Most secondary schools, in most countries, run a very strict timetable. Every second of the day is planned and every day runs on a weekly or fortnightly routine. It’s hoped that this will provide a number of things: structure, security and a much easier job for the poor teacher tasked with doing the timetabling.

But the coronavirus pandemic, the increase in disclosures around mental health, and the need to cater for a broad spectrum of pupils have all fed into a narrative that the school day in September needs to be different. It needs to be more adaptive, more flexible and more holistic.

So more like alternative provision? As mainstream schools look to loosen the shackles around the school day, should they be imitating pupil-referral units?

Certainly, AP is usually very different to mainstream when it comes to the school day and what it consists of. At Millside School, a pupil-referral unit that is part of Haybrook College, in Slough, Berkshire, for example, the timetable is pretty relaxed.

“We have a very short assembly,” explains Lou West, headteacher at Millside.

“Some students will then do two 45-minute lessons, perhaps English and maths, and these will be run by a nurture teacher that runs both lessons.

“We then have a supervised breaktime where the students choose to do an activity, be it sports or playing cards, and then they will perhaps go on to 45 minutes of emotional literacy support.”

Nikki Cunningham-Smith, assistant head at an AP setting in Gloucestershire, says her school runs an even more changeable approach: the timetable can be completely different from day to day. “We don’t have a strict, stringent timetable like you’d find in a mainstream,” she says. “We look at each day and see what is or isn’t working and whether lessons need to be longer or shorter. We can basically react to the data that we are getting.”

Lesson content is also changeable in AP: personalised curriculum offers are common, following a student’s interests is a staple of many schemes of work, and pastoral lessons have much more prominence.

In many ways, this is what some have called for in mainstream schools in September. The oft-mentioned “recovery curriculum” is one that is more personal, adaptive and pastoral than schools are used to.

So should AP settings have been on every mainstream school leader’s visit list back in July? Just reading the above will have made a mainstream secondary timetabler turn white with panic. Even the staggered starts that some schools are adopting for September are causing havoc.

Part of the problem is scale. Your average pupil-referral unit is several times smaller than a large secondary school. So there are far fewer students and far fewer teachers to move around. There are also often far more extensive curriculum restrictions put on mainstream secondary schools.

“We are not bound to a national curriculum or exam offer,” explains John Bradshaw, headteacher at London East Alternative Provision (LEAP). “Ofsted and the Department for Education understand the benefit of our flexible pathways, which are designed to meet the needs of our particular pupils, which includes hair and beauty, hospitality and catering, cycle maintenance and construction, plus a good GCSE offer. At the end of the year, we’re accountable for progress from starting points - we are not judged by Progress 8 and EBacc. This is the key flexibility that AP has.”

West adds that to make such a timetable work, staffing has to be as high, and class sizes have to be as low, as in an AP setting.

“We have small classes of seven to eight students, and each class has a teacher and a learning mentor. Children simply can’t be given this level of support in mainstream classes of 30 to 35 students. I think that would be very difficult,” she says.

All in all, Bradshaw says a simple imitation of AP timetabling is unlikely to be plausible.

“I think that mainstream schools would struggle to be as flexible as AP because of the accountability measures”, he adds.

The time for flexibility

However, those working in AP do think that a little more flexibility could be built into mainstream secondary schools and that now may be a perfect time to do it.

For example, Bradshaw believes that curriculum may be an area where lessons from AP could be learned.

“The reason students find themselves at LEAP is for what’s often called ongoing low-level disruption,” he says. “This can sometimes be linked to unidentified SEND and certainly a curriculum offer that isn’t meeting their needs or interests. We haven’t yet created a curriculum that would remove the need for good ‘alternatives’ for a small percentage of the school population.”

Wst also thinks a more holistic offering could be introduced and given prominence on the timetable. “I think mainstream could do a lot more therapeutic work,” she explains. “We have staff who are trained counsellors so they know the children, and students are given 45-minute therapeutic sessions.

“That is massive for our young people, and many of them hold it together for the fact they know they have got their counselling session the following week.

“All students could also benefit from mentoring. If more mainstream staff were trained up in that way - to better deal with behaviour management and de-escalation - that would also make a huge difference.”

Time is, of course, the issue. With the new school year just weeks away, incorporating these elements would be a struggle if the timetable was a pretty fluid beast. But with months of face-to-face, in-school teaching time having been missed thanks to the lockdown, and the government insisting that GCSE exams will take place next year, will any of these suggestions be possible?

The argument of some is that if we really want children to succeed, then we have to make them possible.

Carly Page is a freelance writer

This article originally appeared in the 21 August 2020 issue under the headline “Can schools learn from AP timetables?”