IPPR is the UK's leading progressive think tank. We give voice to progressive ideas and policies to successfully influence policymakers from all political parties and none (civil servants, the media, employers and civil society). In recent years we have conducted significant work on education and learning, including incubating the charity, The Difference, which looks to prevent school exclusion in England. We are currently establishing an ambitious new programme of work on the future of learning with Big Change called Subject to Change.

Whole Education is supporting 30 schools across England to implement Spirals of Enquiry, a child-led model for professional learning. The six-stage model assists schools to take an enquiry-orientated approach to reducing exclusions. The Spiral brings the perspectives of learners at risk of exclusion to the forefront, as school teams use learner voices to focus their enquiry and plan evidence-based actions. Schools share their findings with a local network, creating communities of learning focused on reducing exclusions.

Teach First is seeking to embed the four main principles of whole-child development within its programmes. Whole-child development encompasses cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development. We aim to raise awareness among teachers and school leaders of how these principles can benefit pupils in their schools. Through our programmes, we hope to equip teachers and school leaders better to respond to underlying factors that impact outcomes for pupils, particularly those facing educational disadvantage.

At SHINE, we want to see all children leave school with real choices in their future. We believe that children should be given the best possible chances in education, no matter what their backgrounds or starting points. Our mission is to raise the attainment of children from disadvantaged backgrounds across the Northern Powerhouse. We do this by supporting innovations in education which have the potential to transform education outcomes for the most disadvantaged children.

Social Finance is working in partnership with two local authorities, Cheshire West and Chester County Council and Gloucestershire County Council, to transform how they identify and support children at risk of exclusion. The programme will develop data insights on who is being excluded, explore what interventions and quality assurance are needed and understand how local systems should support this. Social Finance is a not-for-profit organisation that researches better ways of tackling social problems.

The RSA is a global community of proactive problem solvers, uniting people and ideas to resolve the challenges of our time. Our work on building a more inclusive education system spans everything from youth civic engagement to cultural education. Our recent Pinball Kids report investigated how to stem the recent rise in school exclusions. The project’s next phase will see our recommendations developed into blueprints for collaborative practice in several local authorities.

Right to Succeed’s IntegratED pilot programme works with every child in the first three years of secondary school in Blackpool to close the literacy gap, giving pupils the ability to engage better with the curriculum and improving their ability to communicate with those around them. It seeks also to understand the impact of literacy, language and communication on children’s whole development, looking particularly at attitudes to self and school as well as attendance and exclusion.

Relationships Foundation believes that good relationships are fundamental to achieving a broad range of social and educational outcomes. As part of the IntegratED programme, we will measure and explore relationships in a range of alternative provision settings to understand how factors like closeness and trust support high performance. Relationships Foundation will also seek to identify what it is that enables good relationships within settings and in the wider system, to support sustainable improvement.

Porticus is the philanthropic organisation supporting the IntegratED programme. We believe the most effective way to educate children, especially those in extreme adversity, is to embed a holistic whole-child development approach within education systems. The programme vision is that all children, irrespective of family income or background, should have fair opportunities to develop as socially responsible, fulfilled individuals with a strong academic grounding, able to contribute to and benefit from a just society.

We work with others to improve the lives of the most vulnerable children and young people in the UK, by investing in partners and programmes for children in their early years, in school and through adolescence, wherever, whenever and however the greatest benefits can be achieved. The Foundation is proud to support the Anna Freud Centre’s work on reducing school exclusions through a whole family approach, in collaboration with Porticus and the IntegratEd initiative.

Just for Kids Law established the School Exclusions Hub in 2019. The Hub is a web platform that provides information and resources for professionals and community organisations supporting families facing exclusion. The Hub’s resources include guides and precedent documents that take users through every step of the process, from obtaining school records to identifying and challenging unlawful exclusions. The project aims to end the advice desert that currently exists for families outside of London.

Jearni exists to help people increase their learning power. We want to equip students at risk of exclusion to “learn to learn”. We have developed a learning power assessment tool, the Learning Journey Platform, to help teachers to facilitate students’ self-directed learning. We believe that students are more likely to engage with their learning when they understand how they can improve. We are piloting our Learning Journey Platform at Matthew Moss High School in Rochdale.

IntoUniversity’s Holistic Aspirations project in Leeds, run in partnership with Leeds East Academy and the Co-operative Academy of Leeds, works with students aged 11-16 who are at high risk of exclusion and meet our eligibility criteria, including being eligible for free school meals. Delivering a targeted version of our programme, we aim to increase students’ attachment to longer term goals and increase their school engagement, thereby avoiding a range of negative outcomes such as exclusions.

Inspiration Trust, a family of schools in East Anglia, are creating a model that integrates alternative provision into our mainstream provision, keeping children on the school roll with the same uniform, school email address, and playing on the same sports teams. Our alternative curriculum will include social and emotional interventions as well as academic catch-up delivered by mainstream teachers to enable the children to gradually re-join their mainstream peers in a supported transition process.

The Fair Education Alliance (FEA) is a coalition of over 160 cross-sector organisations that work together to tackle educational inequality. The FEA Secretariat unites its membership of educators, charities, businesses and policymakers to drive collective action, influence policy and scale impactful initiatives to create an education system that builds essential life skills, prioritises wellbeing, supports teachers and leaders, engages parents and communities, and provides support for all post-16 routes.

Thousands of pupils in England leave their school for reasons seemingly unrelated to parental choice and home circumstances. A minority will be permanently excluded, while many more will experience a ‘managed move’ to a different school or alternative provision. EPI research will critically examine this under-researched policy that, for two decades, has been accepted as best practice and which affects thousands of children in England, the majority of whom are vulnerable to poor outcomes.

FFT Education Datalab carries out quantitative research on the education system in England primarily using the National Pupil Database and other national datasets linked to it. On behalf of the partners in the IntegratED programme, we plan to undertake a programme of research over the next 18 months to plug gaps in the evidence base to inform the partnership’s work in reducing preventable exclusions, improving alternative provision and promoting the wider development of pupils.

The Difference exists to improve the life outcomes of the most vulnerable children by raising the status and expertise of those who educate them. As part of IntegratED, we will be delivering our Difference Leaders Programme which places exceptional teachers as senior leaders in schools for excluded pupils, delivers leadership training and school improvement support and aims to create a new generation of mainstream school leaders specialised in educating the most vulnerable and reducing exclusion.

The CSJ engages in research and political lobbying to improve policy around exclusions and alternative provision. We are the secretariat for the All Party Parliamentary Group on Education for Excluded Children. As the “hub” organisation for IntegratED, we will consolidate and disseminate the programme’s findings and publish an annual “state of the nation” report on exclusions and alternative provision. Our research covers unregistered provision, alternative provision benchmarking, and upstream work to reduce exclusions.

Aspire AP is an Ofsted Outstanding pupil referral unit in Buckinghamshire providing alternative provision education and support for secondary age students. Pupils are referred to us by the local authority and attend either full-time or part-time. Our staged support model allows us to flexibly meet the needs of our students and to provide the most appropriate level of support. We also provide home and hospital tuition, outreach services and mental health and SEN-specific provision.

The Anna Freud Centre is a children’s charity dedicated to providing training and support for child mental health services. We will be rolling out our parental engagement programme across ten alternative provision schools and 30 mainstream schools. Children exposed to domestic violence, substance abuse or physical or mental ill health are at greater risk of exclusion. For sustainable change, parents must be better involved in school-based programmes designed to help their children improve behaviour and raise their attainment.

Ambition Institute is interested in what teachers and leaders do to support the development of pupils’ non-cognitive skills. Skills such as resilience, grit, self-determination and self-efficacy are thought to be just as much a predictor of future success as traditional academically focussed metrics. We have surveyed the literature and will be conducting case studies with ten positive outlier mainstream schools to identify practices that are focused on supporting pupils beyond improving their academic outcomes.