Unaccredited online schools

Please provide the following information:

1. The total number of children the council has funded to attend unaccredited online schools in each of the past eight academic years (2017/2018 through to 2024/2025 inclusive). Within each academic year, please break down the total by: a. Sex, i.e. how many of these children are male and how many are female.

b. Age or 'Key Stage' year.

c. Ethnicity.

d. The proportion of these children that qualify/qualified for free school meals (but not including infant free school meals).

e. The proportion of these children that have/had special educational needs.

2. The total amount the council has spent on this attendance at unaccredited online schools in each of the past eight academic years (2017/2018 through to 2024/2025 inclusive).

3. The mean cost per placement in an unaccredited online school in each of the past eight academic years (2017/2018 through to 2024/2025 inclusive).

4. The median cost per placement in an unaccredited online school in each of the past eight academic years (2017/2018 through to 2024/2025 inclusive).

5. The names of the unaccredited online school providers, or the top five most used unaccredited online school providers in each of the past eight academic years (2017/2018 through to 2024/2025 inclusive)

FOI 12652773 – Questions regarding the above response

1. You say Lincolnshire does not use unaccredited online schools to provide full time education to any pupils. Does the council use unaccredited online schools to provide part time or other non-full time education to any pupils? If so, please could you provide data for this adjusted definition as per my original queries?

2. If the answer is still zero, does the council have a policy to only use accredited providers?

3. Would the council know/hold the data if individual schools were funding unaccredited online providers?

I.e. does the council's response definitively mean no unaccredited online schools have been/are publicly funded within the local authority?

Or might schools be funding providers without the council's knowledge, because it does not hold/collect this data from schools?

I can confirm that the information requested is held by Lincolnshire County Council. I have detailed below the information that is being released to you.

Please see the table attached. This answers Questions 1-4 of the original enquiry.

Please note the following:

A. No information is held in relation to the enquiry before financial year 2021/2022.

B. Whilst information relating to 'Sex', 'Ethnicity' and 'Free School Meals' is held, it is not held on the recorded information the relevant service areas hold in relation to the enquiry. To provide it will mean manually searching the numbers involved and will take over 18 hours to find, extract and record. Information is provided in regards to 'Key Stage' and 'SEN' as this is held in a readily available format in relation to the cohort under discussion; however, please note that the latter only has information recorded and readily available in relation to where an Education Health and Care Plan is present as opposed to wider SEN.

C. Information in relation to Permanently Excluded (PEX) Pupils is stored on an academic year basis. Information in relation to non-PEX Pupils is recorded on a financial year basis to monitor spend. As you would expect, information for overall expenditure is for the financial year. It is not possible to break down the PEX numbers accessing unaccredited online schools by financial year without breaking the 18-hour threshold. Numbers may not therefore fully correspond to the expenditure in a given financial year as the PEX cohort, which makes up the overwhelming majority of numbers from 2023/24 onwards, is recorded by academic year.

D. The mean costs and median costs provided on the Excel spreadsheet relate only to non-PEX placements. PEX placements are largely transitional and liable to be short-term nature. This means providing a median cost is highly unreliable as it will be very much skewed towards those in provision for a short period and away from those that might remain in provision for a longer term. In the attached table, the mean charge per hour has been provided to show the average rate incurred for all such placements, both short and long-term.

5. You can find the Council's contracts for Alternative Provision on the ProActis website - https://procontract.due-north.com/Login. If you select 'Contracts' from the menu and then 'Contracts Register' and then 'View Register' you can export the Contracts Register for Lincolnshire County Council using the available filter and then filter the downloaded Excel document by Department for 'Children's Commissioning' and find the Alternative Provision providers. For the follow-up questions received after our request for clarification on the definition, please find response as follows:

1. You say Lincolnshire does not use unaccredited online schools to provide full time education to any pupils. Does the council use unaccredited online schools to provide part time or other non-full time education to any pupils? If so, please could you provide data for this adjusted definition as per my original queries? See table attached - this has now been provided.

2. If the answer is still zero, does the council have a policy to only use accredited providers? Not Applicable.

3. Would the council know/hold the data if individual schools were funding unaccredited online providers? I.e. does the council's response definitively mean no unaccredited online schools have been/are publicly funded within the local authority?

Or might schools be funding providers without the council's knowledge, because it does not hold/collect this data from schools?

The Council asks schools to voluntarily report information relating to any Alternative Provision they commission directly. This is reported every half-term. The Council only receives information from those schools that wish to report use of alternative provision. The most recent report suggests that schools who respond are not using online providers.

 Should you require the attachment mentioned above please contact customerinformationservice@lincolnshire.gov.uk with the below reference number and this can be provided.