International Journal of Inclusive Education Vol. 13, No. 4, June 2009, 423–438 ISSN 1360-3116 print/ISSN 1464-5173 online © 2009 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/13603110801983264 http://www.informaworld.com Data, data everywhere – but not all the numbers that count? Mapping alternative provisions for students excluded from school Pat Thomson* and Lisa Russell Centre for Research in Equity and Diversity in Education, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK Taylor and Francis TIED_A_298492.sgm (Received XXXX 2007; final revision received XXXX 2008) 10.1080/13603110801983264 International Journal of Inclusive Education 1360-3116 (print)/1464-5173 (online) Original Article 2008 Taylor & Francis 00 0000002008 PatThomson Patricia.Thomson@nottingham.ac.uk It is now mandatory for English schools to ensure that young people, under 16 years of age, who are excluded from school are placed in an education and training programme within 12 days. The programme must be at least half time, and should offer a meaningful and balanced curriculum. The Every Child Matters agenda also suggests that schools must coordinate services with other agencies to ensure that young people deemed ‘at risk’ are assisted to stay in mainstream schooling. Our research project examined the educational and training provisions for permanently excluded pupils, and young people likely to be permanently excluded, across two Midlands counties. The research focus – who gets what – is fundamental to questions of equity, access and participation. The findings suggest that, despite some very good local practices and highly skilled practitioners, there is a lack of coordinated data about which programmes exist and who attends, and a proliferation of programmes with varying funding sources, costs, entry practices, and qualifications. It is argued that this situation bodes poorly for monitoring and for ensuring the entitlement to education and training of those young people who are most marginalised by and through their schooling. However, we are concerned about the possibilities for further intensification of staff work and increased surveillance on young people if our recommendations for equity monitoring and better quality control were to go ahead. Keywords: equity; data; exclusion Introduction Educators concerned about equity have long had something of a dilemma when it comes to data. On the one hand, ‘outcome’ data such as higher education entrance, examination results, and early school leaving are statistically married with ‘input’ data about gender, race, age and socio-economic status to show the inequitable distribution of credentials across the school population (e.g. Teese 2000; Power et al. 2003; Teese and Polesal 2003). Such analyses can also be used longitudinally, to show for example whether there has been any shift over time in the pernicious historical correlation of family finances and formal education with schooling ‘success’ (e.g. Marshall, Swift, and Roberts 1997; Hills and Stewart 2005). On the other hand, educators committed to equity also argue that the measures used to collect ‘outcomes’ – tests and exams – are themselves inequitable. The ways in which the curriculum is structured, and pedagogies geared for testing purposes, are productive of the achievement gap, not simply reproductive. This data dilemma is *Corresponding author. Email: patricia.thomson@nottingham.ac.uk