Interim Leadership for Post-16 Provision in Special Schools

A practical guide for proprietors, boards and senior leaders

Post-16 provision in a special school is often the part that receives the least leadership attention, and it’s usually the part where an interim finds the most to do.

Many leaders tell us the same thing. The main school is well run, safeguarding is solid, teaching is monitored. Then you look at the sixth form and find a provision that has grown by accretion, staffed by whoever was available, doing broadly what it did five years ago because nobody has had the capacity to look at it properly.

It’s entirely understandable. Post-16 is smaller, it’s quieter, it rarely generates incidents, and a stretched headteacher will always attend to the noisiest part of the school first. But for the young people in it, this is the last few years they’ll have before adult services, and what happens here shapes the rest of their lives.

Why is post-16 different?

Four things change once young people pass sixteen.

The purpose changes. Post-16 provision isn’t a continuation of key stage 4. It should be preparing young people for adulthood: employment or meaningful occupation, independent living, community participation and managing their own health. A sixth form running a smaller version of the main school curriculum isn’t doing the job.

They’re young adults. Capacity, consent and choice all become live. At eighteen, decisions that were the parents’ become the young person’s, subject to capacity. Staff need to understand mental capacity principles and the difference between supporting a decision and making it.

Safeguarding shifts. Adult safeguarding sits alongside child protection, and the risks change. Exploitation, online harm, relationships and finances all look different for a nineteen year old than for a fourteen year old.

The end is visible. EHCPs can continue to 25, but they don’t have to, and a plan can cease when outcomes are met. Transition planning isn’t a Year 13 activity. It should start well before.

What should an interim leader look at first?

Five things, and they’ll tell you most of what you need to know within a fortnight.

Destinations. Where did last year’s leavers go, and where are they now? Not what was planned. What actually happened. If nobody can answer this, that’s the finding, and an inclusion review will usually surface why.

Study programmes against EHCP outcomes. Take five young people and trace their timetable back to their plan. Does what they do on a Tuesday move them towards what they were assessed as needing? This exercise is uncomfortable and it’s the fastest read available.

Annual reviews. Are they on time, are they focused on preparation for adulthood, and are the young people actually participating in them rather than being discussed?

Work experience and external opportunity. How much of the week is spent outside the building? A post-16 provision where young people spend five days in the same classrooms they’ve used since Year 7 is not preparing anyone for adulthood.

Staffing and expertise. Who’s teaching here, what’s their background, and does the quality of teaching get monitored here as it does in the main school, and were they chosen for post-16 or assigned to it? This is often where the honest answer sits.

The leadership question underneath it

One of the most common challenges is that post-16 problems in special schools are not curriculum problems at all. They’re structural.

Ask who leads post-16 and you’ll often get a hesitation. There may be a head of sixth form with no time allocated, or a deputy who holds it alongside three other things, or nobody at all with the headteacher nominally covering it.

That’s the finding. A provision without a named leader who has actual capacity will drift, however good the individual staff are.

An interim who identifies this has done something useful, but be realistic about what can be fixed in a term. Naming a leader, giving them time, and setting three priorities is achievable. Redesigning a curriculum isn’t, and shouldn’t be attempted by someone who’s leaving.

Working with commissioners on post-16

The funding conversation is different here and it’s worth understanding.

Post-16 places are commissioned differently from school places, and continuation is not automatic. A placing authority reviewing a young person’s plan at seventeen will be asking whether the provision is still the right one and what the exit route looks like.

A school that can answer those questions with evidence, showing progress towards adulthood outcomes and a clear destination plan, holds those conversations from a strong position. One that can’t will find placements challenged.

During a leadership gap, make sure someone is holding these conversations rather than letting them become administrative. From our experience this is exactly the thing that slips, and it slips quietly until a placement is questioned.

Should post-16 have its own interim leader?

Sometimes, and it’s an option boards rarely consider.

Where the main school is stable and post-16 is the weak part, an interim leader for post-16 specifically, two days a week for a term, is a small and targeted commitment. It’s considerably cheaper than headship cover and it addresses the actual problem.

Where the whole school needs interim leadership, make sure post-16 is named in the brief. Otherwise an interim will attend to the main school, entirely reasonably, and the sixth form will get another term of nobody looking at it.

From our experience

The most common thing we find is a post-16 provision that everyone is fond of and nobody has examined. Staff are kind, young people are happy, families are content, and the destinations tell a different story.

That’s a genuinely difficult conversation to have, because nothing is obviously wrong. Many leaders tell us they’d sensed it for a while without being able to name it, and that seeing the destination data laid out was the moment it became undeniable.

The second pattern is preparation for adulthood being treated as a Year 13 activity. Schools that do this well start it at fourteen, build it into every annual review, and have young people practising independence long before the last year.

A common misconception

“Our young people are happy and settled, so post-16 is working.”

Happy and settled matters enormously, and no one should dismiss it. But it isn’t the same as prepared.

A young person can have a contented, well supported three years in a sixth form and leave at nineteen with no work experience, no travel training, no experience of making decisions and no destination other than a day service. That’s a comfortable provision rather than an effective one.

The test isn’t whether young people enjoy being there. It’s whether they leave with more of a life available to them than when they arrived. That’s what post-16 is for, and it’s the question a board should be asking whoever leads it.

Questions for leaders and proprietors

• Where are last year’s leavers now, and how do we know?
• Who leads post-16 here, and how much time do they actually have for it?
• How many hours a week do our young people spend outside the building?
• Do our annual reviews from Year 9 talk about employment, independence and community?
• If a commissioner challenged a post-16 placement tomorrow, could we evidence why it’s right?

Our perspective

Post-16 is the part of a special school where the stakes are highest and the scrutiny is lowest. It’s also the part where an interim leader can often add the most value in a short time, precisely because nobody has looked at it recently.

Name it in the brief. Ask for the destination data. Trace a few timetables back to the plans. Be honest about what you find, and set two or three achievable priorities rather than attempting a redesign.

The young people in your sixth form have a few years left before the support around them changes completely. What happens in those years determines a great deal about the rest of their lives, and that’s worth a leadership team’s proper attention even during a difficult period.