Over 600 pupils were excluded from their school in Torfaen during 2022/23.

The most common reasons were violence towards another pupil and verbal abuse or threatening behaviour towards an adult in the school. A total of 634 pupils were excluded with 117 of them being banned from school more than once.

This added up to 1,792 exclusions leading to 2,734 days in school being lost.

The data is in a report going to the council’s education and scrutiny committee meeting this week.

Councillors will look at information on exclusions, home schooling and attendance and discuss the council’s policies in these areas.

The report said: “Exclusions in Torfaen have increased post pandemic as some learners have
struggled to adapt to the routines of face-to-face learning.”

Nearly all exclusions (98%) were for five days or fewer, with an average length of 1.5 days. Almost half of schools in Torfaen (45%) gave more exclusions in 2022/23 than 2021/22, nine schools didn’t issue any- this was made up of eight primary schools and Crownbridge Special School.

Seven pupils were permanently excluded, and two were overturned on appeal.

Attendance

Attendance in Torfaen’s secondary school is currently 93.26% (Nov 23) and 89.01% in primary schools. These figures are 0.1 percentage point behind the Welsh average.

Persistently absent pupils

A total of 407 primary school pupils had an attendance of under 80% (as of Nov 23) and 832 in secondary schools. The primary school figure shows a reduction of 46.79% on Nov 22 and a reduction of 25.31% for secondary schools.