More around internal alternative provisions.

A while ago we posted an article on setting up internal provisions. It’s been one of our most popular posts. We’ve also been speaking at some school leader events about this and so it seemed time to update and develop those thoughts a little. So with a years more experience and reflection - here’s setting up internal alternative provisions v2.

I’m a great believer in the potentially life-changing impact of good alternative provision. I have seen, first-hand, the way it can revolutionise the life chances of a young person, break that exclusion to prison pipeline and help young people who have struggled hugely to access mainstream education. If our normal iteration of external alternative provision is so good, then why should we focus our efforts on building models of internal AP?

Well, firstly, the education system and mainstream education in particular has some problems it is struggling to solve. DfE figures put the increase in suspensions and exclusions at around 30% year on year. These excluded pupils are twice as likely to have been in care, four times as likely to be living in poverty, seven times as likely to have special educational needs and ten times as likely to suffer a recognized mental health problem. In addition to this we are also see a system creaking under the pressure of a shortage of specialist SEN places for students with EHCP’s, a staggering increase in diagnoses of ADHD, SEMH and ASD. 20% of our pupils are persistently absence and the numbers of young people removed out of the system all together by parents choosing to home education has rocketed.

Even with an increase in schools graded good by Ofsted, movement up the PISA rankings in Maths and English and all the neuroscience and pedagogical research we have at our fingertips - the signs are that what we currently do in schools isn’t working for an increasing number of children. Even across primary schools now Heads are turning to AP and dealing with unprecedented behavioural challenges that their staff don’t have the skills or capacity to deal with.

External AP costs – often over £10k a year sometimes as high as £20k plus. It relinquishes the responsibility of the neediest members of your school community to outsiders. Don’t misunderstand me, there are many, many great APs doing a fantastic job, and they are the best place for some youngsters. Unfortunately, the quality isn’t always consistent and the outcomes for children moving to AP in terms of academic grades, successful future transitions and attendance are still, as a whole, not where we’d like them. I’m a whole-hearted advocate for the power of AP’s both registered and unregistered but the sector is stretched, in most areas around the country there are too few quality places available.

Internal AP is financially more sustainable for schools. It also allows a greater understanding of the quality of what their young people are receiving. As a school leader it means you are investing in the expertise of your staff team, creating an inclusive culture, you have direct influence over the outcomes for these children and gives a better chance of re-integrating back into your mainstream school.

It does come with challenges though. It’s hard work to get right. It will be a journey of success and failure and there is no magic bullet. The children and young people who need IAP are the ones with whom we need to put the biggest effort. Those for whom even incremental progress is the most difficult. You’ll have kids on site that you’d rather not, it’s easier to exclude or to have children in a high-control isolation unit but I’d argue, an inclusive approach is the morally right thing to do.

If you still need persuading, then think about the current sounds coming out of the DfE and Ofsted. Talk has been around report cards that include measures of inclusion. We don’t know what those measures are but let’s get ahead of the curve here. Working hard to help your most challenging pupils access a good education in your school is inclusion and by any measure that should be valued more highly than exclusion.

So, what are the principles and pitfalls of a good IAP? Here’s a health warning to my thoughts on this. I am not proclaiming to be an amazing expert or to have the final blueprint by which you can build success. What I can tell you, often through learning by my mistakes, is some elements I have seen in IAPs that work well and some elements that have gone very wrong. Hopefully it’s helpful but everything needs to be judged against your context and setting. Every school draws from a different catchment and has a different culture running through it’s community. Use what’s useful, adapt to your context, judge, test and explore to find something that works for you.

I think the best place to start and the thing that will drive the rest of your planning and structure is really clearly defining the purpose of your IAP. I have seen provisions working mostly with a nurturing approach for young people who are struggling with mental health, anxiety or school refusers and I have seen provisions working with children who are on the edge of the criminal justice system.

What I want you to be able to get to is to be able to complete this statement for your plans or provision:

We help…….

 to…….

 by……

 We help ….who is it you are designing your provision for? What age range? What needs?

to…… what outcomes are you aiming to achieve for these children?

By…… .how are you different from your mainstream offer? What’s going to make the difference? What approach will you take?

I guess it’s the who? The why? And the how?

When you’re thinking about the who, the ‘we help’ part it could be helpful to look at a few things to make a strategic decision.

·      What problem are you seeking to address? Are you trying to solve persistent absence, the number of suspensions, the number of exclusions, poor external provisions?

·      What does the data say? What’s your concrete evidence around the problem? Is your PA affected by a small number of school refusers? Is your suspension number increased by a specific year group or learning need?

·      Where do your skills lie? Do you already have any bright spots you can build on? Are there already staff who work well with certain types of pupils? Do you have premises, resources or experience that links well for any particular type of provision? Is there a successful intervention you could build on?

·      Where is the need? Where do you see the need?

It’s also really important to protect your cohort. If you know and clearly define the who then the IAP should be a long-term intervention. It’s somewhere where you may take difficult choices around who you include knowing that some pupils will influence the others negatively or aren’t the right fix. They are also magnets for stretched pastoral staff to do the ‘I’m just leaving him here for a moment’ don’t allow your IAP to be a short-term babysitting service. Make referral pathways in clear and thorough and make sure the cohort always fits your purpose.

The to… section is about what you want your purpose to be. Some provisions are for year 11’s nursing through their exams, getting them as many qualifications as possible and helping them transition to a successful post-16. Some are around teaching coping mechanisms to allow re-integration into mainstream, some are primarily about helping pupils re-engage with mainstream. The aims and objectives for your pupils leads to direction around the curriculum plans and shape, your staffing expertise and informs your planning.

The by….  section is where you decide on your approach. Mainstream hasn’t worked so what do you need to do differently? Will pupils be taught a social and emotional curriculum; will it be a therapeutic approach? Small groups, Nurture, Thrive, relational model? Something needs to be different to help them access schooling.

It takes some real thought, probably input from SLT and staff, research around current and future needs in your cohort and some in depth thinking but, just take a moment to sketch out this statement for your setting.

We help…..to….by…..

This purpose, the preparation you do as you develop it and then a resolute focus on delivering it makes sure you don’t set up to fail. You engineer pupils, groupings, staff, curricula and all your structure around it.

So, that’s the top level thinking. Let’s think about some practical elements of the planning. What have I seen that works well and what doesn’t?

Culture

1)        Inclusion v Exclusion

When a young person is moved out of their mainstream classroom it is often after a crisis or a breakdown in relationships. Whenever they arrive in an AP there is always a job to turn that feeling of exclusion into a sense of inclusion and belonging. The culture you set around this is important. I’ve seen a provision set up with no real explanation to the students who were suddenly in a fringe area of the school, on lockdown behind locked double doors and unable to socialise with their peers. Buy in hadn’t been sought from parents and pupils felt like they were under some sort of prison regime. Trusted relationships, unconditional positive regard and a positive atmosphere is key so the culture and introduction to the provision is very important. It’s a journey you have to take parents and students on. You need to do what you can to help it feel like an inclusive part of school life, a support, not something done to pupils to separate them off. Involve the provision in whole school activities where possible think about how you can flex on lunch and break times. Again, I’ve seen provisions work behind locked doors with start and finish times and curriculum engineered to make it an unpleasant place to be – so pupils don’t misbehave to get there. That only works if you want a holding ground till the end of their academic career. If you have tightly defined your purpose, if you’ve clearly explained outcomes to students and if you’ve resourced and planned the provision well then, you’ve a greater chance of pupils and parents/carers buying in. If it turns out that it becomes an attractive place to be then so be it. You’re in charge of who you do and don’t let in.

I’d always lean towards staff who were trauma-informed and a relational approach to behaviour. I think that works well in these kids of contexts. My experience tells me that relationship, belonging and a sense of safety are all important things to aim for and so having staff trained in these approaches helps.

2)        Wider school impact

I think alongside any provision should run the aim to eventually make it redundant. Think carefully about whole school culture and how those young people ended up needing that intervention. If your need is mostly around anxiety, mental health and attendance then how can you make mainstream a safer place to be? Where do students feel least safe? Do you have high expectations without a high level of support. In other circumstances it may be that pupils are in the provision after distinct incidents of behaviour and conflict with staff. Are staff trained in de-escalation? Have you run training in non-confrontational behaviour management? Do staff understand the importance of a trauma-informed approach? Are learning needs not being met?

How can you move upstream and put in the early intervention needed to stop pupils needing the provision in the first place?

3)        Communication

Great provisions have great communication, with the rest of school and with parents and carers. Set up protocols of regular positive communication with families, build the links and bank your positive credit by meeting them, passing on praise, sharing work, talking through targets. I’ve also seen pastoral workers win the undying gratitude of families by helping other family members with CV’s or signposting around issues. It also makes good safeguarding sense. Chances are the young people in your provisions have some of the biggest risks around safeguarding. Getting to know families well can help you spot risks and respond to them early. You will come across issues and it’s so much easier to deal with these when you’ve already built a positive relationship with home.

4)        Evaluating impact

We’re in a sector where we have to evidence what we do. Parents want to know if we’re a great school, governors or MAT leaders want to know what they are responsible for is working, we have Ofsted visits and really, we want to know if what we are investing public money in, especially with stretched budgets is having an impact.

Look back at your purpose. What are you trying to achieve with your young people? How can you track and measure this? Will you track attendance, reading ages, academic levels, behaviour measures, reward points, suspensions? Some hard data helps track whether plans are working. You aren’t going to get miraculous jumps in progress. You’re going to get incremental steps forward, in the day to day challenge of working with struggling young people it can seem like it’s one step forward and two back. So, decide on some impact measures and track them. Get evidence for your leadership decisions and next steps.

Structure

5)        Curriculum

You’ll see this is a theme but, look back at your purpose. The curriculum in your provision needs to match to the outcomes you want. So often the curriculum is a mismatch of where limited resource lies or what some has found at the back of a shelf and will keep the kids quiet for a while. Put effort into this. If the aim is to help anxious pupils engage back in mainstream the curriculum has to cover coping strategies and SEMH support but also keep up with enough academic content that pupils can move back easily. If you’re aiming for post-16 transition, then employability skills or a vocational approach might be more helpful.

A couple of lessons I’ve learnt around this. The first is invest properly in planning a distinct curriculum. It doesn’t work for teachers to deliver work so pupils can try and ‘keep up’ with their peers in mainstream. Firstly, you’re relying on busy stretched teachers to remember and secondly, these are students who have struggled in mainstream. How are they going to learn what they need to away from the specialist teacher and more independently.

The second lesson is to make sure that, if the aim is re-integration your curriculum provides for that. I’ve seen provisions where pupils behaviour has drastically improved but because they’ve dropped so many subjects it’s impractical for them to return to mainstream.

Nearly always the pupils in a provision have missed large chunks of learning, they’ve often got low reading ages. If you’re not sure about your curriculum then you can’t go far wrong with a concentration on numeracy, literacy and reading that means they can return to lessons without feeling like a failure.

In fact, that links to an important point. Provision students often come from a background of consistent failure in lessons. They haven’t behaved, they are kicked out of class or absent. They miss a key piece of learning, that means they can’t access the next lesson. Their response is to play up and get kicked out and so on. They’ve learnt they can’t do Maths or can’t do English. A good provision turns those experiences which have readily confirmed their feelings about themselves into disconfirming experiences. They build lessons that help a kid experience success and learn that they can do it.

6)        Structure of the day

The structure of the day will have to flex around your school models, where you need staff, when buses arrive etc, but I would always have some staples for an IAP. Firstly, I’d make sure that pupils are fed and watered well. These students are least likely to have eaten well before school. They are also the most likely to be late and the most likely to have had a chaotic risky evening before. I would also schedule in a check-in start with tea and toast. I’d also do my best to make sure there is good access to a hot meal (not just sandwiches) and a check out time too to reflect on the day. Then it’s a question of structuring around the needs you’ve defined in your purpose. Can you be creative with lesson length, with PE access, with regular breaks. Think about what your specific cohort need for the best chance of success.

7)        Staffing

If I was to pick a couple of make or breaks in terms of provisions this would definitely be up there near the top. You can have the best pedagogical artists who wouldn’t last a day in an IAP. I think the key here is staff who can form positive relationships with challenging children. Too many provisions are staffed with either the staff left over when the rest of the timetable is staffed or with the youngest, most naïve member of staff who was most likely not to cause a fuss. I’m biased but I think the ability to teach in an IAP is incredibly challenging and needs your most skilled staff members. That might make it expensive and might take staff away from GCSE groups. What it will do though is save you huge chunks of time from pastoral teams and SLT time if it runs well. It can take your highest tariff kids off the floor and into a successful environment.

Think about training. Do your staff know how to respond to trauma? Do they know how to regulate a child? Do they understand how to manage behaviour in a non-confrontational way? Do you need to make sure they are trained in physical intervention and de-escalation techniques?

8)        Enrichment

Give pupils a reason to be in school. Added elements to provisions I’ve seen are music lessons, art therapy, boxing, PE, photography. I’ve seen cookery and craft, even staff members bringing ponies on site. The best chance these pupils have is to be in school with positive adult relationships as regularly as possible. We’ve got to make school a good place to be at. My son, now in year 10 had a real wobble almost on the edge of school refusal in year 7 and 8. What got him through was the extras, the DJ lessons, the D of E, the fitness suite. It wasn’t academic learning or Maths lessons. External APs have an average attendance of 60-70% and these students are the most likely to become persistent absentees. We’re also far less likely to meet those aims if they aren’t even in the building.

Pupils

9)        Understanding the needs

Despite our best efforts there is a really high number of pupils that arrive in AP with learning needs that haven’t been uncovered by school. They’ve been great at masking needs by pulling out challenging behaviour or they were working towards EHCP’s earlier in their education but didn’t have supportive parents or swapped schools to regularly for anything to stick. Start from a blank slate and spend some time diagnosing students when they start your provision. Think about looking for learning gaps, reading ages, dyslexia, etc. Diagnosis doesn’t stop at week one either, it’s a continual process but learning what is going on as early as possible brings the greatest chance of success.

It's also not about just understanding learning needs. Spend time talking to pupils and families, look at their safeguarding records, speak to teachers that worked well with them. They are more likely than others to have difficult safeguarding backgrounds or to be facing bigger challenges around poverty or barriers to education than others. If we get everything in the classroom right but it’s still chaos at home, they aren’t eating regularly or are struggling with regulation as a result of childhood trauma then they won’t be able to access learning well.

10)  Reduce conflict points

As you design you IAP, the premises, the furniture, the structure, think about how potential conflict points can be removed. Behaviour is influenced by environment so how can you make sure the environment is designed to help support positive behaviour. If you don’t want pupils to wear coats provide a hook. If you want mobiles handed in, then buy a charging point so that whilst they are locked away, they can be charged for the pupils. Make sure there is a toilet on site to remove endless debates around ‘I need the toilet’ ’you should have gone at breaktime’…

As part of this it’s helpful to think around your red-lines and non-negotiables as a school. Does the IAP fit under the schools behaviour policies? What do you want to keep as firm rules and what is worth flexing on in order to help students become a success. Keep the main thing the main thing is important here. It’s ok to be flexible around things that don’t matter. If you’re working with a young person deep in CCE with parents who are addicts who has to get his younger siblings to school before he arrives in the morning, then keeping him to the black socks rule that you enforce across the rest of school may not be strictly necessary.

11)  Individual plans

Each pupil in the IAP should have individual targets and a plan to reach the outcomes you want for them. This plan should be regularly reviewed, communicated with staff, family and pupils and have the detail to include safeguarding elements, risk assessments, pupil ambitions and so on.

12)  Change takes time

Lots of provisions are set up with great aims. We’ll take pupils for 6 weeks and then re-integrate. If pupils are needing an IAP, then that’s because of learning or behavioural needs that have been set up from years of habit-forming issues. We can’t change this over-night. Behavioural change takes time, forming the neural pathways, learning new things, changing expectations and teaching coping mechanisms is a long-term project.

For more personalised support do contact us at www.closethegaps.co.uk