ALTERNATIVE PROVISION The route for many of our excluded children


challenging behaviour in school on the child and their family. We have an obligation to consider our own impact and to do everything we can to understand their needs.”


Alternative Provision can be more flexible. It can start from where the learner is and adjust timetables and expectations accordingly. Usually, staff don’t just work on the curriculum: they also focus on behaviour. They try to uncover the causes of a child’s responses and help them with self-regulation. Instead of a narrow Knowledge Curriculum, they can incorporate art, music, drama, links with the community ,vocational areas, work experience and try to develop the whole person. When it works well, the child feels that they have a team behind them and they leave with the skills and confidence needed for their adult life.


Could arts be the answer?


Schools try to support families but are not trained or equipped to do so. A headteacher who had to exclude a child noted: ‘‘We’re getting better at it but I do feel a lot of it is reactive and just containment as opposed to spotting the problem earlier on and putting in the right people at the right time to deal with it.” The authors noted that: “All the schools mention family circumstances as a factor in the pupil’s difficulties but none go on to say how they either took account of these circumstances in dealing with the pupil or how they took active steps to support the family.”


Home education: a choice or last resort? It is not just children suspended or expelled who are out of school. There are many other reasons why children might not be attending. According to government census data, there were an estimated 92,000 children in home education in England on census day in Autumn 2023. Some children reported improved mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic and were reluctant to return to school, especially if they had experienced bullying there.


While home education used to be seen as a middle class choice, increasingly it is used by children with autism or poor mental health. Often, they are waiting for an assessment or on a waiting list for specialist provision. These children have their own acronym - EOTAS - Educated Other Than At School.


The Children’s Commissioner says: “Children with special educational needs and those from disadvantaged backgrounds were more likely to be home educated. My research found that many children who were home educated had a bad experience of the school system…Parents told my office that they often opted for home education as a last resort.”


Researching what home educated pupils need


Nisai Virtual Academy works with pupils with additional needs at home. Adam is one example. For years he struggled to leave his bedroom and still struggles to leave the house. He has severe anxiety so he never logs into live lessons but opts to watch the recordings instead. Last year, he passed English and Maths GCSEs with the Nisai Virtual Academy and is now studying GCSE History.


Nisai is the first online education provider to win a government innovation grant - a


June 2024 www.education-today.co.uk 27


Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Staffordshire University. This starts in September and will run for 30 months. A researcher will analyse their online learning over the last four years and develop new services in partnership with families and commissioners.


Paul Keenleyside, Executive Director at Nisai Education Trust, says: “We want to find out what has worked best for our learners, where we deliver value for money and how the sector can develop new ways of using hybrid learning to meet individual needs. As an online provider, we offer continuity of education to young people at difficult times in their lives, integrating online learning with face to face mentoring and work with other providers.”


What Alternative Provision can offer Schools cater for large numbers and have rules and routines that apply to everyone. This may be part of the problem, says Dr Chris Fielding, a former mainstream primary headteacher. He is now Academy Lead at the Forwards Centre in Bolton.


Chris says: “We choose what they do, how long they do it for and how much of it they have to get done. We choose how they move around the building, how they get their dinner, how they are spoken to and by whom. We choose where they play, what they play and for how long. It is too easy to lay the responsibility for


Last year’s entries for the Education Today Awards showed that some schools still value arts activities. We heard about partnerships with local artists, museums and theatre. A specialist autism provider linked up with Stikings, a company that offers ‘accessible and adapted circus arts instruction’, while another AP provider was a sculpture workshop.


James Steventon is Director of Fermynwoods Contemporary Art. He started a partnership 15 years ago with The CE Academy, an AP setting in Northamptonshire. They bring together artists and non-traditional arts audiences, focusing on rural and disadvantaged communities. While they can provide drawing, painting and printmaking, they have a more ambitious approach. James explains: “What we have found is that what we colloquially call the weird stuff can be quite powerful. So, we’ve done things with robotics and inflatable sculptures, and on one occasion, filmed sculptures floating 90,000ft above the earth’s atmosphere.”


This provision is all about widening horizons. “The students have found both our artists and the ways they work fascinating,” adds James. “They have rarely met individuals who have trodden their own path yet are successful. To be an artist is to be an outsider, and we have watched how young people who have been excluded find it easier to establish a rapport with our artists.”


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