* A pupil can be excluded for a fixed period of up to 45 days, or permanently. Most exclusions are for verbal abuse of staff
* Eighty-three per cent of 10,000 permanently excluded pupils in England, Wales and Scotland in 2001 were boys, most of them aged 13 to 15
* Twenty per cent of excluded pupils are in care; 34 per cent are from lone-parent families
* Two out of three excluded pupils never return to school - more than two million school days are lost each year as a result
* Exclusions are expensive. In 1997, the costs incurred by all services involved totalled pound;81 million. To have kept these pupils in school would have cost pound;34 million
