Improving support for excluded children

I want to use this blog to shine a spotlight on children who are not visible to the education sector and by that, I mean those that aren't attending mainstream or special schools. It's a complicated picture and we must first better understand what we mean by children who are not visible to the education sector in order to champion the needs of these children. Imagine a cutlery drawer at home: the whole drawer identifies the cohort, but within each section, we have different groups with their own unique needs.

So, the drawer includes a section on children who are excluded (either legally or illegally) from school, and children educated in other non-mainstream settings e.g. at home, as well as children not being educated at all. It includes children who are accessing illegal schools (although their parents may say they are being electively home educated), and those who move from one school to another and are referred to as "missing from education", some of whom may be in care.

I am particularly concerned about these invisible children in the sense that they can't be found or seen in official statistics, so I am grateful to ADCS, the Children's Commissioner and Ofsted for raising these important issues through recent reports which tell us that nationally: