Over the last 12 months I have talked with more and more families where being in school every day is just not a possibility for the young person. The school environment, even with reasonable adjustments, is proving too difficult to access day by day. These are often children with educational needs (SEND), but not always; wider issues around mental health are having a significant effect on our young people.
The whole focus of the attendance guidance for schools is on getting young people back physically into school, but for some young people that isn't going to happen any time soon. Many parents/carers are being put in a position where, because of low attendance, they are having to remove their child from school and move to "elective home education" (EHE). Now, for some well-resourced families that works well and it is a parent/carer's right to "home school" their child, but for many families their child is ending up without an appropriate education. This is untenable and morally wrong and we are failing many of the children in our care.
One of the possible solutions is a "blended" approach involving on-site and remote education, but I am struggling to find effective models of "blended" education in disadvantaged communities across England. One of the aspects of my work that I really enjoy is being an assessor for the Inclusion Quality Mark (iqmward,com). Through that work I see inclusive schools getting to grips with the reality of situations where, for a variety of reasons, young people just can't attend school 5 days a week, full-time, but I don't see anyone in the maintained sector developing proper "blended" learning approaches. Students are either in school or they aren't - and if they aren't then their education is limited.
There are solutions available to some: flexi-schooling, where the family takes responsibility for their child's education for part of the week is gaining traction through the excellent work of Sarah Sudea and "Finding the Flex" (findingtheflex.com); there is really good flexible online provision available from organisations such as Nisai (nisai.com); fully virtual schools such as the Minerva (minervavirtual.com) exist... These options cost and are often dependent upon individual family resources of time and money. Where are the scalable "blended" options in the maintained sector accessible to all children and families who need them?
Many schools do attempt to make some online provision: many provide some limited resources online such as the presentations and worksheets from lessons, but these are only intended as a stop-gap for catch-up during short-term illness and can't be fully understood without a teacher. Some schools are very wary about providing online resources as they consider that it encourages absence and they are also very aware of the professional difficulty and workload issues for a teacher of providing effective online teaching for one or more students alongside a physical class. We were very good at this during the pandemic so where are the maintained schools providing high quality remote teaching for "absent" young people?
I believe that we have to engage with a mixed "blended" model of education for some young people. Probably not permanently in most cases, but, at different points some children will need to be educated remotely. At the moment attendance processes strongly mitigate against this. This gives an opportunity for creative thinking and implementation - many of our young people need the opportunity to be educated partly physically in school and partly remotely and, in fact, many would thrive under those conditions.
I was a headteacher and I am still a teacher in a state secondary school (albeit part-time). I understand the safeguarding, attendance and resourcing issues. Those are not excuses for inaction - we have significant numbers of children who are not in school, or who are failing to thrive in our school environments. A positive, well thought-out blended learning model in the maintained sector is rapidly becoming a necessity.
Thoughts?
James
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