The ESRC funded project “Inclusion and the academisation of English secondary schools: trends in the placement of pupils with significant SEN and those permanently excluded”. This project aims to analyse secondary data from the National Pupil Database (NPD) about pupils vulnerable to exclusion from ordinary schools in England, both those with Special Educational Needs (SEN) that enter secondary schools at year 7 and all pupils permanently excluded from secondary schools This will examine changing proportions of entry and exit since 2003 (when NPD records began) for these pupils in relation to the inceasing autonomy of secondary schools from local authorities (LAs). The specific aim is to examine whether greater school autonomy from LAs is related to lower placements in ordinary secondary schools and thus greater separate special school and alternative provision placements.

This study will be the first to examine the relationships between changes in the SEN system in its relation to changes in the wider school organisation and policy system using national data trends in England.

Alison Black (, ) has conducted quantitative research in the fields of the placement of pupils with SEN in her doctoral study and subsequently in trends analysis. She analysed government statistics to explore the over-representation of secondary aged students in special schools in England.

Brahm Norwich (, ) is an experienced researcher with a record of research into the national trends in placement of pupils with SEN and policy study over many years.

Alexey Bessudnov (, , ) is a sociologist with the expertise in statistical methods in the social sciences. His substantive interests are in the fields of sociology of education and social stratification.

Yi Liu (, , ) is a data scientist who applies sophisticated quantitative methods into social-economic analyses. His research heavily relies on computational analytical toolsets in order to gain insights into the patterns of large high-dimensional time series and longitudinal data sets.