Why Pastoral interventions are needed more than ever in alternative education?

As a pastoral Manager and trained Social Worker I have an understanding of the impact of social care needs on a student being able to access their education. The growing need for alternative provision demonstrates the sad fact that many young people today cannot access our mainstream education system and that this is intrinsically linked to mental health and wellbeing. 

The word ‘alternative’ is key to us understanding that there is a growing need for education provisions that enable a young person to heal emotionally, and improve their wellbeing so that they are then able to access education. The effect of the pandemic and the current austerity many families face, have brought challenges that we have not seen in this volume before. This sits alongside significant cuts to Social Care budgets and less services being able to offer the lower level early help support required by many families. 

The updated Working Together Guidance 2023 shifted to a strong focus on early intervention for families, and an increase in agencies playing a crucial role in delivering this support. However, how exactly agencies can do this when there is no funding and an increase in workload for all services is still a question left unanswered.

Having moved from social work in a Local Authority, to pastoral care in an education service, I can see there is a way in which we can offer a combined service for young people and their families to try and bridge the gap left by cuts to funding and services. By offering support around parenting, wellbeing, accessing community services, sleep and communication we can increase the wellbeing of a family as a whole, in turn supporting a young person to access education.

The most recent statistics from the DfE show that 24.6% of pupils in England are needing to access free school meals, which is a steadily increasing rise. In 2023/2024 the number of pupils in England attending a local authority funded, non state, alternative provision rose by 16%, from 2022/2023, an increase which demonstrates the ongoing demand for these types of provisions, to support those students that cannot access education otherwise. This is only scratching the surface, as this data is not factoring in unregistered AP’s, many of whom are doing amazing work with those most hard to reach and vulnerable young people

Combining this data with the research from Action For Children which indicates that if investment was made into early help services for families in England this would directly correlate to fewer young people going into care and requiring the more expensive, intensive social care intervention. However, with funding cuts of 21% for early help services by governments over the past 5 years, there is limited or no ability for Local Authorities to provide these early help services, in house. 

When you look at the facts it seems obvious that providing services at this level that are able to support, intervene and provide a holistic approach, proactively, to address issues would lead to more young people managing more formal education and less ending up in care. Currently for many families they have to reach crisis point before services are able to provide intervention and by this point they have become so frustrated, exhausted and let down they are beyond the point of being able to see a way forward. 

If we were able to provide a holistic approach combining education and early help level support for families this would potentially enable the hardest to reach young people an opportunity to engage in learning. Whilst the primary aim may be to get students to engage in learning and socialisation, by providing the invaluable option of having people to share worries with, we can also additionally support parents, who are so often isolated as a result of their young person's needs and who may have been struggling alone for years. Providing them support in their home around the needs of their child can make such a significant difference. 

‘I love that there is a focus on pastoral support for families - the idea that wellbeing must come first before learning is possible is the idea that needs to be entrenched in our education system. Sense Learning is one of the pioneers!’ Parent quote November 2024

Jenni Griffiths 

Pastoral Manager, November 2024