Absence from school is a pressing issue in England at the present time, with almost 1 in 4 children persistently absent from school in Autumn 2021 (de Souza, 2022).  Concerns related to school absence predate the Covid-19 pandemic and this phenomenon is linked to low attainment, antisocial behaviour and poor employment outcomes (de Souza, 2022). School absence has tended to be treated as a legal issue, e.g. school truancy (Reid 1999, 2002), or a psychological one, e.g. school refusal/phobia (DfE, 2018a); these discourses position the child and/or their family as the ‘problem’ (Grandison, 2011). However, multiple factors, including the school/education system, may contribute to school non-attendance (Cunningham et al. 2022). Some children report feeling let down by an education system that is not designed to meet their needs (Souza, 2022), and there is evidence that the de-regulated and marketized nature of the mainstream school system encourages schools to exclude students who may have a negative impact on exam results (Parsons, 2018; Partridge, 2020). Mainstream schools, therefore, may not be able or willing to educate and retain children with diverse needs.

Against this backdrop, this paper focuses on research into alternative provisions (APs): state or independently-run education settings catering for children and young people (CYP) outside of mainstream school (IFF et al, 2018).  The AP sector caters for CYP more likely than their mainstream school peers to have special educational needs, mental health difficulties, anxiety, experience of bullying, experience of the care system and free school meal eligibility (DfE, 2018b). The latest annual AP census shows that the sector caters for approximately 35,600 pupils (GOV.UK, 2022), but this data does not include the estimated thousands more CYP attending providers which are not registered with the national school’s inspectorate (Thomson, 2022).

AP is an umbrella term that captures a diversity of provision.  The focus of this research are small civil society APs being run by community, voluntary or third sector organisations. As peripheral organisations in an already marginal education sector, they have remained mostly outside central government’s drive to quality assure AP (Pennacchia & Thomson, 2018). Their positioning has brought a degree of institutional freedom enabling them to respond flexibly to the needs of students outside of mainstream school and thereby develop their own understandings of their value and quality. However, this positioning has shifted in recent years, with the government raising concerns about the safeguarding risks and low quality of such provisions (House of Commons, 2018).  Whilst not seeking to diminishing these important concerns, the present research takes a different, and neglected focus by analysing what such provisions offer that supports some of the most vulnerable CYP to reengage in education.

This study draws on the Wenger-Trayners’ (2020) theorisation of ‘learning to make a difference’. We conceptualise small civil society APs as social learning spaces where staff members (i) try to ‘make the difference they care to make’; (ii) work in conditions of uncertainty; and (iii) pay close attention to how their work plays-out in practice. Through the social learning that occurs in APs, we argue that value is created which makes a difference to the learning and lives of vulnerable CYPs   

The project asks the following research questions:

1. How are staff in small civil society APs learning to make a difference to the learning and lives of vulnerable CYP outside of mainstream school?            
2. What value is being created in these APs?
3. Does/can the social learning and value creation in these APs help to inform policy and practice to support vulnerable CYP, prevent persistent school absence, and inform the development of an appropriate quality framework for these organisations?

Given the dearth of research into small civil society APs a case study approach was used to explore the phenomenon in depth (Day Ashley, 2021). To transcend the idiosyncrasy of an single case study and understand whether findings may be applied beyond a specific case (Miles et al., 2020), a multiple case study approach was adopted. Selection criteria included civil society APs that (i) were located in the Midlands; (ii) catered for less than 50 students, (iii) were less formalised provisions that do not resemble mainstream schools in England; and (iv) were not part of a wider network or organisation. Two APs were selected for the final study, one located in suburban Nottinghamshire and the other in rural Warwickshire. Once ethical clearance was given by the University of Birmingham Ethics Committee, data collection began. To generate rich data, multiple methods and sources of data generation were used. First, documentary analysis was undertaken of AP websites, Ofsted reports and media reports relating to the provisions. This enabled the researchers to build up an initial picture of the AP and helped inform the formulation of questions for interviews, which constituted the main method of data collection. Sixty-minute interviews were conducted with seven AP owner/founders, leaders and practitioners (both teaching staff and pastoral staff) to understand how these participants articulate the difference they care to make, the uncertainties and challenges they encounter in their work, and how they articulate the value being created through their work in the AP. Guided by the research questions, semi-structured interview schedules for each type of participant were devised to allow for a consistent approach to questioning across a range of participants in both cases to enable cross-case comparison, whilst also allowing some space for questioning to be tailored to specific cases. Data collection was conducted mostly during the covid-19 pandemic and therefore the majority of interviews were conducted online. However, brief visits were made to the APs once post-pandemic rules allowed, enabling researchers to observe some of the main spaces, classrooms and outdoor facilities of the schools, which helped inform initial case study reports and build a visual picture of the APs. Data analysis is being conducted through triangulation processes across data methods and sources, first within each case to generate in-depth understandings and then across the two cases to identify patterns and variation. This paper will report on the study’s findings following data analysis.

Initial analysis has revealed that staff members founded and/or came together to work at APs both to respond to local need and for deeply personal reasons. Staff were often disillusioned with the ability of mainstream schools to effectively support vulnerable children. This disillusionment was reported as being shared by children, contributing to their initial resistance to learning when they first join APs. Staff describe paying close attention to children’s individual needs e.g. by allowing a slow integration, flexibility with start times and dress codes, and reducing learning pressures. They tailor curricular to each young person, offering a balance of academic and non-academic subjects. They are taught in small classrooms in very small groups (2-4) or even one-to-one and have daily individualised pastoral support. AP staff members work at the edge of their knowledge, often without specialist training. They are aware when they make a difference to CYPs’ learning and lives, but recognise a need to better articulate and communicate the impact of their work to the wider educational community. The challenges of the landscape for civil society APs include funding insecurity, being poorly understood and supported by/through policy, and not being seen as a high-quality offer by the government and national schools’ inspectorate. We argue that Wenger-Trayner’s notion of ‘value creation’, is a useful tool for eliciting and enabling APs to articulate the difference they make in attempting to support some of the most vulnerable CYP to re-engage with learning, particularly in areas which are not typically valorised through mainstream school effectiveness and quality measures and debates. This is needed now, more than ever, as current government proposals to bring AP into a national special education needs system (DfE, 2022) may lead to the imposition of a quality framework (IntegratED, 2022) on small civil society APs without even consulting them.

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