July 2025

IZA DP No. 18044: Does Being Excluded from School Harm Student Achievement? Evidence from Siblings in English Population Data

Andrew McLean, Duncan McVicar

This paper presents sibling fixed effects estimates of the relationship between school exclusion and subsequent academic achievement from population-wide administrative data on English secondary school students. It complements a growing base of quasi-experimental and individual fixed effects evidence on exclusion effects in predominantly US settings. We find that being excluded is negatively associated with subsequent achievement at school. We assess the extent to which this might reflect a negative causal impact of exclusion.