Alternative route: what's the picture of alternative provision?

Briony Balsom  
Hello, welcome to Ofsted Talks. I'm Briony Balsom, and today we're talking about alternative provision. Firstly, let me welcome our guests, here today with us we have Mark Vickers who's chair of the National MAT CEO network for alternative provision and special educational needs and disabilities and CEO of Olive Academies, we have Grace who attends the Olive Academy in Cambridge. Jo Fisher the Chair of the ADCS, that's the Association of Directors of Children's Services education committee, and we have Steve Shaw, who's one of Ofsted's Senior His Majesty's inspectors for SEND - special educational needs and disabilities. So, alternative provision or AP settings are places that provide education for children who can't go into a mainstream school. In January last year, we launched our new AP framework for Ofsted. Until then, there wasn't much of a coherent overview of how commissioning and oversight practices worked at a local level or of the mix of AP that local area partners were using. So that's why Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission now inspect local areas' approach to commissioning and overseeing AP as part of our joint area SEND inspections. And in February this year, we published a report into our findings about six local areas. We wanted to find out whether AAP is meeting the health, educational and care needs of young people how it's being used, what's helping, and indeed, What's hindering local partners from working together. Mark, can I come across to you to set the scene around what exactly AP is why we need it, who's it for?

Mark Vickers  
Alternative provision plays a really important part within the broader education offer for children and young people. At its best, its purpose is to help pupils to reengage with their education generally, often through short term interventions before returning to mainstream school for a fresh start in a new setting, can also be providing more long term placements and support for young people, particularly at Key Stage four.  And increasingly AP settings are providing upstream early intervention and preventative support through outreach to avoid the need for exclusions in the first place. 

Briony Balsom  
Grace, can you talk to us a little bit about your experience?

Grace  
So I started last March. And coming into it, I was very, very scared like, because obviously, at the start of my school, I was didn't always feel 100%. I never wanted to go in and my attendance dropped down to about 6%. So it got to the point where they didn't really want me in school anymore, because it it wasn't working for me. So now I got managed move to three different other schools. But that didn't work for me either. So the last opportunity was coming to Olive. So I started here, and at first I was very wary, because I didn't know no one here. But from the first week, I literally just went straight in everyone was so lovely. The teachers are amazing here with like English and maths and that like they sit you down and you just get that one to one. Like in a normal school, you don't get that one to one. It's like, okay, I'll tell you the answer, then it's like you still don't understand, as well here, they'll like repeat it 100 times over and over again until you're like, Okay, I get that now, with like, anxiety wise, I just feel so much more like myself now. And so much more happier than where I was a year ago. I feel like this school is just bring out such like a new person of who I am.

Briony Balsom  
What Grace has described sounds like an incredibly special environment for her to be able to develop in how how do you make that work? 

Mark Vickers  
It's effectively drawing on the very best practice of mainstream in terms of the same expectations. So we don't lower our expectations at all. But what we do is that we do it slightly differently. So the experience for those young people, we're not trying, we're not trying to recreate a small version of the mainstream school because clearly that hasn't been successful. For those young people, they found that a challenge, but we want to not lose the importance of a really strong education in terms of thinking about those educational outcomes as well in terms of qualification so so we have really strong teaching all levels. And that will be you know, a big focus on core to English, maths, science, particularly, but we have a much broader curriculum, and that's based on understanding the needs of young people. So we have a, you know, a therapeutic offer in terms of supporting those young people with a range of therapeutic professionals who are part of our staff group at Olive academies. And we also have a very broad and we think interesting and Grace could tell me otherwise if not outdoor learning curriculum and that's broad and layered again and as personalised and as bespoke as we can make it within confines of budgets to the needs of the young people. And the idea of, of our outdoor learning curriculum, which has been around with Olive Academy, since we started as a MAT nine years ago, is to really build build up pupils confidence through improving their resilience, they come to us with some real challenges around that Grace, obviously, has just articulated doubt in terms of how she felt transitioning coming out of the mainstream school into AP.  But one of the things I'm very proud of is hearing Grace, talk about how she's been able to sort of move on quickly in her learning, and engagement at Olive. And that's because, you know, we provide those opportunities to take young pupils slightly out of their comfort zone, but in a very careful managed way, through a range of, we hoped, quite creative, interesting activities. And it just changes the dynamic, I think.

Grace  
With off site is it's nice because you have your days on site where you are doing your work, but then you have them days where you do go off site, and you do learn new things. And it is really good, like learning new communication skills, and from doing stuff that you've never done before, by getting out there and doing bold new things that you wouldn't do in your everyday life. It is a great experience.

Briony Balsom  
Thanks so much for sharing with us, Steve. So having heard that from Grace, can I come across to you? Just to say a little bit about why Ofsted decided to look into AP commissioning?

Steve Shaw  
I think it's probably fair to say that for quite a while, it's had some concerns. You know, we were concerned around for example, where a P wasn't necessarily being commissioned in the best interests of children and young people, some variety around the the quality of AP and the monitoring of pupils progress when they're in AP. And I think we've we've been worried about what the outcomes look like for children in AP. And are the commissioners really clear on what they hope the AP outcomes will look like for those young people. And if you then add into that mix, the challenge around the use of unregistered AP, the multiple routes into AP, from schools through LA's, that has meant that some of the quality of the oversight for children and young people in AP is variable. 

Briony Balsom  
Thanks Steven, You took the words right out of my mouth. It's just such a complex and fragmented picture with so many different routes and variables that and pathways that young people can take through it. It's incredibly complex. So I wonder whether I could bring you in here just to say a little bit about what the backgrounds of challenges looks like against which I'm we're putting this fragmented AP picture? 

Jo Fisher  
Before the pandemic, but especially since the pandemic, the the number of exclusions, both permanent and fixed term exclusions is really increasing. And alongside that, we know that so many of our children, young people just aren't attending school consistently in the way we'd want. We've seen the persistent absent rates for the current academic year stand something close to the region of 20%, which is well above pre pandemic levels, we know that there are far too many children who are now not in school or not in any form of education that we really do need to support and, and be clear that actually being you talk to yourself about what's in a child's best interests, we know that being out of school is rarely in a child's best interest. And it's really important that we all work together to build an inclusive education system that puts children I think back in back in the classroom and back where they should be because every day counts. That said, you know, it's really good to hear Grace, talk and, and to recognise, I think that alternative provision does have a really important part to play in all of this. And it's really important, I guess, that it's seen as part of an inclusive education system, it shouldn't be about exclusion. This is about, as Mark said, helping children, young people really engage in learning, but not just that I was smiling as Grace talked, it's about building people's confidence, self esteem and aspirations as well. It's that wider thing. And, and I know when I go out and visit children in the alternative provision, where I work in Hertfordshire, you know, that's when I see the really best practice, it's when I see children, or young people like Grace, not just getting on a learning and, and being interested in, in learning, but also talking about how much better they feel in themselves to so that really holistic picture. And there are 1000s of children every day in some form of alternative provision. Steve talked about the, you know, the fragmented picture that we're seeing, and that, you know, we've got over 25,000 pupils in any time and the sort of state funded alternative provision, so we call them pupil referral units or where I work, we call them education support centres, but also alternative provision academies and free schools. And there's about that number, again, in school arranged alternative provision. You set that alongside all the other types of alternative provision such as special schools. All these independent schools, independent special schools, we've got a massive range of provision out there with a lot of children who deserve, you know, deserve the very best help to be included in school and education. So I think there is I really welcomed the Ofsted report because I think it sets some really big challenges for us all to work together and really be clear about what we mean when we talk about alternative provision, what good looks like what people like Grace and her family should expect when they go to some form of alternative provision.

Briony Balsom  
 Thanks, Joe. Grace, you spoken about anxiety issues that you've had, do you feel the link between the pandemic? And do you feel like, this is something that's been incredibly formative for you and your peers?

Grace  
I 100% agree, because I think with the pandemic, a lot more people stopped going out like a lot more kids just wanting to be at home all the time. And then when it was, they were so used to sit at home on the computer doing all their work all the time, when it was time to go back to school, it was it was a big push again.

Briony Balsom  
And Mark that chimes with your experience?

Mark Vickers  
Oh, completely. I think it's interesting. I mean, obviously, just looking more broadly at this thinking about my role across the national network. When we look at the current attendance figures, the most recent DFE return show for the first time since I've been in education, attendance in alternative provision, just falling underneath the 60% figure for the first time so close to half and just not not attending, not accessing on a daily basis. Now that that clearly can't can't be a good thing in any way shape or form, it is a real concern. And it is often young people that okay, their attendance is improving when it comes to alternative revision from from their starting points, which could be in the single figures, or zero when they come to learn to come into the setting. But I think it is good to see that incrementally that is increasing in the strongest settings. And as Steve said, there's such a variety of quality around provision and such a variety therefore of practices around how you know schools might start and providers are encouraging young people to come in and managing attendance, particularly through their through their strategy. So I'm delighted that the last year's round of wave of new attendance has included two alternative provision MATS, one in the northeast and Olive Academy's as a second one and being able to support a range of not just AP settings, but mainstream settings as well, because there's lots of good practice that's happening and alternative revision that a number of our mainstream colleagues are really finding useful to really work think about engaging with the hardest to reach young people, particularly.

Briony Balsom  
Steve, what do we find in the report what  commissioning practices?  Are we seeing patterns between regions?

Steve Shaw  
we did find some some strong practice. You know, we found commissioning practice that was really clear where it had the best interests of children, young people at heart where there was a real strategy that sat behind it, where there were really clear processes for monitoring the quality of it, and so on. We found some interesting things around the lack of national standards to do with AP. And that's a that's a particularly interesting question around what might national standards in AP look like where to compare the outcomes of young people in AP with the outcomes, even people in mainstream wouldn't be relevant, meaningful or fair in many cases, that kind of absence of clarity from the centre around what my really effective AP look like. And that's something that DFE is working on, but that absence was interesting. We found a lack of clarity on responsibilities for AP commissioning and oversight are leading to inconsistent and effective practice. And often that's made worse by underdeveloped strategic planning, and an insufficiently clear purpose of AP and a lack of monitoring of children's outcomes. So at its worst, I mean, we understand at Ofsted, that there are real challenges around sufficiency and capacity for AP there aren't enough places. And often, AP is being asked to take on a kind of a shadow SEND role a specialist setting for for youngsters with SEND, we understand that, we saw that. But we also saw where commissioning was very much sort of in the moment, what we might call spot purchasing. We sometimes found that agencies weren't strategically collaborating with each other. So for example, the the teams around education around care around health weren't routinely and always talking with one another. And we would find that mirrored sometimes with EHCPs where those services weren't in communication weren't talking weren't liaising with one another, and decisions around placing children in AP were often not rigorous enough, and placements not monitored. So as a result, children's outcomes were were really inconsistent in the areas that we visited, we did find a picture of a system that's in desperate need of reform. We've made some recommendations around the need for real care around what we've referred to as subcontracting. So this is where, for example, a youngster might be placed in an AP. But that AP then decides for various reasons that the youngster needs to be placed somewhere else in another AP or two or more AP. So so that child or young person has a real kind of Jigsaw provision across a week. And that raises all kinds of safeguarding challenges and safeguarding questions, as well as those questions around who's actually got an oversight and a grip on on that, that coherent, cohesive quality of education that that young person is getting, if their education is fragmented across a number of different settings.

Mark Vickers  
I was actually delighted to be honest, really pleased about about the kind of recognition of where the where the challenges are, and the you know, the need the need for change. And I particularly liked the fact that some of those recommendations really linked really well to the broader reform agenda DFE's reform agenda for for alternative provision, as set out in the SEND and AP improvement plan, particularly focusing on, you know, the need for clarity around arrangements for young people within AP, because you can't move anywhere near a three tiered, high cost, high quality, three tiered approach to alternative provision, without that clarity around commissioning, particularly.

Jo Fisher  
But we also know that too many children do have negative experiences. And too often they don't return to mainstream school, them and their parents feel like alternative provision is more of a destination than a sort of a way of re engaging with mainstream education. So, you know, I recognise what what the report said. And I think, you know, fundamentally, rather than it being a destination, it's got to be a form of intervention that really is crafted towards helping young people really do well, in school in the classroom, you know, alongside their existing schools curriculum. It offers that sort of bespoke sequence curriculum, which often isn't available in a mainstream school and includes subjects and vocational courses such as horticulture and animal care and mechanics. And I met a young person just recently who's, you know, now got onto a great Ford apprenticeship because of the sort of really bespoke curriculum he followed. And there's also something about how mainstream schools play their part in this to make sure there's that very clear, and I can see Mark nodding, but you know, just making sure there's that really clear continuum of support. And I know that many, many schools are really inclusive and work hard to be inclusive. But that's not true of all of them. 

Mark Vickers  
I really welcome around the recommendations and the findings of the report is it moves, and you put those that report alongside the three tiered approach is set out, as I said, in the AP and SEND implementation plan, you can just see a sort of roadmap, if you like, to a place where young people can get that experience like Grace and others in really strong AP settings have nationally at the moment, but but more consistently. And I think that's so important, because without those points being joined up and the commissioning being absolutely nailed and understood around what what the purpose of that young person's placement is, and crucially, how will How will their engagement and their progress, be tracked, monitored, supported, so that they can truly transition to the next right the right place on the continuum, wherever that might be on their journey.

Briony Balsom  
To wrap up, I think probably we need to put a marker down that we've asked more questions than we've got answers for today. So Steve, what are the next plans? 

Steve Shaw  
We currently have an AP strategy, which is to do with a real focus on for example, how we train our inspectors to go out and inspect AP. So a real focus on making sure that our inspectors are upskilled in, in kind of getting the diversity and differences of AP, and really getting under the bonnet of what's the what's the particular core work on objectives of this AP for this young person? And can we see that and track that back through the commissioning agreements? So that we're really looking at what makes that AP unique? And how does that AP convey the ambition for those young people to achieve in the way that Jo and Mark have described in the way clearly that Grace is achieving? We continue to work as you would expect, and have discussions with the DfE with NHSE, with groups like ADCS that Jo is representing and the sector that Mark represents, to try to make sure that we're really working collectively towards an understanding of what national standards might look like, and how might we get to a point where the ambitions that are set out in the DFE's SEND improvement plan are actually going to be delivered and meaningfully delivered and in a way that is that is sustainable. 

Briony Balsom  
Thanks Steve. And Grace to bring it back to you. Talking of the future what are your what are your plans, what's next for you?

Grace  
I want to be a professional dancer. So we have Jo who comes in on Tuesdays and sits us down and helps with like our college applications in that so I think tomorrow I'm gonna sit down with her and I'm gonna find something out obviously do with what I want to do. 

Briony Balsom  
Oh, that sounds incredibly exciting. We all wish you the very best of luck with your conversation tomorrow and I just like to thank you and Mark and Jo and Steve for for joining me today. You may have heard that Ofsted has launched its Big Listen, please contribute by going to www.gov.uk/Ofsted big listen 

AP thematic review: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/alternative-provision-in-local-areas-in-england-a-thematic-review/alternative-provision-in-local-areas-in-england-a-thematic-review

 

 

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