Interim Leadership for Unregistered Alternative Provision Seeking Registration

A practical guide for alternative provision directors and proprietors

Plenty of alternative provision operates entirely lawfully without registering as an independent school, because it doesn’t meet the threshold. Some provision has grown past that threshold without anyone noticing.

Many AP directors tell us the question first reached them from a commissioner rather than from a regulator, and that they were genuinely unsure of the answer. It’s an understandable position. The provision grew a few pupils at a time, the hours crept up, and nobody sat down and checked where the line was.

This guide sets out how to work out where you stand and why registration is a leadership problem rather than a paperwork one.

When does alternative provision have to register?

A setting must register as an independent school where it meets the statutory definition, which broadly turns on the number of pupils, their characteristics and whether the education provided is full time.

The elements that matter are the pupil numbers, whether any of those pupils have an EHCP or are looked after, and whether what you deliver amounts to full time education. Where the threshold is met, registration is a legal requirement rather than a choice, and operating without it’s a criminal offence.

Two things make this harder than it sounds.

“Full time” isn’t defined by a single number of hours. It’s a judgement about whether the provision constitutes all or substantially all of a pupil’s education. A provider delivering twelve hours a week to a young person receiving nothing else may be closer to the line than one delivering twenty hours to pupils who are also on a school roll.

The threshold can be crossed by accident. Taking one more pupil with an EHCP, or extending your day, can change your position without any decision having been made.

Because the assessment is fact specific, take proper advice on your own circumstances rather than relying on any general description, including this one. A registration assessment will tell you where you actually stand.

Working out where you stand

Four things to establish, honestly, before anything else.

How many pupils attend, and on what basis? Not your capacity. Your actual roll, including anyone attending part time.

How many have an EHCP, and how many are looked after? This changes the threshold materially.

How many hours does each pupil receive, and are they receiving education anywhere else? The second half of that question is the one providers most often skip.

Has any of this changed in the last year? Growth is what moves settings across the line.

Write it down. Most providers who think they might be close discover the answer within an afternoon once they have the actual numbers in front of them rather than an impression of them.

What does registration involve?

Considerably more than an application form.

You’ll need to demonstrate that the provision is likely to meet the Independent School Standards once registered. In practice that means a policy set that describes how your provision actually works, safeguarding arrangements that are operating rather than planned, a curriculum that meets the standards for the pupils you serve, premises that comply, staffing and safer recruitment including a single central record, and leadership that can demonstrate it understands all of it.

There’s a pre-registration inspection, and the school can’t admit pupils as a registered independent school until registration is granted.

The timeline is measured in months rather than weeks, and applications that aren’t ready are the main reason it takes longer.

Why is this a leadership problem?

Because everything registration assesses is the work a school leader does.

The curriculum, the safeguarding arrangements, the policies, the staffing structure, the compliance position. These aren’t administrative tasks that a director can complete alongside running the provision. They’re the substance of school leadership, and an AP that has grown from a small informal provision frequently has nobody who has done this before.

There’s a second dimension. Registration changes what your provision is. You become a school, inspected as one, with all the standards that follow. A provider that registers without leadership capable of operating at that level has solved a legal problem and created an operational one.

The young people you work with are the reason this matters. Many of them are in your provision because a school did not work for them. Becoming a registered school without the leadership to run one well isn’t in their interests, whatever it does for your compliance position.

How does interim leadership help?

Three ways, and the first is usually decisive.

Experience of having done it. An interim leader who has taken a setting through registration knows what the application needs, what a pre-registration inspection tests, and which of the many things on your list actually matter. That knowledge shortens the process considerably.

Credibility. An application naming an experienced leader as the person who has prepared the arrangements reads very differently from one that doesn’t.

Capacity. Preparing for registration is a substantial piece of work running alongside the whole of the ordinary job. A director trying to do both will do neither well, and the part that suffers is usually the provision.

The arrangement is frequently part time, two or three days a week rising as you approach submission, which is more affordable than providers expect.

What if you may already be operating unregistered?

Act rather than wait, and take advice immediately.

Operating an unregistered independent school is a criminal offence, so this is a matter for a solicitor rather than a consultant in the first instance. What we’d say is that providers who identify the issue themselves and move quickly to address it are in a materially better position than those who wait to be told.

Practically, that usually means taking legal advice, establishing your actual position with evidence, deciding whether to reduce provision below the threshold or to register, and being open with your commissioning authorities about what you’re doing.

That last point is uncomfortable and it’s right. A local authority that discovers the issue independently will react far more strongly than one you told.

What doesn’t work is continuing while hoping the question doesn’t arise. It arises, usually through a commissioner or a parent, and by then your options are narrower.

From our experience

From our experience, almost nobody sets out to operate unregistered. It happens through growth.

A provision starts with six young people attending part time alongside their schools. Three years later it has twenty two, half of them full time, several with EHCPs and no other education. Every individual decision was reasonable and nobody stood back and asked where the line was.

Many leaders tell us they had a vague sense the question applied to them and did not know who to ask. The answer is usually available in an afternoon once someone looks at the actual numbers.

We often see providers who register and then struggle, because nobody had thought about what operating as a school would require. Registration is the start of the obligation rather than the end of the process, and the settings that manage it well got leadership in place before submitting rather than afterwards.

A common misconception

“We’re alternative provision, not a school, so registration doesn’t apply to us.”

What you call yourself doesn’t determine your legal position. What determines it’s how the provision actually operates: how many young people attend, their characteristics, and whether what you deliver amounts to full time education.

A provider describing itself as a therapeutic programme, a vocational centre or a mentoring service can still meet the definition of an independent school. Equally, plenty of provision that looks school-like sits legitimately below the threshold.

The only way to know is to look at the facts rather than the label. And the young people attending deserve a provider who has checked, because the consequences of getting it wrong fall on them as much as on you.

Questions for providers

• Do we know our actual pupil numbers, hours and EHCP profile, in writing?
• How many of our young people receive no education anywhere else?
• Has anything changed in the last year that could have moved our position?
• Have we taken proper advice, or are we relying on an impression?
• If we register, who has the experience to lead a registered school?

Our perspective

Registration is a legal question with a leadership answer, and providers who treat it only as paperwork struggle on both counts.

Establish your actual position with real numbers. Take proper advice rather than relying on general guidance. If you need to register, get experienced leadership in before you submit rather than after. And be open with your commissioners throughout.

Every provider’s circumstances are different, but the ones that come through this well treated it as an opportunity to strengthen the provision rather than a hurdle to clear. That’s the outcome that actually helps the young people in your setting, who have usually had one experience of education that did not work and are relying on you for a better one.