‘Disposable’ children: understanding primary school exclusion through the experiences of education professionals and parents of excluded children in the west midlands

Whitehouse, Megan ORCID: 0000-0002-6823-8459 (2025). ‘Disposable’ children: understanding primary school exclusion through the experiences of education professionals and parents of excluded children in the west midlands. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

Research on school exclusion frequently focuses on secondary schools, often connecting exclusionary discipline to the quasi-marketisation of schooling and demands for continuous improvement. Recognising that primary schools also contend with policies of marketisation, this project explores the practice of exclusion from primary schools in the West Midlands. It investigates the purpose that exclusionary discipline
serves, how children are made vulnerable to exclusionary practices, and what inclusion looks like following the Covid-19 pandemic which negatively impacted time and resource availability. Through interviews with nineteen education professionals and five parents of excluded children, and the conceptual frameworks of ‘childism’ (discrimination against children) and an ‘ethics of care’, this thesis examines the values that uphold exclusionary discipline, demonstrating that the capacity to care for children in mainstream primary schools, and to meet their needs, has been eroded by an approach to schooling that is centred around the promotion of neoliberal capitalist values which encourage the
implementation of childist policies and practices. As such, the thesis demonstrates that by viewing children through this transactional, human-capital based lens the most vulnerable children, including those at the intersections of minoritization and disadvantage are not only excluded but positioned as disposable and less deserving of care

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):