This is not a pipeline. It is a conveyor belt greased with neglect.
Children are vanishing from classrooms and showing up in courtrooms because of what they learned at school. They learned that they don’t deserve care, because they are unworthy. That their distress is desirable. That masking pain is rewarded. And that being visibly hurt gets you removed. These are not hidden messages—they are the curriculum of exclusion in BC Public Schools.
The public education system is functioning exactly as designed: to discard those who cannot comply with its narrow demands and punish them for their unmet needs. The result is a predictable and preventable flow of children from school desks to prison cells, from exclusion to suicide.
When support disappears, so do the children
In British Columbia, the most vulnerable children—those in government care, with disabilities, or who are Indigenous—are systematically excluded. In the 2022/23 school year alone, there were more than 4,000 instances of school exclusion involving just 253 children and youth in care (Still Left Out: RCY, 2023). That’s an average of 16 removals per child. These children were not accommodated. They were removed.
Suspension is not neutral. It is a warning shot.
The Ministry of Education does not publish provincial suspension rates by disability or care status. Nor do suspensions reflect the actual level of exclusion, considering many exclusions are informal with schools threatening that parents must comply or otherwise they will remain on the child’s permanent record. But in one BC district, children in care were 21 times more likely to be excluded from school than their peers (Still Left Out: RCY, 2023). Exclusion is rarely a one-time event. It’s a message repeated until it is internalised. And eventually, it becomes a path.
Gatekeeping by deprivation
The youth who vanish from school records do not vanish from the world. They show up in child welfare files, in police databases, and in coroner’s reports. These are children who needed housing, stability, and relationship—but instead encountered suspicion, coercion, and loss. As the RCY found, many were out of school for weeks or months at a time with no educational access whatsoever. One parent shared: “They never said he was expelled, but he was not welcome” (Still Left Out: RCY, 2023).
They are punished for our failure to accommodate them
The RCY report confirms what families have long said: children with disabilities are being disciplined for behaviours directly related to their disabilities. One child was excluded after being triggered by a fire alarm. Others were denied EA support and then removed for struggling. These are not disruptive children. These are children whose distress is being interpreted as defiance.
The line from exclusion to incarceration is straight
British Columbia does not track school exclusions in a public or transparent way. But the outcomes speak for themselves. Youth with experience in care or school exclusion are vastly overrepresented in youth justice. Once a child is out of school and unsupported, the road narrows. And at the end of that road is often probation, incarceration—or death.
Some children do not survive the journey
In the same RCY report, one youth died by suicide after experiencing multiple exclusions from school and barriers to accessing both education and mental health care (Still Left Out: RCY, 2023). Another, referred to as Youth E, had 64 documented critical injuries over six years—including self-harm, suicidality, and repeated use of physical and chemical restraints. These are not hypotheticals. These are children who made it into the report, because someone was still watching.
These children are warning signs, not write-offs
Every exclusion is a flare. It signals that a child has been failed, not that they have failed. It tells us that the promise of inclusive education has been abandoned in favour of control and compliance. These are not cracks in the system. They are evidence of design.
We know what works. We just refuse to do it.
This is not an unsolvable problem. We know that early identification, trauma-informed support, and consistent relationships prevent harm. We know that inclusive education is possible. But it requires more than rhetoric. It requires investment, honesty, and moral clarity.