/ THE RESPONSE OF THE NATIONAL UNION
OF TEACHERS TO THE CONSULTATION ON
THE REFORM OF ALTERNATIVE PROVISION
MAY 2012
  1. Following the publication of the Taylor report, on 8 March 2012, the Secretary of State accepted all the recommendations and moved swiftly to issue consultations.
  1. Consultations have been issued in relation to ITT in pupil referral units (PRUs), the regulations to allow PRUs to convert to academy status and now on the reform of alternative provision (AP). The NUT believes that the pace of change is confusing and destabilising for all those employed in the AP sector.
  1. The six-week consultation period on the reform of alternative provision is not asufficient period of time to enable the sector to submit its views. There is no justification for providing such a short period of consultation. The NUT represents over 1,000 teachers in PRUs. Many schools have commented that the pace of these top-down changes is not appropriate or constructive and is sapping morale.
  1. Publication of revised guidance before the start of the summer holidays will certainly not “give the sector time to familiarise themselves with those changes coming into force in September 2012”. Teachers and school leaders in the PRU sector are not aware of the changes which are planned and, therefore, will view those changes to structures and school status as impositions on them rather than as constructive school improvements in which they are invested and integral to.
  1. The exasperation and insecurity which teachers in PRUs will feel as a result of more top-down reorganisations will not lead to innovative or improved practice in meeting the needs of students with complex difficulties. In one south west authority, for example, the council is negotiating a new compact with the local schools about which services will be provided, and the teachers in the ‘behaviour’ and ‘medical’ PRU will not be informed until June whether they will be keeping their jobs.
  1. All the international evidence about school improvement and all the evidence from the UKconclude that school self-evaluation and buy-in from teachers must be at the heart of self-improvement. The Department for Education (DfE) has not allowed time to meaningfully engage with, or consult, PRU teachers and school leaders. The Taylor review of Alternative Provision should not be taken as proxy for a thorough and rigorous consultation with a wide sample of teachers and school leaders in PRUs.
  1. The NUT utterly rejects any automatic link between conversion to academy status and school improvement.
  1. The DfE has made some surprising claims about these reforms, including that many PRUs are eager to embrace academy status and will welcome these imposed reforms. The NUT has not found any PRUs which want to become academies. The nature of the work which PRUs excel at – working with mainstream schools, partnership working and admitting pupils on dual roll – means that, generally, PRU teachers are one of the groups of teachers most opposed to academy status and concerned about the threat to inclusive practice and provision for vulnerable pupils.
  1. The NUT is specifically concerned about the prohibition on new provision being created as local authority provision.
  1. The consultation claims that the proposed reform will lead to a sector “where those responsible for commissioning provision can choose between a range of quality providers to find the best way to meet a child’s needs”. There is no evidence for this. There is a huge risk, however, that reducing the planning, quality assurance and accountability function of local authorities will mean that quality within alternative provision will become more inconsistent.
  1. There is no evidence that forcing PRUs to convert to academies by 2018, or creating legal powers for the Secretary of State to intervene to oblige PRUs to enter into academy arrangements will improve outcomes for children and young people in PRUs.
  1. The jury is still out as to whether there is any link between academy conversion and school improvement. In the absence of any evidence which does show such a link, it is unnecessary and disproportionate to introduce forced systemic change to such a specialist sector. Pupil referral units have historically been subject to relentless reorganisations and the DfE should take greater heed of the lessons of twenty years of EBD re-organisations.
  1. The consultation says “though there is some excellent provision in PRUs, the Department must be prepared to intervene when provision is not of the required standard”. The NUT rejects this summary of the quality of provision which is not an accurate summary to draw from the evidence. In relation to provision which is inadequate, there is no evidence to suggest greater powers for the DFE to intervene is the answer to school improvement.
  1. PRUs are hugely under-valued. PRU teachers are expert at engaging vulnerable and disaffected children and young people, and those with medical needs, and working to engage their parents and carers. Teachers plan work carefully so that it relates to pupils’ specific needs. PRU teachers and other PRU staff carry out a significant amount of work with families and liaising with other agencies including housing and social services. PRUs are engaged in early intervention activity with pupils at risk and work hard to support pupils with reintegration into mainstream schools. None of this is recognised by the Government.
  1. In addition to this, many PRUs share resources and expertise with neighbouring schools and others within the local authority family. Staff support pupils through outreach services and offer professional development opportunities to staff from neighbouring schools. Some PRUs make their facilities available to other schools and some share knowledge of funding opportunities and contacts in the worlds of sport and culture. Pupils attending PRUs have benefited from projects involving pupils from mainstream schools, particularly when this has enabled them to work with older or much younger pupils. The NUT is concerned that these arrangements will not continue if these PRUs become academies.
  1. Ofsted inspections data reveals that PRUs are very effective, although this is not publicised. Between 1 September 2010 and 31 August 2011, 65% of PRUs were judged to be ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’, compared with 52% of mainstream secondary schools. The proportion of PRUs believed by Ofsted to be ‘inadequate’ was the same as the proportion of mainstream schools[[1]]. PRUs are inspected against the same Framework as mainstream schools.
  1. The NUT believes that this disparaging view of PRUs is being peddled by the Government in order to justify the privatisation of these essential services. It is unclear how a ‘failing’ PRU could be improved by being forced to become an academy and the NUT therefore concludes that the intention is to do away with PRUs in their current form, rather than to ‘improve’ them. PRUs that are judged to be not meeting pupils’ needs may require more support, better access to external services and improved information sharing with pupils’ previous schools. Being further removed from the local authority will not achieve this.
  1. The problems of high staff turnover, leadership discontinuity and inadequate LA support will not be successfully tackled by closure or by replacement by outsourced provision.Creation of academies and unpredictable commissioning will undermine the outreach and behaviour support advice capacity of PRUs.
  1. The key issues facing PRU provision is not their quality but their lack of an integrated and co-ordinated relationship with mainstream schools. Independent provision will inevitably set up barriers to resolving these problems. Managed moves of pupils, integration plans, co-ordinated professional development for PRU staff, the provision of support and professional development by PRUs to local mainstream schools, the transfer of records and data, and jointly planned provision for excluded pupils will all be hindered by creating academy provision.

20.OFSTED published a report of a survey of PRUs in September 2007. It inspected good and outstanding PRUs at Key Stage 3 and 4, as well as consulting with LAs, to identify the factors which contributed to success. The NUT agrees with the following summary by OFSTED about the challenges faced by all PRUs daily:

“They face similar barriers in providing children and young people with a good education. The success of pupil referral units depends on their responses to these challenges and the support they receive from their local authority.”

21. Ofsted found that the effectiveness of PRUs is related to the support they receive from their local authority. The NUT agrees with this finding. Ofsted concluded that productive partnerships between PRUs and LAs are characterised by clearly defined roles and responsibilities for authorities, teachers in charge and management committees, and good quality support from authorities for leaders of PRUs.

22.The NUT does not support proposals for a new ‘requires improvement’ category to replace the previous ‘satisfactory’ and ‘notice to improve’ categories. The NUT has responded separately to the proposals relating to the changes to the Ofsted categories.

  1. These changes are to be implemented in September. The DfE does not recognise, or seem to be aware of, the concerns expressed across the PRU sector about Ofsted inspections. NUT surveys of members about the inspection framework highlight a wide range of issues about the challenge of making inspection processes appropriate for alternative settings. The reforms of alternative provision must consider how the inspection process should change to fit the setting rather than the other way round.
  1. Many PRUs perceive that Ofsted inspections do not provide an accurate assessment of the value added by the school. This is particularly important in relation to PRUs, since value added measurements take into consideration the progress pupils have made based on their prior attainment and adjusts for other issues that are known to affect a child’s performance.
  1. The consultation simply announces the Department’s intention to apply the change to the Ofsted framework in a blanket manner. This fails to understand the nature of teaching and learning in PRUs.
  1. The NUT recommends that any Ofsted team visiting a PRU includes a minimum of one inspector who has experience of working in, or leading, a PRU. The combined experience of inspection teams must match well with the inspection needs of each PRU. Teachers in PRUs must believe the measures being used to evaluate and appraise their effort and professional expertise are the correct measures.

27.The NUT rejects the proposal for the Secretary of State to be able to replace management committees with an interim governance structure.

28. The NUT survey asked PRU teachers whether they thought PRUs should be part of local authority provision. The feelings of NUT members are very clear; the majority of respondents, 92 per cent, felt that PRU provision should remain within the local authority. Not a single respondent to the survey felt that PRU provision should operate outside local authorities. The NUT recommends that PRU provision remains within local authorities.

  1. The proposals in the consultation document focus undeservedly on enhancing the Secretary of State’s power to direct “failing” PRUs to be converted. This emphasis on failure limits the degree to which Ofsted can be encouraged to play a greater role in supporting pupil referral units.

30.The NUT agrees that it is essential that settings catering for highly vulnerable children improve quickly when they require special measures. At present, the evidence suggests that the average turnaround time for PRUs is less than the average turnaround time for secondary schools. PRUs draw on sources of support and regeneration to come out of special measures, in many cases, in a shorter time than mainstream schools. This reveals that there are lessons to be learned from how PRUS are currently achieving regeneration – lessons that other schools can learn from and which suggest that the mantra that forced academy conversion is the only answer is a fallacy.

31. It is welcome that the measures proposed will leave room for Local Authority PRUs to continue to operate. Charlie Taylor recognised that PRUs maintained by the Local Authority may add value to the operation of the PRU. The NUT believes that every PRU should have the freedom to remain a PRU maintained by the Local Authority. The NUT rejects the case for legislation to require that all new AP should be through AP Academies or FreeSchools.

32. If the Department “wants PRUs to have a greater autonomy to meet the needs of their pupils and be responsive to the needs of local schools”, then PRUs should have the freedom to pursue this as a Local Authority PRU if they so choose.

33. The consultation justifies some proposed changes to alternative provision placements on the basis that they are consistent with the approach of the current exclusion trials. The exclusions trial has only commenced within the last six months. Some local authorities have withdrawn from the trial because they disapprove of the direction of travel. No external evaluation has yet been conducted. It is therefore too early to make recommendations for wider practice based on its efficacy.

34. The NUT does not believe that PRUs will be ready to take on delegated budgets and control over staffing in April 2013. The DfE should consult separately on this.

35. The NUT has responded separately on the consultation about the acquisition of QTS and the extension of NQT Year to PRUs.

36. The focus on early intervention and identification of needs is welcome. The focus on information sharing is also welcome.

37.The consultation refers to the announcement in the SEN Green Paper about “Education, Health and Care Plans”. This new form of assessment is currently being explored within the SEN Green Paper pathfinder areas. The pathfinders are at the start of their planning, however, and it is not possible at this stage to predict that the new EHC plans will remove the barriers to information sharing which remain, even after long term policies such as Every Child Matters and the introduction of the Common Assessment Framework. The barriers to sharing information will be exacerbated by creating settings which compete rather than collaborate.

38. The NUT has responded previously on the issue of conversion to PRUs to academy status and the consultation is attached.

39. A copy of a letter sent by General Secretary to the Behaviour Tsar, Charlie Taylor, on 30 March 2012 is also attached.

NUT Response to Alternative Provision 201217 September 2018

Created: 14 Mary 2012/CA

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