From July to September 2022, the UK government opened a public consultation which sought to understand the use of unregistered alternative provision.
Following the consultation, Rachel de Souza – the Children’s Commissioner for the UK – issued a statement in which she stated that school is the right place for children to be. This was backed up by ‘The Big Ask’, a survey of 500,000 children and the largest survey of its kind in the world, which focussed on how much children loved school, how much children loved learning, and how over the course of two tough years of primarily online learning, children missed their teachers, their friends, their activities, and real classroom learning.
As a result, Rachel de Souza set an ambitious target to ensure ‘that no child gets left or falls out of sight’:
“My ambition is for a truly inclusive education and health system, which understands children’s needs are varied and complex and provides appropriate support, at the right time, to enable them to achieve the best possible outcomes.”
We completely agree that all students should be in education full time. It’s the best place for them and provides a broad and diverse curriculum whilst also allowing them interaction with peers, teachers and broader opportunities.
But for some students, this may not be the traditional academic route, which is why alternative provision is so important.
Companies like ours are here as a safety net to support those students who cannot currently access full time education. This could be due to break down of placement, anxiety, medical needs or behaviour.
Our focus is making sure that for the time they are with us, tuition is put in place quickly (to prevent any loss of learning and further disengagement), and that the provision is high quality – this is key. We work as hard as possible to replicate the classroom experience as closely as possible by using qualified UK teachers to deliver a bespoke curriculum that we have spent over a decade developing.
We also work incredibly closely with the students’ regular teachers to ensure the learning we deliver is focussed on the students’ areas of weakness and the assessment summaries we provide contain the right metrics, so teachers can ensure these pupils aren’t being left behind.
This gives us confidence that we’re supporting children in the best way possible and builds children’s confidence as a result, as they know when they re-enter the classroom, they’ll be able to keep up with their peers.
The focus for all these students should always be reintegrating back into mainstream school or full-time alternative provision and we always work closely with partners to facilitate this. In the meantime, our focus, per child, is on focussed planning, quality delivery using qualified teachers and accurate assessment of academic attainment.
If you have students in need, then talk to us about our tutoring for schools services.
Written by Josh Blackburn, COO at TLC LIVE.