Following the initiation of the LocalED project in April 2022, each organisation involved in Pilot 1 focusing on support for vulnerable pupils has submitted a progress report covering the first six-months. You can read of summary of these reports below:

Wakefield

Wakefield’s approach to Pilot 1 brings together three existing elements of the local area’s work that aims to deliver better support, experiences and outcomes for vulnerable young people:

  1. A new, locality-based, multi-agency approach called Wakefield Families Together, which brings together key services supporting families and young people in six localities.
  2. A new, Wakefield-wide, collective-responsibility based approach to fostering inclusion and the appropriate use of AP, and avoiding exclusion – now in its third year of operation, this work involves school, AP and LA service leaders working together through three locality-based Secondary Inclusion Panels, a Wakefield-wide Primary Inclusion Panel, and overseen by the Wakefield Inclusion Partnership Board.
  • A new strategic partnership for the local education system – the Wakefield Integrated Education Partnership, launched in September 2022, has been designed to involve school and trust leaders as part of a partnership-wide approach to key strategic and systemic issues facing the local education system.

Over the next two years, system leaders in Wakefield will work together to –

  • agree a new definition of vulnerability based on a holistic understanding of young people’s experiences (rather than segmenting them into vulnerable groups using existing labels);
  • use absence and non-attendance as an initial flag to explore the reasons for non-attendance and the linked risk factors that make young people vulnerable to missing out on educational opportunity, and how these differ by age, phase of education, and locality;
  • explore the lived experiences of this cohort of young people in order to identify the barriers to young people attending and being successful in their education;
  • develop and launch a new district-wide strategy for tackling the underlying reasons for vulnerability to missing out on education, with a specific focus on locality-based interventions and approaches.

 

Wiltshire

Wiltshire is proud to be part of a pilot that aims to develop and test a new way of thinking about vulnerability and risk of missing out on education. Wiltshire aims to develop a new sense of collective responsibility for all Wiltshire children and develop innovative locality-based approaches that address challenges and deliver impact for vulnerable children.

Wiltshire is utilising participation in the pilot to bring together three existing strands of work.

  • First, building on and broadening existing approaches to inclusion – Wiltshire has a successful model in the secondary phase where funding from the High Needs Block of Dedicated Schools Grant is devolved to secondary schools, working in three partnership areas, to foster inclusion and prevent exclusion. (Last year, Wiltshire recorded zero secondary permanent exclusions.) Wiltshire want to build a similar locality-based inclusion model in the primary phase.
  • Second, Wiltshire have recently reorganised key support services into a single “Targeted Education Service” – this includes the Virtual School, education welfare, behaviour support, alternative provision, ethnic minority and traveller services, and medical needs services. They will test this new approach through the pilot.
  • The third element is relaunching a new, integrated approach to early help and family support – Wiltshire currently have a model of multi-agency fora operating across the county, but how these fora operate and their impact are inconsistent. Through the pilot, Wiltshire want to test and develop a new model of holistic working between schools and services to support vulnerable young people and their families.

Over the next two years, system leaders in Wiltshire will work together to –

  • develop an agreed locality wide definition of vulnerability which moves beyond pre-existing labels;
  • test the right set of metrics for tracking the progress and outcomes of this cohort;
  • explore what are the most effective preventative strategies available to localities in working with schools and academy trusts to support these young groups;
  • strengthen partnerships between all agencies and explore opportunities through collaboration to enrich the offer, including reasonable adjustments to the curriculum; and
  • share successful practice in supporting these young people and identify the benefits and challenges of working as a locality in implementing the agreed action plan.

Rochdale

Rochdale has undertaken – and continues to undertake – significant work over the past five years to strengthen inclusion, prevent exclusion and marginalisation, and recovery after the Covid-19 pandemic.

They see the pilot (as well as being a Priority Education Investment Area) as an opportunity to “align the planets”, and develop a single, coherent, system-wide ethos of promoting inclusion and delivering better support and improved outcomes for vulnerable pupils. They call this single plan “Raising Rochdale”.

Over the next two years, system leaders in Rochdale will work together to –

  • draw together information about the outcomes and lived experiences of children and young people at greater risk of marginalisation;
  • use this to secure a Borough-wide definition of vulnerability, which will in turn provide a common view about and collective responsibility for the experiences, progress and outcomes of young people who are in some way vulnerable or at risk of marginalisation; and
  • pilot new approaches to supporting inclusive practice and support for vulnerable children and young people across the Borough.

Coventry

The AEC pilot in Coventry is being embedded within the place-based integration work that they are already doing in Coventry, both in the Bell Green and Wood End, Henley Green and Manor Farms areas and on redesigning attendance services and support in line with revised DfE guidance.

The pilot area was chosen as it is an area with low rates of attendance and high levels of deprivation. Attendance is being used as the “lens” to focus the pilot. A key starting-point for the pilot is the simple fact that, as Coventry’s action plan for the pilot states, ‘If pupils are not in school, we cannot deliver any outcomes.’

Within the community prototyping approach, we are exploring how locality working enables partners including residents, schools, statutory and council services, and voluntary and community groups to work together. These existing partnerships are resulting in more holistic approaches and earlier identification of opportunities to help vulnerable children and families.

This pilot will focus on supporting vulnerable children through the lens of attendance and aims to:

  • identify successful strategies and approaches for supporting vulnerable children and improving attendance;
  • highlight gaps or areas of development – focusing on wider community approach;
  • explore opportunities for earlier intervention and prevention; and
  • undertake measurement and evaluation of impact.