I think this is a real mistake. I was permanently excluded twice, and I’m glad I was because i) I needed to have that boundary, and ii) ultimately mainstream schooling was unsuitable and damaging for me.
The real problem here is quality of alternative provision post exclusion. https://twitter.com/nexclusions/status/1380152914438672389

Unsurprisingly I meet lots of young men in prison who were excluded from school and ended up in alternative provision. The story I hear repeatedly is that expectations of them were super low, they stopped attending, no one chased up with them, and they dropped out altogether.

There is excellent and high quality alternative provision out there. When I’ve visited, I’ve heard many kids tell a story similar to my own - they don’t want to go back to mainstream. For the first time they have found a school setting which works for them.

There is definitely work to do to make sure schools have better behaviour systems which support more vulnerable kids earlier, and work to do to hold schools to account and offer them support if they don’t do this well enough, but completely banning exclusions isn’t the solution

And where we should REALLY put our focus is on offering support afterwards.
Exclusion needs to trigger an intensive package of support and care and resource, instead of it meaning people stop caring and you can drop out of the system without anyone noticing