Featherstone Academy

The impact on attendance that EDClass has had is that been able to support an increase of 2.7 per cent increase in the first term of this academic year (2015) because students are engaged in an alternative provision whilst excluded. This often has not been the case in other alternative providers we have set up through failure to engage or attend through choice or transport issues. This is not the case with EDClass as we have set it up in the comfort of their own home after we have undertaken appropriate and legal safeguarding measures to ensure the student is in the right and safe environment to continue their off-site education.

EDClass, because it is all interfaced related students of this day of age quite often prefer to interact in that measure and they almost don’t feel like they are learning and they don’t feel like it is school work, because of the way it is set up and how they engage with it. I cannot recommend EDClass highly enough in terms of how it has supported the behaviour transformation at the Featherstone Academy and I would willingly endorse it to any other educational establishment in the country that is looking to make a difference to their school’s behaviour and overall school culture.

What is a real bonus for the student is how they can see how they are making progress because the work is so tailored to them in their personalised pathways they actually demonstrate a markable amount of progress. With that intrinsic motivation and being rewarded with being able to see the personal progress made themselves is a really powerful tool to changing some of our students, some of real hard-to-reach student behaviour.

Also, EDClass has saved the academy many thousands of pounds this academic year because we use it as our first port of call for alternative provision. The impact of EDClass is that we can now support students' learning whilst they are excluded from the academy. Therefore, when they return from their exclusion they have not fallen behind their peers in terms of their learning and they are able to be seamlessly reintegrated back into mainstream lessons without any detriment to their education.

We are avoiding bounce-back exclusions where students return back to mainstream lessons because the gaps in their knowledge can often lead to low-level disruption or further disruption which ends up as a repeat fixed term exclusion – but EDClass fills that gap and students are far better supported in their learning both once on exclusion and when on return from exclusion.