Education Endowment Foundation:Understanding the use of internal alternative provision for pupils at risk of persistent absence or exclusion

Understanding the use of internal alternative provision for pupils at risk of persistent absence or exclusion

Project info

Independent Evaluator

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This study is a School Choices’ project. School leaders make choices about school-wide practices and approaches that are intended to produce positive outcomes for pupils, such as how to organise the school day or communicate with families. However, many school-level practices have limited or no evidence for them, which means leaders must make decisions using other information. The aim of School Choices research is to produce causal evidence about the impact of different school-level approaches and policies on outcomes of interest, with particular attention to the impact on pupils from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds.

School Choices evaluations are divided into two phases: a scoping phase, and an impact evaluation phase. During the scoping phase, the research team will refine their research questions, verify their assumptions, and explore the feasibility of their evaluation designs.

This project is part of a joint funding round with the Youth Endowment Fund (YEF). The EEF and the YEF are partnering to find, fund, and evaluate programmes and practices in England and Wales that could keep children safe from involvement in violence and/​or improve academic attainment, by reducing absenteeism.

The aim of this evaluation is to explore the impact of different approaches to internal alternative provision (AP) in publicly funded secondary schools in England on the probability of persistent absence, suspension, exclusion and/​or unexplained school exits among secondary school pupils.

We know that school absenteeism (missed attendance as well as suspension and permanent exclusion) has the potential to impact pupils’ attainment and the likelihood of them becoming involved with the youth justice system. Many pupils with poor attendance and those excluded from school are the most disadvantaged.

Secondary schools’ use of internal AP has seen rapid growth in recent years. This is driven by several factors, including movement away from permanent exclusion, limited access to high-quality external alternative provision, and an increase in pupils’ social, emotional and mental health needs. However, there is considerable variation in the definition, purpose, content and intended outcomes of internal AP and limited evidence of the causal relationship between internal AP and pupil attendance and/​or suspension, exclusion and unexplained exit from school.

This study aims to address this gap by identifying the range of internal AP approaches used by secondary schools, the extent to which they can be classified into distinct models, and the features and prevalence of the models observed.

This project had an initial scoping phase that is now complete. The scoping phase aimed to assess the feasibility of designing an impact evaluation that can produce evidence about the impact of different types of internal AP.

The findings from the scoping phase confirmed that a quasi-experimental impact evaluation – a type of research design that compares a group of individuals who received an approach with a similar group who did not – is feasible. Additionally, the findings provided insights into uncertainties and challenges surrounding the School Choice in question. The scoping phase established

  • An understanding of the current use of internal AP in secondary schools, using three sources of evidence

Eight expert interviews were conducted among practitioners and education policy advisors in internal AP, behaviour and inclusion policy, and AP more broadly. Twelve schools were also selected for case-study analyses, including interviews and site observations. The goal was to understand how different approaches to internal AP work within a school setting, paying particular attention to the purpose, offer, access, and outcomes.

The information collected from the methods above was used to develop a survey that was sent to all maintained publicly funded secondary schools in England. 478 schools responded.

  • The relevance and feasibility of the proposed approach to classifying secondary schools’ internal AP practice.

Evidence was found to support the idea of a continuum of internal AP support with schools varying in how their provision operates alongside or integrated within mainstream education. Differences were also found in how standardised or tailored the support is, as well as in the number of students involved and the typical duration of the support. These findings suggest a viable approach to classifying secondary schools’ internal AP practices.

  • A typology of internal AP models employed by schools and an estimate of their prevalence.

Latent class analysis (LCA) was used to analyse the responses from the survey and identify heterogeneous subgroups (types of internal AP) within the schools. Two distinct groups of internal AP emerged. Group 1 include schools with a more bespoke provision where at-risk students remain with their mainstream class group while receiving additional support. This provision was typically to a larger number of students and for longer. Group 2 schools tend to provide more standardised support, usually outside of mainstream education, to fewer students and for shorter periods.

The analysis also suggested that schools reporting no internal AP’ may form two groups. However, the distinction within this group was less clear from the information collected.

The impact evaluation will employ quasi-experimental methods to create matched groups of schools, representing two treatment contrasts: Internal AP support model 1 (group 1) vs. Internal AP support model 2 (group 2) and Internal AP’ vs. No internal AP’. The analysis will be conducted at the student level, and the primary analysis will look at a subgroup of students classified as at risk of suspension, exclusion and/​or unexplained school exits.

While matching methods will be applied, this study is considered observational in nature, as causal conclusions could be affected by unobserved differences between the groups that cannot be controlled for through matching.

Additional context will be provided through the Implementation Process Evaluation (IPE), which will explore the mechanisms leading to impact and test the Theory of Change (ToC) developed for each internal AP model. The IPE will seek to capture the diversity within school groups and identify distinguishing features, allowing for a more nuanced interpretation of the impact analysis results.

The evaluation will be completed in Autumn 2025. Once the evaluation is finalised, this web page will be updated with a summary of findings and an evaluation report.