Alternative Provision
How Alternative Provision is arranged in Buckinghamshire
Commissioners within the Council arrange and monitor Alternative Provision. They work alongside other service areas in Children’s Services including:
- Integrated Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) Team
- Education Entitlement Team
- Admissions
- The Virtual School
These teams work together to commission safe provision, to support children and young people who need alternative or specialist education.
Regular reviews and contract monitoring takes place. This is to ensure the Alternative Provider is delivering in accordance with commissioned services. They will also check the attendance and progress of pupils. This is in addition to the regular monitoring that referring schools are required to do.
Current Alternative Provision commissioned by the Council includes:
Bucks Primary PRU supports primary-aged pupils who are excluded or at risk of exclusion. They operate from 3 sites within the County, providing in-school support for pupils and teachers. They also offer in-house placements for pupils at risk of exclusion.
Aspire is an alternative provision school (academy) and is commissioned to:
- provide a secondary Pupil Referral Unit (PRU) for those pupils who have been excluded, those excluded and are moving into Buckinghamshire
- there is also a site that provides full-time, permanent placements for pupils with Social Emotional and Mental Health Support (SEMH)
- provide outreach support to pupils at risk of exclusion in their home school or provide a placement in the event of permanent exclusion
- provide a home tuition service for those pupils who are unable to attend school due to medical needs
- provide hospital teaching services, taking place within Stoke Mandeville Hospital
- other support and provision to pupils who have a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) referral
- provide outreach service to pupils in their home school
Progress Schools is an independent special school, providing:
- support for pupils who are excluded at key stage 4 by providing in-house support and education. These pupils will have been excluded from a special school, or pupils living in Buckinghamshire but have been excluded from a special school outside of the county.
Targeted Provision are part of the Department for Education’s national tutoring programme, but they are not a registered school. Targeted Provision are commissioned to provide tuition to pupils either online or in their homes, or through a combination of both approaches, with the aim of reintegrating them back into their home school.
Bespoke provision for pupils with SEND provides tailored packages of support to meet the individual needs of a child or young person. There is a wide range of such alternative providers, which tend to be small organisations and usually unregistered, and cater for pupils with an Educational Health and Care (EHC) Plan.
The Council carry out a series of checks as part of the due diligence process to ensure that such provision is appropriate, safe and meets the required standards, particularly if the provider is unregistered. This process must be carried out before any unregistered provider is used as an alternative education provider for any pupil with an Educational Health and Care (EHC) Plan.