At Cordis Bright, we specialise in evaluating interventions which aim to reduce or prevent young people’s involvement in offending, and especially in serious violence. Several recent interventions promote inclusion in education as a protective factor against involvement in offending or serious violence.

Our short review of relevant evidence demonstrates that there are a range of interventions which have been successful in reducing exclusion from education. For children and young people, these often involve mentoring support, counselling and a focus on mental health, and support to build academic skills. Alongside this, skills training for teachers is a common feature of effective whole school interventions.

At this stage, we need more evidence to understand whether preventing school exclusion also reduces existing involvement or prevents future involvement in offending or serious violence. First, we need evidence which establishes a causal link between being excluded from school and becoming involved in offending and violence; current this link is theorised but is not confirmed by available evidence. Second, we need a greater body of evaluative evidence which establishes whether and how interventions to prevent school exclusion impact on involvement in offending and violence.

Our Cordis Bright evaluation teams are seeking to build this evidence base through close collaboration with funders, commissioners and providers of interventions to design and deliver robust impact evaluations whose findings are relevant to anyone interested in how to prevent and reduce young people’s involvement in offending and violence.