I think [other students] see me as a freak. Like when I was walking with friends past some lads from school, they start laughing and calling me ‘retard’ and that. It’s ’cause they think Access is for the stupid kids.”

In his individual learning plan, Year 10 student Darren is identified as having “learning as a primary cause for concern”, as well as some fine motor skill challenges. But since enrolling in an alternative provision (AP) setting, this has become a “stigmatising marker”, resulting in the abuse he recounts above.

Like more than 10,000 young people each year, Darren attends college-based AP. But this is a type of provision that is largely ignored. In the long-awaited Timpson Review of school exclusions, published in May, the word “college” is mentioned only three times.

But a number of colleges offer AP - either for young people technically still enrolled in their school or through direct-entry provision. AP is more than just provision for excluded young people, of course: the Timpson Review defines it as “education arranged by local authorities, and in some circumstances schools, for pupils of compulsory school age outside of mainstream or special schools, who would not otherwise receive suitable education for any reason”.

So, while colleges may play only a supporting role in the great debate around school exclusions, off-rolling and behaviour, for many children who cannot see a future in a school setting, further education can provide a crucial lifeline. This can be particularly true for learners who are already more on the fringes of education than their peers.

The attainment of white, working-class boys is lower than that of all other pupil groups, research has shown. In 2016, social mobility charity the Sutton Trust found that white British boys on free school meals achieved the lowest grades at GCSE of any main ethnic group, with just 24 per cent gaining five A*-C grades at GCSE, including English and maths.

“They have now been either the lowest- or second-lowest-performing ethnic group every year for a decade,” the charity said in its report. The figures also showed that white British girls on free school meals were the lowest-performing female ethnic group, with 32 per cent achieving the same measure.

This is despite the fact that nearly two-thirds (64.3 per cent) of disadvantaged pupils entering GCSEs at that time were white British - over 10 times the size of the next largest ethnic group, Pakistani (6.3 per cent).

Last summer, Ofsted’s analysis of its own data showed that schools in poor white communities were much more likely to be rated “inadequate” or “requires improvement” by inspectors, compared with those in deprived, non-white-British areas. While nearly half (47 per cent) of the most deprived secondary schools with a “high percentage” of white British pupils were rated “inadequate” or “requires improvement”, the proportion was just 18 per cent for similarly deprived schools where most pupils were non-white-British.

And weeks later, Ofsted’s chief inspector Amanda Spielman spoke out about her concerns that white, working-class communities could “lack the aspiration and drive seen in many migrant communities”.

White, working-class boys also remain under-represented at university - and helping them into HE was identified as one of the measures that should be a top priority for policymakers in a report by the Higher Education Policy Institute in May 2018.

Labelled and left out

So, could colleges hold the key to helping these young people achieve in education? A paper published in the journal Disability and Society in April, “Alternative spaces of failure: disabled ‘bad boys’ in alternative further education provision”, highlights previous research showing that students enrolled in alternative forms of schooling go on to achieve poorer life outcomes. This includes higher rates of prolonged unemployment, homelessness and criminal activity (Pirrie et al, 2011) than those from mainstream schools.

The paper adds that “white, working-class male students with disabilities are over-represented in APs in England”. It considers one such group of young people in a college in England, and states: “White, disabled, working-class male students are increasingly placed into alternative provisions intended for young people who would otherwise not receive suitable education for various reasons.”

According to the researchers, Craig Johnston and Simon Bradford, the group of young men they analysed had diverse corporeal, cognitive and emotional characteristics, and were labelled by their college as having a physical or learning disability, or both. Some young people had acquired secondary labels, identifying emotional and behavioural difficulties, bipolar disorder or extreme mood disorder.

“The research found that these young people experience a lack of support, low trust and disregard from peers and some professionals at a crucial time in their educational careers,” the report finds.

White, working-class teenagers make up 70 per cent of the cohort in AP settings, Johnston says, adding: “There is no research, and that is why AP is seen as a good thing. But no one looks at what happens to them when they get there.”

The young people he talked to for his research often felt they were not part of the FE college that was running their AP, he explains. There had also been instances of tutors refusing to teach what they saw as a difficult group of students. “If you come into a college to teach adults and then you face 14-year-olds who have no interest in education, that is difficult,” Johnston says.

“There needs to be more research done on FE colleges, but they have to make a decision over whether they can change the environment to accommodate some of those kids. A lot of those kids were just plonked into colleges. It is about making the environment more comfortable for those kids, but it’s whether the colleges would be happy to do that.”

This, he says, can involve simple things such as letting students play football in the grounds and encouraging them to settle into the college community. He stresses that he is not setting out to criticise the sector - and, in fact, colleges are uniquely placed in their ability to provide facilities for these young people.

Johnston and Bradford’s research looks at only one college and a small group of students. So, what is the bigger picture here? A July 2018 report by the Commons Education Select Committee found there were “at least 48,000 pupils who are educated outside of mainstream and special schools during the year”, not including pupils who were educated in AP but remained on the full roll of their mainstream school.

According to the Institute for Public Policy Research, some groups of children are indeed more likely to be educated in AP or excluded - with children in care, children in need, children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and children in poverty all more likely to be excluded than their peers. Boys are also more likely to be permanently excluded than girls.

While the exact number of children who attend AP in FE colleges is not recorded, the Association of Colleges’ response to the committee’s inquiry said that there were 13,650 students aged 14-16 known to be studying in colleges, of which just over 2,250 were on full-time key stage 4 direct-entry programmes. All others were enrolled on AP programmes in collaboration with schools, or partly home educated.

“Young people are referred to AP in colleges for a variety of reasons,” the report explains. “Schools may feel that students would benefit from a ‘hands-on’ vocational/technical curriculum offer. For others, it will be the opportunity of a different environment. Some young people who select to be home educated are positively guided by local authority advisers to opt in to a college environment. The highly supportive, personalised and consultative approach in college often leads to sustained positive engagement.”

Carina Tomlinson, vice-principal for curriculum and performance at East Durham College (see box, above), says that the Timpson Review failing to consider the role of FE was a missed opportunity. “Not every AP provider is poor or provides weak qualifications. School doesn’t work for everyone. It is also about not waiting until someone is permanently excluded. It is about what is right for the student. I am a little bit disappointed FE did not get more of a mention because there is so much good work going on in colleges.”

Tomlinson says her college offers AP both for students enrolled with their school and through direct entry. “What we can offer them is small class sizes and strong support. We are not better than school - we are entirely different. [In college,] they get maths, English and science, and then they have an opportunity to study vocational subjects. A lot of young people can see the job prospects from that.”

Leanne Forde-Nassey, head of the Key Education Centre, a pupil referral unit in Hampshire, agrees that colleges can play a vital role. “For those white, working-class boys, they have really low aspirations by the time they get to us, and they are coming to us younger and younger.

“Our argument when it comes to the more vocational options has been, ‘Are we lowering aspirations by saying we want them to do something with their hands?’ ”

However, she stresses that the decision should be “absolutely dependent on the individual child”, adding: “We have children who want the vocational route because it gives them some context and they can link it to a job. For some of them, it almost gives them an excuse to absent themselves from the more traditional academic subjects.”

Springboard for progression

Forde-Nassey says that finding vocational options for learners in her region means “plugging those children into suitable courses”, with many of these courses having adult learners on them, too. This can prove to be a benefit or a hindrance, depending on the circumstances of the individuals involved.

She stresses: “It is about engagement and having the relationship so they have the trust in the adults that are guiding them to the options as well. Capacity needs to be built around the adults to get them to that provision.”

For Catherine Sezen, senior policy manager at the Association of Colleges, what colleges can give these students is a clear progression from AP into general FE, and then on to employment. She says colleges can provide an alternative offer and a more technical direction for young people - but they need appropriate funding to do so effectively.

Among the Timpson Review’s 30 recommendations - which the Department for Education has agreed to in principle - is making schools responsible for children they exclude and accountable for their educational outcomes. Neither the review nor the DfE has suggested how this could work in practice. But the report does say that to ensure schools can deliver on this responsibility, they should have more control over AP funding.

Greater consistency in how provision is funded and where money comes from would be beneficial to colleges offering these types of programmes, says Sezen - and could help them to map out a route back into mainstream FE for students. “For a lot of young people, their lives are quite chaotic and they benefit from the more hands-on, small group provision. It has to be a right fit for that young person,” she adds. “It is not a panacea and I am not saying it is easy, because it is not. But otherwise colleges are dealing with young people when they are leaving AP and they are then starting from scratch.

“Our argument is, for those colleges that want to be involved and believe it is the right thing to do, it should be funded appropriately, and then it provides a stream into mainstream colleges.”

Julia Belgutay is deputy FE editor for Tes. She tweets @JBelgutay

This article originally appeared in the 5 July 2019 issue under the headline “Another alternative”