Internal alternative provision risks being ‘costly holding pen’
Schools need more guidance and support in setting up internal alternative provision (AP), if such spaces are not to become merely ‘costly holding pens’, a new report warns.
The report What works: Four Tenets of Effective Internal Alternative Provision has been produced by education charity The Difference, using analysis of DfE data and interviews with 23 schools offering best practice. It found that schools are increasingly opening internal AP to address challenges around absence, behaviour and special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). A shortage of places in traditional AP settings is also driving this trend. However schools are often ‘navigating uncharted territory’ with ‘limited guidance, research or evidence about what works’, the report says.
Kiran Gill, CEO of The Difference said: ‘Schools are operating under crisis conditions, and many are responding with determination and innovation, developing internal alternative provisions to help keep children thriving in the mainstream. But too often, these efforts are unfolding without clear guidance, and despite best intentions, some risk replicating the very exclusions they aim to prevent, creating costly holding pens rather than inclusive support.’
The report identifies four ‘tenets’ for putting in place effective internal AP. The first is that the AP is unified with the mainstream school – suggested strategies to achieve this include pupils in internal AP sharing social times with mainstream peers, attending assemblies and some mainstream lessons, and using the same behaviour and rewards system. The other tenets are that the internal AP should identify learning, wellbeing, and safety needs; that it balances academic progress and wellbeing; and that it is shaped by measurable pupil outcomes. The report also emphasises that there should be ‘robust’ and ‘data-driven’ referral processes that involve ‘multiple professionals’. School staff quoted in the report say that without such referral processes in place, internal AP could be seen within a school as a ‘dumping ground’.
Full report: https://tinyurl.com/3y7c82wn