Length of school day rationale
Chaselea Alternative Provision Academy (CAPA) is a Pupil Referral Unit (PRU) set in Cannock, Staffordshire. The school primarily serves the districts of Cannock Chase and South Staffordshire with pupils who have been permanently excluded from their education provision, pupils who their current provision commission a placement, or pupils who are hard to place and have moved into the local authority (LA). The overwhelming majority of pupils arrive at CAPA disengaged with education, often having spent large periods of time without education, and displaying diagnosed and undiagnosed special needs.
CAPA work with the pupils and their families to build relationships and emotional resilience so that they can return to an alternative high school. Or it might be that the young person needs some intervention that will help them to remain in their current secondary setting. It could be that our expertise is being used to identify a pupil’s special educational needs and/or disability (SEND) and obtain an Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP) that will support the young person in finding their appropriate educational setting both now and in the future.
The ‘traditional’ five, one-hour lessons, five days a week does not meet the needs of the pupils that are attending CAPA. If that were the case, then the young people would still be in their mainstream setting. The complex range of needs of the pupils that are on site make the afternoon lessons particularly challenging. Quite frankly, they have burnt-up any energies that they had in the morning lessons. Therefore, CAPA have lessons of forty minutes five times during the ‘normal’ day. The day also begins with a ‘soft landing’ of tutor time to say hello and have some breakfast. Following lesson 5, pupil attend afternoon tutor time to check-in and reflect at how the day has gone. The final session of the each day is an enrichment period of thirty minutes where pupils choose from a number of different activities to attend.
The ‘normal’ day begins at 08:45 and then ends at 14:00, Monday to Friday. This is five hours and fifteen minutes each day, twenty-six hours and fifteen minutes per week. Pupils are welcome to remain on site if they are completing work and wish to.
A nurture group called 7/8 is available for those pupils who really cannot access the site when other pupils are present and starts at 14:20 when the other pupils have left. This is a temporary provision with the aim of reintegration back into the main cohort or moving to their next provision.
In the majority of cases, a pupil’s attendance improves from their previous setting(s) when they attend CAPA.
The amount of time the pupils attend the main site is reviewed yearly. The aspiration is to increase the length of engagement both inside the classroom outside with further enrichment.