Preventing and reducing the impact of school truancy and exclusion
Young people who have low attendance or who are placed into alternative provision following exclusion from school achieve, on average, far poorer educational outcomes than their peers. As a result, they have fewer choices after they leave school.
Young people become disengaged from education and learning for many reasons, but there is a strong correlation between school truancy and exclusion and wider experiences of disadvantage.
Between 2006-15 our Education and Learning open grants programme had a specific focus on supporting approaches designed to prevent school truancy and exclusion, at times with a particular emphasis on early intervention or on supporting children and young people through points of educational transition. The fund supported local authorities, voluntary sector organisations and groups of schools to test innovative approaches, or trial new ways of implementing interventions that had already been shown to be effective in other contexts.
Under this fund we awarded nearly 100 grants, working in all four UK nations and with awards totalling over £8.2m. We also convened a number of targeted roundtables and networking events to provide space for organisations engaged with these challenges to share good practice, and commissioned an independent evaluation to understand the impact of three particular therapeutic approaches. Find out more about the organisations and projects we supported under this fund through our grants database.