What do we do with the data we collect?
Pupil movement and what the White Paper still hasn’t answered
I want to tell you about a child that I am going to refer to as Marcus. Marcus lived in an area which boasted of having no exclusions. So whilst Marcus was never excluded from school, he moved schools three times in Key Stage 3. Each move was framed, at the time, as a fresh start and a new environment. Marcus wasn’t difficult to place within school, there were lots of things happening in the background that made this easy. But schools would struggle to keep him because of his behaviour. He had a lack of a positive relationships with staff members as well as other children.
This week the government published its long-awaited Schools White Paper, Every Child Achieving and Thriving. Beneath the fanfare of a new white paper, I am reminded of the Education Policy Institute’s work on unexplained school transfers and managed moves sits quietly and published a number of years ago but without the media coverage of the white paper.
What the data is already telling us
The EPI report on unexplained school transfers is not new, it was published in 2024 but I think its relevancy this week is sharper than ever. Around 34,000 pupils finishing Year 11 in 2019 had experienced at least one unexplained school transfer during secondary school. These weren’t about family moves or parental preference, but unexplained for other reasons. Looking at the data more closely, almost one in five pupils with unexplained moves had an identified social, emotional and mental health need. One in seven of those children were classed as persistently absent. One in ten who had ever been looked after. Almost one in ten from Black ethnic groups.
These are not random numbers but something about structural inequality that means they are more vulnerable to be marginalised from the school community. The white paper calls for localised support, a nod to the idea that it takes a village to raise children. The children experiences these unexplained moves are most likely to be marginalised for a range of reasons, have a disconnect from education and struggle to be part of their local school and this is further enacted by movements, directions off-site and repeated suspensions that further fragments their experiences. We have this information already, the EPI has looked closely at this, but we do little with the information to make a real difference to children experiencing this. These are likely to be the the children we already know need us most.
Three in five managed moves resulted in the pupil returning to the home school. Let that sit for a moment. Three in five. That means the majority of managed moves, those structured, protocol-driven processes designed to offer stability, weren’t offering stability at all. They were the beginning of a process of unravelling. There have been some changes in the law around this, managed moves would mean that a school had to take you on roll, so school instead direct off-site before making a decision to take a child on roll. Policy needs to be tight, otherwise we will find the chink and exploit it.
At the time of the publication of the EPI report, only around a quarter of local authorities even held outcome data for managed moves happening across their area, and one in five had no managed move protocol at all. We’re not just failing to act on the data. In too many places, we’re failing to gather it in the first place. The white paper looks to address this with mentions of data dashboard. However, data collection isn’t the answer in itself to deal with this, it is prerequisite to trying to do something different but mustn’t be the end point.
There’s a risk, when we talk about school movement data, that we get seduced by the idea that if we could just see it all; the transfers, off-site directions, informal arrangement brokered over the phone on a Tuesday afternoon that somehow this will save the problem when we know this is note the case. The EPI report is careful and important in its recommendation that a central data reporting system should capture all moves and the reasons for them. Whilst I support this but ask the question; what do we do with the data once we have it?
Every Child Achieving and Thriving contains much that I welcome and want to find out more about how it will work. Some of the key elements are:
The inclusion base in every secondary school.
The Inclusive Mainstream Fund.
The Experts at Hand service.
The Individual Support Plans.
The statutory duty to publish an Inclusion Strategy.
These are really important policy directions, the idea that inclusion is a central concern, not something that sits on the margins. I recommend reading Haili Hughes’s work on professional development as well as Mark Enser’s blog that discusses some other elements of the white paper with a slightly different lens to me. After years of watching inclusion treated as a bolt-on aspiration rather than a structural commitment, there is something genuinely significant in a government saying: every school, by design, should be able to support more children.
However, I do have concerns. The White Paper describes Alternative Provision as offering “time-limited support in an alternative provision or a specialist setting” to “allow pupils a short time placement for their needs to be assessed and addressed before reintegrating back into a mainstream setting.”. On the surface, that sounds reasonable. Humane, even. But I want to challenge the framing, because this is where data without relational infrastructure becomes dangerous.
If a child moves into AP for a short-term placement and we assess their needs; what are we assessing, exactly? Their presenting behaviour? Their reading age? Their compliance? Or are we asking the deeper questions: What did that child experience in their home school that made belonging there impossible? What did the school do, systemically, that produced this outcome? What do the patterns of movement in this local area tell us about which schools are holding children and which are releasing them? What is the relationship between child and parents that may also be having an impact.
The data should be pointing back at systems and the structures within it. At the managed move that happened because a school didn’t want to trigger a permanent exclusion. At the “parental request” that wasn’t quite voluntary. At the Y7 pupil with SEMH needs who moved twice before anyone thought to check whether the timetable, the sensory environment, or the behaviour policy was the problem rather than the child.
In the best AP and PRU settings I know, data isn’t a filing exercise. It’s a conversation starter. A managed move protocol isn’t just a form; it’s a structured opportunity to ask: what has this child experienced, and what do the people who know them best say they need?
The EPI report notes that in fewer than one in five local authorities did protocols clearly state that parental preference and the views of pupils were factored into decisions. In two areas, there was explicit evidence that pupils could be excluded if parents didn’t agree to a managed move.
This is what happens when data becomes bureaucratic cover rather than relational accountability. When a managed move becomes something done to a family rather than with them. When the child’s file gets heavier and their sense of belonging gets further away.
The White Paper talks about schools as no longer being “islands.” I believe that. I’ve seen what happens when secondary schools, AP settings, and specialist provision genuinely work in partnership, not as a referral chain, but as a community of practice that holds a child’s story across transitions.
That kind of partnership needs data but it also demands relationships. It needs the managed move meeting where someone in the room is unambiguously there for the child, not the system. This is something EPI is right to recommend as an independent representative of the child’s best interests. It needs the inclusion base to be a place of genuine support, not a soft exclusion suite. It needs Alternative Provision to be recognised as the skilled, specialist sector it is, not a short-term assessment depot where we farm out children.
The White Paper opens a 12-week consultation, closing 18 May 2026. For those of us working in and alongside AP, PRUs, and inclusion provision, this is a moment.
Not just to respond about EHCP thresholds or funding formulas though those matter enormously. But to insist that movement data, when it is finally mandated and collected centrally, is used to ask systemic questions. That the patterns in that data, who moves, from where, how often, and to what outcome, are read as a mirror held up to school culture, not just a profile of vulnerable children.
That we use the Inclusion Strategy requirement not as a compliance exercise but as a genuine accountability mechanism. That inclusion bases are not created in the image of withdrawal rooms. That time-limited AP placements have a named person whose job it is to hold the pages of that child’s story and to bring it back.