Guide to starting an Alternative Provision
This post comes out of all the questions we’ve had recently from people looking at starting an Alternative Provision that doesn’t fall under the Ofsted framework. It’s not an exhaustive list but should help you get an idea of what is required.
Our more detailed guide complete with a suite of policy templates, planning tools and additional advice is available here:
Guide to starting a Non-School Alternative Provision
The mainstream education system doesn’t work all of the time for all children and young people. Some children have SEN needs that their local school just isn’t able to support, other young people have trauma or SEMH needs that mean they can’t access education. Good alternative provision brings an option and support that can be literally life-changing for a struggling young person.
Starting an alternative provision
As part of the support, we give at Close the Gaps we often come across people who have ambitions to start up their own alternative provision and we answer lots of questions around this. For someone who wants to develop a specialised provision that won’t fall under the Ofsted framework (a ‘Non-School’ or unregistered AP) here’s a guide to what you’ll need to do to open. The guide includes what you’ll need in terms of policies and paperwork to fulfil most approval processes but also some of those less obvious areas for success that come from our experience of having worked with so many provisions.
At the moment there is a real need for alternative provisions to help re-engage and support the many young people who are struggling to access mainstream education. Their needs are varied but, for many, an excellent AP can literally be life changing. The option to work as a Non-School AP is available and allows a degree of specialism and freedom that isn’t found under the Ofsted framework. Alongside this freedom however comes a responsibility to drive the high standards that the young people we work with deserve.
Whilst the steps below are relatively straightforward, setting up an AP is not an easy option. Working with struggling young people takes unmeasurable levels of patience and compassion. These young people deserve the very best standards you can deliver in terms of safeguarding and health and safety and delivering outcomes. The set up journey isn’t easy and secure, you will have to earn your referrals and growth and this takes time.
Here’s what we believe are the steps to take to be successful if you want to start an AP.
1) Do a feasibility study.
You may be starting completely from scratch, or your AP may be growing organically from home schooling or an out of hours tutor service. Whatever it is, you need to be sure your idea is feasible. You want to be sure that, if you’re putting money, time and resource into making an AP happen you do all you can before you take the plunge to make sure it is going to be successful.
Every local region is different and every local authority has a different approach to AP so it is important to check the feasibility for where you are going to be based. It's helpful to know the answers to the following questions to understand the local demand and whether your idea is going to be sustainable long-term:
· What is the existing provision like in your area?
Obviously, you won’t be opening in an empty market. You need to know what the competition is locally. The AP market is fairly saturated in some areas and really in demand in others. What are the other providers in your area and are they already delivering well?
· What are the exclusion/suspension rates like in local schools – is there a demand for places?
Talking to local schools can help you understand the kind of challenges they are trying to solve with their young people. You can find out what commissioning staff look for in an AP and where they have found the gaps in the local market to be.
· What kinds of needs are local commissioners looking to meet through AP placements? Who are the key decision makers in local commissioners?
It isn’t always easy to get conversations with commissioners before you’re ready to take students but a quick conversation to scope out what they look for and who needs influencing to make successful referrals can be really important. In schools the key people with be SENCO’s or pastoral leads. In the local authority roles vary but there is often someone who heads up AP or commissioning for AP.
· What are the prices of local AP’s? Will your finances work on these kinds of levels? AP’s charge as little as £60 for a day of supervised work placement to £200 plus for 2:1 staff supervision placement.
Prices vary hugely on a regional level and even on a quite local level. It is important to pitch yourself at a level that offers value especially as you are setting up and before you have a good reputation built. To do this well you’ll need some local intelligence around what others are charging (which isn’t easy to get). You also need to financially model what your service will actually cost to deliver. It’s no use pitching a price to commissioners only to find it means you can’t pay staff properly or cover your rent.
The most useful people to speak to are probably the pastoral leads in local schools. Their contacts can usually be found on school websites so arrange a conversation with them, they are your future customer base, so it is a great way to make links ahead of time too. Also check out local authority websites for details of any approved provisions in the area or approval processes that are needed. It’s no use setting up an alternative provision based on the forest school model if there are already three locally who are under-subscribed.
We offer a feasibility study service where a Close the Gaps associate will do the legwork for you, analysing the local context, making links with key stakeholders and helping to inform your decision making.
2) Know your legal position.
Alternative provisions that are unregistered under the Ofsted framework (referred to as ‘Non-School alternative provisions) are only allowed if they don’t meet the criteria for registration as a school. An AP provider should be registered as an independent school if it provides full-time education to five or more pupils of a compulsory school age, or one such pupil who is looked-after or has an EHCP. The punishment for running an unregistered school can be a fine or imprisonment so it is important to stay within the rules.
Unfortunately, ‘full-time’ isn’t defined anywhere in terms of hours. Many AP’s use 18 hours as a guide but a place is considered to be providing full-time education if it provides ‘all, or substantially all, of a child’s education’. This can create complications where a school only provides a part-time timetable for a child, or you are working with a school refuser. Attending your provision part-time shouldn’t preclude the possibility that the pupil could attend education provided elsewhere – a part-time place of 3 hours a day between 10 and 1 each day would realistically stop a pupil from attending elsewhere and so could be seen as full-time even though it is below 18 hours across the week. A safe level is to take students only for two days or 4 sessions a week.
There is now a set of voluntary standards set up by the DfE for Non-School AP’s. These will be becoming mandatory at some point and are being used more often by LAs for QA checks. They are a good place to start in terms of compliance and making sure you are doing what you should be as you set up.
If you’re looking for a registered model then the big difference is that you have to offer a full-time education that covers a broad and balanced curriculum. You’ll have to evidence meeting the Independent School Standards. This is doable for a start-up but doesn’t require significant investment and preferably a good understanding of school leadership.
3) Clarify your USP.
The very best AP’s are clear about who they are aimed at, who they work well with, and they stay focussed on these pupils. There are a wide variety of pupils who struggle with mainstream across all key stages. There are those at the end of KS4 who need support with exams and those in KS3 that struggled to cope with the transition from primary. There are those who are anxious school refusers and those who need close supervision due to the risk they pose to others.
Who do you have a passion for working with, which struggling young people do you want to help?
It really helps to define who you help, how you help them and how.
We help………to……….by………… is a useful template for this. For example, “we help KS4 school refusers to successfully transition to their next place of learning by providing a nurturing trauma informed setting.”
It helps you in the design of your AP, it’s curriculum and processes and also helps you when you’re selling yourself to commissioners who can pick you as an AP as a best option for a pupil they have with those particular needs.
4) Pull together your paperwork.
Different schools and local authorities will ask for different things in place in order to check that their pupils are safe with you. The bare minimum is a safeguarding policy, comprehensive insurance and proof that your staff are recruited under safer recruitment guidelines. In reality most will ask for a much more comprehensive list, and it pays to aim to model yourself on best practice in this area. The DfE’s voluntary standards are a good starting point. It is much more impressive for a commissioner thinking about whether to use you to receive a full set of policies and paperwork than the very basics. You may wish for additional policies than these, but this list is a helpful starting point.
· A curriculum plan (an unregistered provision has more leeway with curriculum, but a plan means that schools can make sure what they do with pupils complements your offering. It also demonstrates your academic rigour)
· Behaviour policy (including your approach to sanctions, suspensions and exclusion)
· Anti-bullying policy
· Complaints procedure
· Admissions Policy
· Data protection policy
· E-safety policy
· Fire safety policy.
· First Aid policy
· Health and Safety policy
· Managing allegations policy
· Safeguarding policy (including safer recruitment)
In terms of contracting for work with commissioners you’ll need a Service Level Agreement. Make sure it is clear with what you need from them as well as what you’ll deliver. You can’t do your job without full information around the young people, good prompt communication and support to facilitate a good reintegration at the end of a placement.
You’re also expected to have insurance in place – a minimum of public liability insurance (£5,000,000), employers liability insurance (£10,000,000) and professional negligence insurance (£2,000,000)). This can often be a challenge to find so be prepared to spend some time working on this.
All educational establishments also have a single central record a register of the qualifications, recruitment and vetting checks for all staff and volunteers. Commissioners will either ask to see this or ask for a letter of assurance that these checks have taken place.
There are some additional documents asked for by local authorities sometimes, particularly during tendering processes. This can include a range of more detailed documents such as financial records or critical incident plans.
In addition to the paperwork, you need to make sure your staff have the appropriate skills and training. You need a designated safeguarding lead and deputy, all staff trained in safeguarding, a first aider and a responsible person for health and safety and fire safety as a minimum.
Our AP start-up support package contains templates for all the paperwork you’ll need as a Non-School AP. We also put together bespoke packages for AP start-ups if you prefer more in depth-support.
5) Check your premises.
Your premises needs to be safe for young people and you are responsible for this whether it is a shared premises or just for your use. The standards that are expected for an independent school are helpful as guidance here. In terms of standards are the premises, these are some of the independent schools requirements which set a good standard however you choose to set up:
· A detailed fire risk assessment is carried out by a competent person.
· Fire evacuation plan is in place.
· All activities have risk assessments which identify and mitigate risks to staff and pupils.
· Premises should include a toilet and washing facilities for the sole use of pupils (water must not carry a scalding threat)
· Premises should include changing and showering facilities where pupils are taught PE.
· Lighting should be appropriate including external lighting to make sure entry and exit to the buildings are safe.
· Premises should include a medical area for treatment and short-term care of pupils.
· Premises should have access to suitable drinking water.
· Health and safety checks should be thorough and carried out regularly.
· Access to the site is managed and restricted or risks mitigated.
6) Get Local authority approval.
There is no consistent approach between local authorities. Some have no approval processes; others have stringent checks of every provision. You need to approach all the local authorities from which you want to take students to work through their approval processes. It is sometimes hard to find the details and the correct contact in the LA to work with. A starting point is to look at the local offer on the LA website or to approach another local AP who should be able to pass on some links. Find out about tendering processes to get commissioned places from LAs.
The approval processes should be fairly straightforward if you follow the other points on this guide, but the approval process isn’t always available all year round. It’s helpful to work on this as early as possible in the process.
7) Contact commissioners.
Once you know the kind of young people you want to work with and have your paperwork in place it’s time to approach commissioners to try and sell your places. This gets easier when your reputation builds so the early pupils will be the most important.
Depending on you provision there are likely to be three routes to filling places:
· Local authorities – most local authorities (but not all!) commission places directly from Non-School AP as part of their local inclusion strategies. To get pupils through this route you normally have to be accepted as an organisation through a LA tender process. These don’t guarantee you young people but make it much more likely. These processes can be really productive in terms of places but generally need starting well ahead of time. They take a long time to work through.
· Schools – schools often commission AP directly for their young people. They can be much more quick, responsive and communicable than LAs.
· Parents – some parents will fund places directly with APs. This could be because they are home educating and need the support or because they can influence SEN budgets for their children. Get involved in local SEN and home education groups to advertise you services.
It would be most helpful to have some personal conversations with the decision makers in schools. Schools can make decisions and buy places very quickly whereas local authority places often only come after a longer tendering process so go with schools first. You want to speak to the pastoral leads who often head up the alternative provision purchasing and deal with the pupils who are struggling in mainstream. Cold calling doesn’t work very well in schools as staff are normally too busy to take calls during the day. Sending emails and arranging to meet people in person is normally most effective. If you have a premises ready, then inviting staff to visit to see your set up can work well too.
8) Put good frameworks in place.
A good AP is more than high quality health and safety and safeguarding structures. Your frameworks around the day-to-day running of your provision are key to success for the pupils and their outcomes. These are the things that can bring life-changing success.
You need to think about the way you will do the following:
· Pupil supervision during the day
· Staff are suitably qualified (some schools will prefer qualified teachers as part of the team)
· When pupils arrive, you have a clear understanding of their learning needs, academic levels, risks and any safeguarding concerns.
· Support pupils in reading, literacy and numeracy.
· Prepare your pupils for transitions and/or qualifications at the end of the placement.
· How you will track and communicate attendance (on a daily basis)
· How you will communicate positive and negative behaviour with stakeholders
· How you will address personal, local and national safeguarding needs with pupils
· How will you evaluate and report pupil progress?
· How will you co-ordinate with commissioners in communication to families?
· How will you regularly review placements?
· How will you train staff to deal with the needs of pupils?
· Do you understand trauma and its effects on young people?
· Do you have access to expertise around SEN?
9) Start slowly.
Transitions are challenging times for everyone in an AP. Don’t expect to introduce lots of new pupils all at the same time. Start slowly, establish good norms for behaviour, care and learning and introduce new young people at your pace.
To be honest a slow start is likely to be enforced on you. Don’t expect an immediate up-take of places. You will have to market yourself well and build a reputation before you can start your waiting list!
10) Grow your reputation.
The very best selling point for schools is to work successfully with their young people. Be the best you can in terms of communication with commissioners and in engaging the young people you work with. If you’ve worked well with young people from a school before and they have attended well and transitioned successfully back into mainstream or into their next place of education, then you’ll be the first AP schools will try when they are placing students.
We’re currently offering our more detailed AP opening guide in a package with over 35 planning documents, checklists and policy templates. This is a paid service but one we’d recommend for those who are serious about moving their AP ambitions through to reality. Have a look at what we can do to make your plans go more smoothly here.
If you’re starting a new AP and want support, we regularly support settings in feasibility studies, in setting up policies and processes and in meeting standards for local authority approval. Our support can cover full Health and Safety and Safeguarding audits and all the AP’s we supported through LA tendering processes last year achieved approval. Do contact us via the website if you need some support.
We also support AP’s through Ofsted registration and inspections so get in touch if you want some help as a registered provision.
