Teacher Tapp finds England’s school sanctions vary by phase and deprivation

Primary teachers used break-time sanctions more often, while separate analysis found socioeconomic differences in classroom removals that remain outside England’s national exclusion data

Teacher Tapp data compares how teachers use and view sanctions across primary and secondary schools

Teacher Tapp has published findings showing substantial differences in how sanctions are authorized and used across English primary and secondary schools.

Behavior management has implications beyond individual lessons. One in five classroom teachers considering leaving the profession cited poor student behavior as a reason, according to Teacher Tapp. Yet only 5% of primary teachers and 6% of secondary teachers thought their school was too strict.

Support for removing break time was high. Sixty-six percent of primary classroom teachers agreed that it was a good way to teach students about the consequences of their actions. The figure rose to 72% in schools serving the most deprived areas, compared with 61% elsewhere.

Among secondary classroom teachers, 79% supported the sanction. Unlike in primary schools, opinion changed little when schools were grouped by their proportion of students eligible for free school meals, at 79% compared with 76%.

School phase shapes access to sanctions

Not every teacher can issue a detention. Fourteen percent of primary teachers and 18% of secondary teachers worked in schools where classroom teachers were not allowed to do so, although 79% and 72%, respectively, believed all teachers should be able to remove break time as a sanction.

Primary teachers reported greater authority to take all or part of a break, at 82% compared with 54% of secondary teachers. They were also more likely to be permitted to remove lunchtime, at 74% against 59%.

After-school detention showed the reverse pattern. Fifty-nine percent of secondary teachers said they could keep students after school, compared with 2% of primary teachers.

Use during a week at the end of June or beginning of July broadly reflected those permissions. Break time was removed by 53% of early years foundation stage and key stage 1 teachers, 63% of key stage 2 teachers and 25% of secondary teachers.

After-school detention was reported by 33% of secondary classroom teachers. The corresponding figures were 0% in early years foundation stage and key stage 1, and 1% in key stage 2.

Teacher Tapp’s question about schools’ sanction policies was answered by 8,757 teachers on June 30, 2026. Its weekly-use findings came from 1,177 primary teachers and 1,745 secondary teachers on July 3, with the results weighted to reflect teacher and school demographics.

Belief did not consistently predict practice. Among secondary teachers, 25% of those who considered detentions useful issued a break-time detention, compared with 22% of those who did not. The primary gap was wider, at 68% against 36%.

Teacher Tapp cautions that the figures do not establish whether teachers use detentions because they believe in them, or whether their experience of using sanctions influences what they think works.

Internal suspensions leave a national data gap

Formal figures for the 2024/25 academic year show that 94,400 students missed the equivalent of more than one week of school through suspensions, while another 9,906 were permanently excluded.

Classroom removal, described as “internal suspension” in the government’s recent white paper, is different. It involves moving a student from a lesson to another space on the school site and is not captured in any national dataset.

For an analysis by Lily Wielar, the Education Policy Institute commissioned a nationwide Teacher Tapp survey of 5,071 teachers and senior leaders. The work forms part of EPI’s Exclusionary Practice in English Secondary Schools project, funded by the Nuffield Foundation.

Disruptive behavior dominated both policy and practice. Eighty-four percent of respondents said it was included as a reason for removal in their school’s behavior policy, while 73% said it prompted the most recent removal they had made.

Schools with higher proportions of students eligible for free school meals were more likely to include low-level disciplinary reasons for classroom removal and to use them in practice. Teachers in the highest FSM quartile were almost twice as likely as those in the lowest quartile to say their most recent removal was part of a behavior-points system.