Children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are being pulled out of lessons and isolated at a far higher rate than their classmates, according to new figures obtained by The i Paper – and the gap is widening.
Experts have warned the trend risks undermining the Government’s flagship reforms to make mainstream schools more inclusive, with one leading academic warning the system is “increasingly pushing vulnerable children into isolation” instead.
The divide has been uncovered by an analysis of previously unpublished figures on hundreds of secondary schools’ use of internal suspension – often referred to as internal exclusion or isolation – a serious sanction involving the removal of disruptive pupils to separate classrooms for supposedly short spells.
Eurostar rival finally gets go ahead – everything we know
Incoming Eurostar rival Virgin Trains has been granted track access for new services between London and Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam in 2030.
It marks a step closer to ending Eurostar’s monopoly. The trainline has operated without competition for nearly 32 years.
Approval lasts for 10 years
- The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) has given approval for Sir Richard Branson’s company to run up to 20 daily services through the Channel Tunnel between October 2030 to December 2040.
5
Virgin Trains in Eurostar stations
- In October, Virgin Trains was told it could share Eurostar’s Temple Mills depot in east London.
- Temple Mills is the only depot that can be accessed from High Speed 1 – the line that runs between London and the tunnel.
2
‘Still more work to do’
This is an important next step in bringing competition and growth to the market for international rail services, and we welcome the progress and London St Pancras High Speed have made. While there is still more work to do, we are supporting and the wider industry to grow international services.
Martin Jones, Deputy director of access and international
What next?
Despite just clearing a major regulatory hurdle, Virgin Trains has yet to secure access to other rail networks.
It must also obtain safety approvals from the ORR and relevant regulators in the EU before services start in 2030.
6
5
The weather to expect for the rest of the summer
While temperatures are expected to drop this week after the UK’s fifth heatwave brought a record 38.1°C – it appears the relief will be only temporary.
Another heatwave is expected to descend on the UK next month, the Met Office has warned, after a month of unprecedented hot and dry conditions.
A September heatwave
The Met Office has predicted that there is a chance of a late-season heatwave developing in September as the UK moves into the meteorological autumn.
The forecaster said there was “a chance that late-season hot spells or heatwaves develop” in the south between 31 August and 14 September.
Northern areas to see ‘more changeable conditions’
The Met Office predicts “drier, more settled weather is slightly more likely towards the south and east. Temperatures are again likely to be near to or above average overall”.
While the south may see more heat, there will likely be “more changeable conditions” in the north and northwest of the country as autumn begins, the Met Office said.
Rain to fall after record dry July
Looking to the weekend, BBC Weather forecasts up to a 58 per cent chance of rain on Sunday, 23 August.
The following week could also see some rain, with BBC Weather predicting showers on Thursday, 28 August and Friday, 29 August – some respite after the driest July on record across England.
4
4
Where does the Gaza peace deal stand?
US envoy Jared Kushner is in the Middle East today for talks with key figures, following a rare meeting with Hamas’s leader yesterday.
Last month, Donald Trump’s Board of Peace said it had reached an agreement for the “complete disarmament” of Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza.
Here’s what you need to know.
Israel rejects Gaza peace plan
Hamas deal
Trump said Hamas had agreed to disarm if Israel withdraws its forces from Gaza. Israel rejected the 15-point plan, which calls for Gaza to be rebuilt under a new civilian Palestinian administration.
The Hamas deal breakthrough came nine months after a US-brokered ceasefire was signed, with negotiations between Israel and Hamas largely deadlocked since then.
US envoy to meet Netanyahu
Netanyahu rejects plan
The Israeli PM said his military would not withdraw from Gaza, warning there would never be a Palestinian state in Gaza under his leadership.
US envoy in Middle East
Trump’s envoy Jared Kushner is expected to meet Netanyahu today to discuss the US-backed Gaza plan. He met with with Hamas leader Khalil al Hayya yesterday.
What happens next?
Eight Muslim countries issued a statement on Sunday condemning Israel’s rejection.
While it’s not yet clear whether Kushner’s talks will be successful, one topic at the heart of discussions will be the disarmament process.
5
Why average house price plunged by £7,360 in August
Average house prices nosedived by more than £7,000 this month- marking the biggest August price fall since 2018, according to new figures.
Property site Rightmove said asking prices fell by 2 per cent, or £7,360 month-on-month.
Rightmove downgrades annual house price projections
While prices usually fall in August, this is a much bigger drop than the 10-year average of 1.3 per cent.
The figures prompted Rightmove to downgrade its annual house price forecast for 2026 from a 2 per cent increase to between 0 and a 2 per cent fall.
4
3
What is influencing the figures?
The average asking price for a home in Britain stood at £364,999 in August – 1 per cent lower than a year ago.
And it’s all down to the supply.
- The number of available homes for sale is at a 12-year high for this time of year.
- This, combined with the quiet summer holiday period, has led to lower price expectations from sellers.
- Colleen Babcock, a property expert at Rightmove, said the larger-than-usual price drop is a sign sellers are pricing much more competitively from the offset.
- “Buyers have the widest choice of homes for sale at this time of year in more than a decade, so standing out on price for the right reasons is hugely important,” she said.
A regional divide in property prices
But not everywhere is experiencing a dampening in property prices – as usual, there is a regional divide, Rightmove said.
In the North West of England, average asking prices are up by 1.9 per cent annually, beating out homes in London where prices have sunk by 3.1 per cent on average.
- The depressed figures follow a “mini bounce” in buyer demand since Andy Burnham became PM.
- Buying activity, however, remains roughly 10 per cent below 2025 levels due to the changing picture for mortgage rates, geopolitical uncertainty and October’s Budget spooking potential buyers.
3
Everything you need to know about Reform’s welfare overhaul
Reform UK is preparing to unveil the biggest shake-up of the welfare system “in a generation”, with plans to abolish personal independence payments (PIP) for working-age adults and save an estimated £50bn a year.
3
3
‘We will not pretend this is painless’
Nearly three million people would see their disability or sickness payments withdrawn or changed under the plans.
The party’s treasury spokesman, Robert Jenrick, set out the proposals in an article for , ahead of a full 50-page policy paper due on Monday. He has acknowledged the human cost directly, writing: “We will not pretend this is painless.”
3
What is Reform proposing?
- Reform would scrap PIP and the health element of universal credit for working-age adults. Both would be replaced with a new “health security allowance”, a single, regularly reviewed payment.
- Only claimants with “severe, enduring and high-risk” conditions would qualify for that cash support.
- Everyone else currently receiving disability-related payments would lose their cash entitlement altogether.
3
A closer look at the detail
Those who would lose access to payments would instead be supported through council-run disability support accounts.
Reform estimates that 2.16 million would keep their present cash entitlement in full, while 2.89 million would see theirs modified or withdrawn.
Child payments impacted
- The party plans to extend the same approach to children’s benefits, aligning the system for anxiety, depression and ADHD with the adult changes, though only for new claimants.
4
Plans modelled on Dutch system
Reform would also place a new obligation on businesses with more than five staff to take out “return to work cover” insurance, which would pay for the cost of an employee’s first two years off sick, rather than the state covering that cost through benefits.
The scheme is modelled on the Dutch system, where Reform argues disability benefit applications fell by 40 per cent after similar reforms were introduced.
3
5
Scientists hail malaria breakthrough – what we know
A new compound has been hailed “an exciting step forward” in the fight against malaria – which kills hundreds of thousands of people each year.
Researchers at the University of Dundee, who discovered the compound, say it has the potential to simplify dosing regimens for the treatment and prevention of the illness.
A ‘novel drug-like molecule’
The new compound, called cabamiquine, is described as a “novel drug-like molecule” that can be delivered in a single dose.
An early-stage clinical trial showed that when administered with a commonly used antimalarial drug called pyronaridine, it is both effective and has a favourable safety profile in adults and adolescents.
Larger trials on the horizon
The team said the findings support the development of the combination therapy for larger trials and children.
In 2024, there were an estimated 282 million cases of malaria and 610,000 deaths from the disease worldwide. Figures have been rising in part due to resistance to common malaria medicines.
An ‘exciting step forward’
This is an exciting step forward for a compound which has great potential to simplify dosing regimens for , a disease which causes hundreds of thousands of deaths every year. We are delighted to see how the compound… is progressing into a potential medicine.
Dr Beatriz Baragana, a member of the Dundee University team that discovered cabamiquine
It comes after a tribunal criticised a school for removing a dysregulated autistic student to a room used for sanctions instead of a dedicated unit for anxious pupils.
According to data provided by hundreds of schools, in the academic year from September 2025 to July 2026, 28.4 per cent of children with SEND at these schools were placed in internal suspension, compared with 16.8 per cent of children without a special educational need or disability.
This means children with SEND are nearly 70 per cent more likely than their non-SEND peers to be internally suspended.
A ‘worrying’ divide
The data was shared exclusively with The i Paper by The Key Group, which sells behaviour management software to schools. The firm says it wants to inform the national debate.
The software for collecting the data is reliant on schools self-reporting seclusions.
Academics, policy experts and headteachers described the growing divide as “worrying” and urged the Government to investigate the findings.
Ministers want more children with SEND educated in mainstream schools which are far cheaper and often closer to home than private specialist schools. Local authorities are buckling under the cost of educating children with SEND as the number in need of specialist support spirals.
The Government’s plans – outlined in its February White Paper – will see SEND support revamped with £3.7bn of funding. The proposals include establishing dedicated units (“inclusion bases”) in mainstream schools.
It also includes plans to help schools avoid formal suspensions and expulsions by sanctioning pupils with internal suspensions instead – which the new data suggests is being disproportionately applied to SEND children.
After The i Paper shared our analysis, the DfE said schools should scrutinise their internal suspension data to identify pupils who need extra support. But there is no legal requirement to collect this data or a standard way of doing so – meaning the figures can’t give a full picture of how long pupils were secluded for or why.
Concerns over the impact of internal suspension rooms on SEND children and their families were revealed by The i Paper investigation earlier this year. Our analysis of 100 accounts found that one 12-year-old boy became so distressed after being repeatedly placed in such rooms, he stabbed his mother in the hand with a cheese knife.
SEND student’s family wins case against school
The can also now reveal that the use of an internal suspension room at a major academy chain has been successfully challenged at a tribunal, which found a school had harassed and discriminated against an autistic former pupil.
In a rare case, a tribunal found that a secondary school run by an academy trust had an “inflexible adherence” to its behaviour policy and failed to make a “reasonable adjustment” for a pupil’s disability.
The school repeatedly sent the student to its Ready For Learning removal room, which was always staffed, when they were dysregulated – rather than to its Learning Support Centre, a unit for anxious pupils, which was not always open.
The student’s father claimed the school “nearly killed” his child, and said the stress suffered caused them to self-harm. He added that it was the school’s inability to admit their failings that compelled him to act.
“The school was adamant that they had acted absolutely correctly. This is why we took the case to the tribunal. We wanted to be able to say to our child, look, this isn’t your fault.”
The educational trust has since issued a formal apology to the family.
A spokesperson said it was continuing “to review our approach to supporting pupils with additional needs, in line with our duties under the Equality Act 2010”.
‘Disproportionate exclusion of pupils with SEND’
The lead behaviour adviser to the Department for Education (DfE), Tom Bennett, speaking in his capacity as an independent consultant, said the difference the data identified was “substantial” and should be examined but cautioned against extrapolating further.
“It suggests a relatively small group of pupils may be experiencing internal exclusion repeatedly,” he added. “Schools could be asking themselves whether repeated sanctions are changing behaviour, and if other responses are required. But a disparity in outcomes is not, by itself, evidence of discrimination.”
Anthony Benedict, chief executive of Manchester’s Ambition Community Trust, said the Government’s plans for more inclusive education came from a “good place” but that it risked running “blind” without proper funding, training, and investment in the workforce.
“These figures should make us question whether suspension is really an inclusive response, or simply exclusion by another name,” he added. “When children with SEND are disproportionately removed from classrooms, we should be asking whether we are meeting their needs – or simply moving them out of sight.”
The Education Policy Institute, an independent research body, which is researching “under the radar” exclusions in schools, says SEND pupils were caught in a “pincer movement”.
As well as being more likely to be absent from school, they were now being “pushed out” by high rates of permanent exclusions and internal suspensions, the institute’s researcher, Lily Wielar, told The i Paper. “That should sharpen the urgency to more closely investigate the use of internal exclusion in schools, particularly in regard to pupils with SEND.”
The DfE said: “Having SEND is not the same as bad behaviour, and we are clear that the removal of any pupil from the classroom should only happen if absolutely necessary.”
It planned to consult on the use of internal suspensions but was “clear that schools’ legal duties to make reasonable adjustments for disabled pupils are non-negotiable”.