The varied landscape of alternative education provision in the UK: a home international comparison

This report provides an analysis of the key differences and similarities in the landscape of alternative education provision (AEP) in the UK. As part of the ESRC-funded Excluded Lives Project, it attempts to illuminate some of the contextual factors that may contribute to the very different rates of school exclusion in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. As Figure 1 indicates, while levels of temporary (or fixed-term) exclusions are low and/or falling in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, they are rising in England.

Alternative education provision (AEP) is often portrayed as an important factor in reducing levels of school exclusion and/or providing an appropriate substitute for ‘mainstream’ education. Some forms of AEP provide long- or short-term placements for those pupils whose continued presence in the mainstream school is no longer possible or desirable. Pupil Referral Units in England and Wales, and EOTAS Centres in Northern Ireland, are examples of this kind of AEP. Other types of AEP offer ‘outreach’ services to schools. These can include a wide range of interventions that are designed to eliminate or reduce those behaviours which render the ‘troubled’ pupil at risk of exclusion, and therefore enable them to remain in the school – even if not in the mainstream classroom for all of the school day or week. This form of AEP may take the form of therapeutic interventions (such as counselling, mentoring or mindfulness), outdoor activities (bootcamps, working with animals, games) or vocational courses (often at FE colleges, but also with business and industry).