Schools to be responsible for excluded pupils' education

The education white paper, published Thursday, proposes handing responsibility for organising alternative provision to schools because the government believes this will improve outcomes for vulnerable pupils.

Alternative provision is used to educate a child when they are excluded from their mainstream school due to behaviour problems or because they have learning needs that the settings cannot meet. Currently, schools are responsible for arranging alternative provision when the exclusion is temporary, while councils must commission it for permanently excluded pupils.

Speaking at the launch of the education white paper, Morgan said that in the future mainstream schools will have a duty to commission high-quality provision for their pupils. They will also be responsible for pupils’ educational outcomes.

“By many objective measures, pupils who have spent time in alternative provision do considerably worse than their peers,” she said.

“I will not tolerate a situation where we effectively give up on a whole group of young people and where alternative provision becomes a dumping ground.”

As part of a wider package of reforms that will require all schools to become academies by 2022, Morgan said that schools will become responsible for the budgets for alternative education provision, with multi-academy trusts encouraged to set up their own services.

Morgan also announced that the government will fund research to examine how pupils arrive at AP, and will assess new approaches to support pupils moving directly from alternative provision to post-16 education.

Josh Coleman, education principal at charity and education provider Nacro, said the move would give “renewed focus on education for young people with complex problems and vulnerabilities”.

He said: “The complex problems young people have should not be an excuse for poor-quality education and it is right that the government sets out that it expects more.

"Too many young people at Nacro centres reach us too late, marking time and resigned to a life of non- or insecure, low-paid employment.”

Concerns were raised over the safety of pupils in alternative provision last month by Ofsted, who said the majority of staff in alternative provision settings had no child protection training.