Alternative educational provision

Alternative provision is defined as “an organisation where pupils engage in timetabled, educational activities away from school and school staff” (Taylor, 2012, p.4). Such activities are for pupils who cannot attend mainstream school for a variety of reasons, such as school exclusion, behaviour issues, short or long-term illness, school refusal or teenage pregnancy. Predominantly, they are young people with behavioural difficulties, who come from deprived backgrounds and are among the most vulnerable within society:

They often come from chaotic homes in which problems such as drinking, drug-taking, mental health issues, domestic violence and family breakdown are common. These children are often stuck in complex patterns of negative, self-destructive behaviour and helping them is not easy or formulaic. Many also have developed mental health issues.

(Taylor, 2012, p.4)

If we look at the above in accordance with McLeroy et al.’s. (1988) social ecological model, it suggests that young people attend alternative provision due to individually related factors. However, the individual category within the model is built upon choice and individual agency, which is often reduced for LACYP. It is therefore crucial to recognise the interplay here between the interpersonal (relationships) and the institutional (e.g. placement moves) factors that would have also impacted upon their educational trajectory. For LACYP, spending time out of mainstream education is not uncommon. Dixon and Stein (2003) found that 95% of their study participants had truanted or been excluded and half had been victims of bullying. This causes a disruption to their learning and, as has subsequently been found within this study, to potentially impact upon their experiences of PESS. Although it is documented that LACYP are more likely to be excluded and experience increased behavioural and emotional difficulties than their peers (a finding identified in the following chapter), over two thirds of the young people involved with the present study were in mainstream education (albeit varying in degrees of stability and consistency). However, the remaining respondents spoke of how their behaviour meant that part of their educational trajectory was spent in an alternative provision setting, such as a Pupil Referral Unit (PRU). All PRUs have a teacher in charge, akin to a mainstream school’s headteacher, and in 2013 there were 393 PRU’s in operation across England and Wales (DfE, 2013f). In order to decipher the PESS experiences of youth participants who

had attended alternative education, it was important to firstly gain a fuller understanding of LACYP’s experiences of learning within an alternative provision setting. By so doing, the data revealed that their experiences were significantly different from those of mainstream schooling, particularly in relation to PESS provision. This is illustrated below in the example from 19-year-old Jamie, who reflected on his PESS experience when in a Pupil Referral Unit (PRU) at the age of 11:

We didn’t have PE in the PRU at all, just an activity day which we had every single Friday every week … We’d go to the park, we’d go to the park and just run around and do whatever so that’s pretty much our PE, but we didn’t learn anything in the way of PE integration.

Similarly, in the context of a different PRU, the below extract from an interview with Shannon confirms that the provision of PE within PRUs is largely ambiguous, thus indicating that time spent out of mainstream education can result in limited access to PESS for LACYP:

CW: What about your times at the PRU’s, did you have PE there?

Shannon: I did but it wasn’t actually PE. See what they would call PE was “Awesome” right … you’d have Dan who was classed as the PE teacher, he’d take you out with however many students were in your class, most likely in mine there was about 5 students. So you’d think me, 5 other students in the back of this mini bus and he’s go “right we’re going to Broadstoke”. So you’d turn up in Broadstoke right, we’d go into that like educational park bit, now it’s like an exercise park and he’d literally just say “run free”. He’d open the doors and say “go play, be back in half hour”. I swear to God, if you wanted to you could go lie on the ground, he would not do nothing, you could do whatever you wanted to.

These interview extracts are perhaps not surprising given that the statutory guidance at the policy level (McLeroy et al., 1988) for alternative provision states that such provisions must offer appropriate and challenging teaching in English, mathematics and science (including IT) on par with mainstream education (DfE, 2013f). There is no mention of other compulsory subjects such as PE, which if delivered would be on par with what these young people would have access to in mainstream education. This may be suggestive of why it has been argued that alternative provision is not of a consistently high quality (PRT, 2016).

PRUs, however, are just one example of how alternative educational provision is delivered; other options include home schooling services, e-learning centres and residential schools. For Jamie, his trajectory was particularly complex. Following his time at a PRU, as identified above, Jamie also attended a special needs residential school for the majority of his secondary school education. In contrast to the PRU, this had a positive impact on his education:

I think I would’ve failed in normal school if I didn’t [attend residential school]. ‘Cos obviously the relationship with the teachers and students and stuff and the friendliness, and it was so small groups as well. I don’t think I’d survive in a bigger group than what I had.

Jamie explained that although PE was part of the curriculum at this school, he did not engage with it or see its value, a theme that is explored in more depth in chapter 7. Despite Jamie not engaging with PE, he did value and participate in the extra-curricular programme that the school offered, as the illustrative quote below evidences:

Jamie: You’d get an activity list that would come round that you could do. Mostly the things I chose was go to the gym or go on a walk ‘cos we’d do night walks … anything in the gym, like in the hall because we’d play dodgeball, we’d play killer, hockey and snooker and stuff like that. But I think from year 7 to year 10, I mainly chose walking, night walks and stuff cos it was fun, or cooking. I think those were the two ones I enjoyed the most.

CW: So was there quite a lot of activities to choose from then?

Jamie: Yeah I think it was mostly, you wouldn’t do the same thing twice in a month, ‘cos it would be like doing loads of stuff, they’d keep you busy.

CW: And did you enjoy doing these activities?

Jamie: Oh yeah I loved it, yeah it was brilliant. ‘Cos it gives you a chance to waste time until tea, so you’d go out, do something, come back, have tea, and chill out in the house area and watch tv and go to bed … it was a very nice way to spend your time basically … and cos of the range of activities I didn’t look at the list and be like “Oh there’s nothing to do”. So it kinda, it got me out as well instead of sticking myself in the house area like I was doing at home, it got me out and about so.

Jamie’s recollection of his positive experience at the residential school may be due to the opportunity and individual choice given in being able to access extra-curricular activities (such as sport and outdoor pursuits), which he may otherwise not have been able to access within a mainstream school setting or had the opportunity to try, as implied by his pre- care experiences. The examples presented within this section of the chapter highlight how the complexity of some LACYP’s educational journey can mean participation in lessons (such as PE) and extra-curricular activities (school sport) is varied or even non-existent; often due to the degree of turbulence and loss of control within their lives. Being educated within alternative provision, such as a PRU, meant these young people were unable to learn within a mainstream environment and, from the examples above, their access to compulsory education such as PE suffered due to their emotional, social and behavioural (ESB) difficulties. For other LACYP like Jamie, however, alternative provision can in fact enhance their engagement and access to PESS, highlighting the disparity between alternative provision services at an institutional level within the social ecological model (McLeroy et al., 1988).

5.5 Summary

The aim within this chapter has been to present some of the key findings that emerged from the analysis across the three phases of data collection. From the surveys and interviews with both adult and youth participants, it became clear that LACYP’s experiences of PESS can vary significantly due to the environment and context within which they find themselves situated; largely influenced at an individual and institutional level within the social ecological model (McLeroy et al., 1988). For many of the LACYP interviewed, the influence of their experiences prior to becoming looked-after was noted as having a subsequent impact upon their decision to engage with PESS when looked- after. Although well-documented within the educational literature concerning LACYP (see Chapter 2, section 2.4), placement instability has also presented itself within this study as having a specific effect on LACYP’s PESS experiences, alongside the location of such placements in proximity to schools. Being educated in an alternative provision setting has additionally been found to impact LACYP’s experiences of PESS, highlighting the disproportionate availability of PESS afforded to LACYP. Within this chapter, there has been ongoing references to the wellbeing and behaviour of LACYP being impacted by their environmental and contextual surroundings, and it is this issue that is the focus of the subsequent chapter.