An AP free school plans has been forced to use £180,000 of reserves to bankroll a new sixth form after council bosses snubbed its bid for cash from the authority’s high-needs budget.
Nottingham’s Stone Soup Academy’s plight has reignited calls for the government to provide APs with post-16 funding, with many forced to dip into their pockets to support their pupils’ moves into mainstream education after year 11.
‘Disastrous consequences’
Kiran Gill, the chief executive of the education charity The Difference, said: “Many alternative provision schools offer amazing and innovative post-16 support, but do so without sufficient government funding or guidance.
“Without more schools filling this gap, we will continue to see disastrous consequences for children and the economy.”
Isos Partnership research from 2018 revealed the average cost of an AP placement – which are largely funded through authority high-needs budgets – was £18,000 a year.
But mainstream 16 to 19 funding rates range between £2,715 and £5,105.
Local authorities are only legally required to provide AP places to children of compulsory school age, which means after year 11 they are funded at mainstream levels.
Councils can choose to fund post-16 AP settings, but Schools Week analysis shows just 21 of England’s 332 APs – 6 per cent – have their own sixth forms.
Stone Soup will launch its sixth form in September, with one its aims to improve not in education, employment or training (NEET) rates.
The number of NEETs between October 2024 and December was just shy of 1,000,000, almost 300,000 more than in 2021.
‘Gutted’ by council’s decision
Forty per cent of Stone Soup’s 35 year 11 leavers last year became NEET within six months. Kerrie Henton, the school’s executive principal, said in previous years the figure rose to 60 per cent after 18 months.
She said Nottingham council’s decision left her “gutted”.
An authority spokesperson said the “primary reason” for its refusal was the sixth form was “not prioritising post-16 students with an education, health and care plan (EHCP), which is our statutory obligation”.
They stressed the council’s “limited funding requires us to prioritise our statutory duties”.
Henton will use more than £180,000 of reserves to pay for the provision and will lodge an application with the DfE to access mainstream funding for the places.
She hoped council chiefs “will see the work that we’re doing, the impact of that work and… fund us next year”.
Going ‘cap in hand’ to LAs
“There needs to be a better way of ensuring support for our most vulnerable young people post-16, rather than having to go cap in hand to a local authority.”
“The DfE should fund it for at least two years post-16. The most vulnerable young people in our society are being failed.”
An education committee report published in 2018 said it was “extraordinary” that the coalition government’s decision to lift the education participation to 18 “was not accompanied by statutory duties to provide post-16” AP.
It said ministers “must allocate resources to ensure that local authorities and providers can provide post-16 support to pupils, either in the form of outreach and support to colleges or by providing their own post-16” alternative.
The committee, then chaired by Robert Halfon, noted these youngsters were “denied access” to education after year 11 “because the system is not designed or funded to accommodate their additional needs”.
During the pandemic the last government set aside £7 million to fund “additional transition support provided by AP settings for year 11 pupils”. The fund was canned in 2022-23.
Calls for ‘step-down programme’
A report published last year by Dame Rachel de Souza, the children’s commissioner, said the lack of funding made it “difficult” for AP leaders to provide such support.
De Souza told the DfE to “look at how to create a limited number of post-16 placements for children who have had a disrupted key stage 4”.
She also called on it to fund a “graduated step-down programme of support for all year 11 leavers”.
Last year, the Education Policy Institute found 63 per cent of pupils permanently excluded from school would be considered NEET at age 24. This was over double the level for the average cohort (25 per cent).
The DfE has been approached for comment.
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