Schools are to be given support worth £150,000 as part of a project to reduce suspensions and room removals.
The , launched by The Difference charity, comes as schools are coming under great scrutiny on inclusion, including through the new Ofsted framework.
The charity which promotes inclusion said that schools are asking what can be done internally to support children earlier amid high numbers of suspensions and room removals.
But it has warned that until now there has been “very little guidance and support available” to help schools ensure that more pupils are learning.
Suspensions and room removals
The Difference Schools Partnership is now inviting bids and will chose 10 schools to work with, which will each receive three years of support worth £150,000 over the course of the programme as they develop internal provision and inclusion strategies to be shared across the system.
Kiran Gill, CEO of The Difference, said: “We know that child poverty is rising, challenges with children’s mental health are rising and that is translating into more and more children struggling to stay in lessons.”
She said the charity is now looking to partner with 10 headteachers who “are all facing similar challenges of either high suspensions or room removals and who are invested in driving forward their whole-school inclusion work”.
Ms Gill told Vlog that The Difference will learn from each school’s findings on “key implementation steps” for improving inclusion and identifying barriers and challenges faced by schools.
The for bidding to be involved in the partnership opens today and runs until 24 February. The work, which is being funded through philanthropy, starts in June.
Ms Gill said: “We want to hear about their ambition to not just develop further with their practice, but also to be able to share that learning with a wider group of schools. And so their application will be backed by either their trust leader - an academy trust CEO - or their director of children’s services, who will write a supporting statement.”
Schools successful in their application will receive three years of funded support through the charity, which will include helping them to implement a plan and use data to track progress, and the chance to take part in peer-review days.
The project is being launched on the back of on how schools can run inclusive internal alternative provision.
Risk of exclusion or absence
This research defines this provision as “an in-school supportive intervention for children at risk of some form of exclusion or absence, which acts at least partially in place of mainstream lessons for a specific period of time”.
It also highlights the “importance of getting internal alternative provision right”.
The research report adds: “If done well, it can support belonging, wellbeing and attainment. If done badly, it has the potential to inadvertently become another form of exclusion, where children continue to miss out on learning, furthering their disengagement from their education and school community.”
The report identifies what it describes as four tenets for effective internal provision. These are that it is unified with the mainstream school; it identifies learning, wellbeing and safety needs; it balances academic progress with wellbeing; and it is shaped by measurable pupil outcomes.
However, The Difference will not be giving schools involved in its new project direct instructions on what their provision should look like.
The impact of collaboration
Karen Hand, headteacher of Stopsley High School, in Luton, said her school had “reworked” its practice after working with the charity, leading to reduced suspensions.
There had also been an improvement in students’ sense of belonging at school and in the school’s relationships with families, she said, while teachers had developed new skills.
She said: “The next stage in our ambition is to share the model across Luton, helping our sister schools develop their internal alternative provision.”
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