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 a