the updated wording.

🏫 Post-16 students: an often-overlooked group

The 2026 guidance explicitly includes discouraging a post-16 student from continuing their course when that is against their best interests as a form of off-rolling. This is a meaningful extension of scope that many sixth form leads and college liaison staff will not be aware of.

Pupils in sixth form, or in post-16 AP, have historically sat in a grey area in terms of exclusion protections. The guidance is now unambiguous: if a school steers a post-16 student away from their course for reasons that serve the school’s interests rather than the student’s, that is off-rolling.

⌛ What to do before September:

If your school has a sixth form, make sure whoever manages post-16 retention is aware of this change. It is also worth reviewing any conversations that took place this year where students were advised to leave their course or transfer elsewhere. If those decisions were not clearly in the student’s educational best interests and properly documented as such, they may now be challengeable.

🔍 The Ofsted shift, don’t be lulled

One change worth noting, and interpreting carefully, is that the Ofsted language around off-rolling has softened slightly. The 2024 guidance said schools engaged in off-rolling were “likely to be judged as inadequate.” The 2026 version says it “may negatively affect the school’s leadership and governance evaluation.”

I wouldn’t read this as the DfE relaxing scrutiny. I’d read it as reflecting the new Ofsted inspection framework, which has moved away from single-word judgements in some areas and towards evaluation of leadership and governance as a more nuanced domain. The accountability is still there. The mechanism has changed. And importantly, leadership and governance is one of the areas inspectors dig into most carefully when inclusion concerns are already on their radar.

If your school has high suspension rates, a significant number of pupils in off-site AP, or a pattern of pupils leaving the roll without formal exclusions, those data patterns will still attract attention. The threshold for “inadequate” being automatic may have shifted, the underlying scrutiny has not.

✏️ The through-line

Reading this guidance alongside the SEND white paper and the direction of travel on inclusion, there is a consistent message: the children most likely to be informally managed out of school are also the children the system is being held most accountable for. Part-time timetables, informal exclusions, off-site AP used as a default, post-16 pushouts, these practices have disproportionately affected children with SEMH needs, children with EHCPs, and children known to social care.

The guidance doesn’t ask schools to manage the unmanageable without support. It does ask schools to be honest, in their records, their processes, and their decision-making, about what they are actually doing with their most vulnerable pupils.

Before September is the right time to look at that honestly. Not because Ofsted might be coming. Because these are children.

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