Schools will be told to stop sending suspended pupils home and instead discipline them on site, due to too many spending the time on social media.
Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, said she wants schools to adopt ‘internal suspensions’ in most cases, with pupils serving the time at school instead.
Under her plans, suspended pupils will be placed in special exclusion zones inside schools and given set work so they do not fall behind.
External suspensions, when children are sent home, will only be used in the most extreme circumstances.
Mrs Phillipson said the change is needed because many pupils are now spending their suspension at home on ‘social media, gaming and the online world’, which ‘devalues’ the punishment.
However, Laura Trott, shadow education secretary, branded the plans ‘micromanagement from the centre’.
Schools will be told to stop sending suspended pupils home and instead discipline them on site, due to too many spending the time on social media (file picture)
She said on X: ‘Children need clear boundaries and must understand there are consequences for poor behaviour.
‘Weakening those consequences risks a further erosion of standards.
‘The schools that will suffer most are weaker schools. It will encourage them to reduce headline suspension figures, rather than properly tackling poor behaviour.’
Meanwhile, Matt Wrack, general secretary of NASUWT teaching union said it risked ‘weakening’ the deterrent.
‘External suspension has long acted as a clear signal to pupils and families that behaviour has crossed an unacceptable line,’ he said.
‘Any measure that may undermine the ability of schools to establish and maintain good discipline will not be welcomed by teachers or parents.’
The measure, set to be unveiled in a forthcoming schools white paper, will recommend guidance that at-home suspensions should be saved for serious cases, such as those involving violence.
However, heads will still have the power to decide which cases warrant this action.
Current laws state that a suspension must take place off-site, but the Government will seek a law change to make in-school suspensions the default.
The Government will launch a consultation on the changes with the aim of introducing them from September 2027.
Suspensions were first introduced 40 years ago, but the Department for Education believes they are now less effective because of pupils’ access to friends and gaming via the internet.
Mrs Phillipson said: ‘Suspensions will always play a critical role in helping heads manage poor behaviour, but time at home today can too easily mean children retreat to social media, gaming and the online world instead of serving their punishment. That has devalued suspensions and led to high levels of lost learning.
‘Time out of school doesn’t just disrupt learning – it can have a huge impact on a young person’s life chances. We want to restore suspensions as the serious sanction they should be, while keeping young people engaged in their education and reducing the time teachers spend helping pupils catch up.’
Nearly a million suspensions were handed out to state school pupils in England in 2023-24 – the latest full year with available data.
It marked a record high and a 21 per cent increase compared with statistics from the previous year.