Olive Education’s Support For Young People ‘The Importance of Teaching’
The Importance of Teaching: Schools White Paper and the Education Bill set out a range of reforms for education in this country with the purpose of fulfilling the Coalition Government’s ambition of turning education into world-class provision.
From September 2011 all local
authorities are required to provide full-time education for all children in alternative provision. (Currently this is not the case).
New voluntary and private sector organisations will be
able to offer high-quality education for disruptive and excluded children and others without a mainstream place. Local authorities will be expected to choose the best provision and replace any that is unsatisfactory. The Secretary of State will use powers to close inadequate PRU’s and specify what sort of provision will replace it. In doing this competition will open the way for high quality new providers to enter the market.
Powers for teachers to improve discipline, and trailing a new approach to exclusions.
More academies and free schools and a strong strategic role for local authorities
Opening up the alternative provision market to new providers and diversify existing
provision by legislating to allow PRU’s to become Academies.
Changing legislation to ensure
that Pupil Referral Units (PRU’s) will be able to gain the same self-governing powers as community schools including, for the first time, giving their governing bodies powers over staffing and finance.
Schools will be responsible for finding and funding
alternative provisions themselves when considering whether to exclude a pupil. Collaboration with other schools is being encouraged. Schools will be held more accountable for the pupils they exclude and their academic performances will count in the school performance tables. This will create a strong incentive for schools to avoid exclusion where possible and ensure that where it does happen it is appropriate and that pupils receive good alternative provision.
Ensuring that there is greater diversity of provision in PRU’s.
The vision includes ensuring that pupils who attend PRU’s have the opportunity to be able to achieve the same number of ‘meaningful qualifications’ as pupils who attend mainstream schools.
Changes to school performance tables, ofsted inspections and governance.
Please contact Olive Education to discuss how our consultancy services can support your organisation to utilise these critical messages from the White Paper for the benefit of young people and staff.