Commissioned by
Teaching children in Bedford who cannot be in school
Commissioned by Bedford Borough Council
Commissioned by Bedford Borough Council
Not on any school's roll, and not being educated anywhere else. Across England the same count reached 34,700. That is 0.3% of pupils in Bedford, against 0.4% across the country.
A child in Bedford who needs an education, health and care plan receives it inside the twenty weeks the law allows in most cases: 94% of new plans were issued in time in 2025, against 46% across England.
When a child cannot attend school, the obligation to keep educating them does not pause. It moves to the local authority. In practice the child is still on a school roll, still known to a head of year, and still waiting for someone to arrange something.
Where a child of compulsory school age would not otherwise receive suitable education, the local authority must arrange it.
Section 19, Education Act 1996
secondary pupil enrolments in Bedford were persistently absent, missing a tenth or more of their sessions, 2024/25.
That is 24.4% of enrolments in Bedford, against 23.4% across England.
Department for Education, Pupil absence in schools in England, released 26 March 2026.
In Bedford last term, the thing that got arranged was Purple Ruler, commissioned by Bedford Borough Council directly rather than school by school. This page sets out exactly what that amounted to over one term.
Between 5 January 2026 and 31 March 2026, this is what Purple Ruler taught for children in Bedford, every lesson of it commissioned by Bedford Borough Council directly. Every figure counts only sessions that actually ran.
lessons the council commissioned this term were places held open, and none was attended. The timetable ran and a teacher was allocated for each subject; the placement did not start.
Purple Ruler attendance records for the children the council placed, 2025/26, extracted 27 August 2026.
Purple Ruler teaches children across England who cannot get into a classroom. The teachers, the timetable and the class groups are the same wherever a child is placed. What follows is only the Bedford part of that, and it is drawn from this authority's own record rather than from anything we say about ourselves.
Bedford runs a little above the England rate for persistent absence. It is not a dramatic gap and it is a real one, and the section above has the figures. What it means here is that the pressure is steady rather than exceptional, which is the kind that gets absorbed year after year until somebody counts it. Every place counted here was commissioned by Bedford Borough Council itself, for children it placed. There is one arrangement and the accountability for it sits in one place.
What runs in Bedford is curriculum-matched teaching, which appears on an invoice as Blueprint: lessons built on the child's own school syllabus, so that nothing is lost while they are out of the room. The teaching here is the core curriculum, English, maths and science, which is the minimum a child needs to keep a year from being lost. Almost all of this is recent. The arrangement in Bedford is young, which is worth knowing in both directions: there is less history to judge it on, and what is there was built quickly.
This is also where being a national provider stops being a boast and starts being the mechanism. A class is not built around one school or one authority. Children are grouped across both, so a small number in Bedford who could never fill a class alone are taught in a full one, at their own year and their own level, by a teacher who has the subject. It is why a place can start in days rather than at the start of a term, and it is the answer to the question every authority asks first, which is how this can possibly work for the numbers they are actually holding.
Where a register is too thin to stand a figure up, this page prints nothing rather than a number it cannot defend. What it can show is that the offer was real: the timetable ran and the teaching was staffed, for every week it was needed.
No Bedford school holds its own arrangement with us. Every lesson on this page was bought by the council in its own name, for a child the authority placed directly. One referral route, one invoice, one reporting line.
It also sets what we can honestly count. A child placed by the authority has no school record with us, so the number of children behind these lessons is the council's to state and not ours. We count what we taught, which is 120 lessons across 40 separate days.
This is our first term with Bedford Borough Council. Everything above is what the arrangement has done so far, rather than a sample of something longer running.
Children out of the classroom still sat a real timetable. Across the term we taught 3 subjects in Bedford, led by the core three.
Sixty seconds on the provision behind these lessons.
Used for: Pupils without a school place, or unable to attend one.
A full timetable taught live, with daily registration, for pupils who are not attending a school site.
The figures in these four boxes describe the provision across all our work, not this authority. Every other number on this page is this authority’s own.
After a lesson we ask the child what they thought of it. This is every answer we have so far, and it is a small number: 23 answers from 9 maths groups in Purple Ruler Academy between 20 July and 19 August 2026. They are not this authority's children. We publish it because it is the only thing on this page said by a child rather than about one.
Purple Ruler, student feedback survey, 20 July to 19 August 2026. Counts rather than percentages, because a percentage off twenty-two answers reads like a survey of thousands. Two questions are left out on purpose: whether the child had a technical problem, and whether they had anything to report, which is a safeguarding route rather than a view of the teaching.
Claire's daughter stopped being able to attend school at 13. She sat her GCSEs this summer. Claire is in Buckinghamshire rather than here, so this is a borrowed voice like the school account further down, and her daughter is never named.
Claire Ball, parent of a Purple Ruler learner. Three minutes on what changed, in her own words. Captions are on the picture throughout.
Chris Cassidy, Vice Principal at The Centre School, in Cambridgeshire. The provision described here is the same one running in your area, commissioned the same way.
The common wisdom is that the more complex a child’s needs, the less online teaching can do for them. A specialist school found the opposite. The full account is published, with their name on it.
Read the accountChris Cassidy, The Centre School. Five minutes on what changed for one pupil. Captions are on the picture throughout.
It was more cost-effective for us to go through Purple Ruler.
Bal GillLondon Borough of Barking and Dagenham
Bal Gill, London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. The full interview, five minutes, on why the borough moved its home tuition to us. Captions are on the picture throughout.
Bal Gill commissions for London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, not for Bedford Borough Council. It is quoted here because it is the one commissioner voice we hold that is signed off for publication, and a commissioner's own words are worth more than ours even when they are somebody else's.
Provision that discharges a statutory duty has to stand up to scrutiny. These are the mechanisms behind every lesson counted on this page.
Every lesson is taught by an experienced teacher. This is school provision delivered online, not supplementary tutoring.
Lessons are recorded, staff are DBS checked, and safeguarding follows KCSIE. A designated lead is reachable throughout the school day, and when a child misses a lesson somebody rings home the same day.
Sessions are observed and graded against a rubric, so quality is measured continuously rather than reported after the fact.
Each placement produces an attendance and progress record the school and the authority can use as evidence that the duty is being met.
Bedford Borough Council already commissions places from Purple Ruler directly, and did so 120 times last term. No Bedford school holds its own arrangement with us, so the council is the only route into this provision in the authority. That is what makes it straightforward to widen: the contract, the safeguarding and the reporting line are all already in place and have run for a term. What changes is how many children can reach them.
Every page like this one proves what was delivered and then stops. This is the part a commissioner actually asks about.
Bedford Borough Council commissions the places itself, so a referral goes straight to us rather than through a school: one route in, one invoice, one reporting line.
Which children you are trying to place, which of the four provisions fits each of them, and what it would cost. Thirty minutes is enough, and the calendar below shows real times in your own timezone.
Each placement produces an attendance and progress record the school and the authority can both use as evidence, and a designated safeguarding lead reachable through the school day.
Nothing about attendance or exam results. Those belong to whoever arranged the place, and the figures here count lessons we delivered.
Every authority on this list has its own page built the same way, from its own records, with the same refusals about what may and may not be claimed. The nearest to you are Cambridgeshire, Enfield and Brent. Reading one of them is the quickest way to judge whether what you have read here is a pattern or a coincidence.
Every authority we work in is listed on the index.
We can walk through this term's delivery, how the referral route has worked in practice, and what widening the arrangement would look like.
Book a 30-minute conversation at purpleruler.com/book · hello@purpleruler.com
Take the short version of Bedford instead. It is this page with the figures, the schools and the subjects kept and the long reading taken out, built for forwarding to somebody who will not read all of this, and it needs nothing from you.
Your contact for Bedford
Daniel Demarmels
Looks after our work across the south of England, which includes Bedford.
daniel.demarmels@purpleruler.com · put time straight in their diary
The photograph. Illustrative, from our own library. It is not a photograph of a child we teach, and no child on this page is pictured.
Our figures. Lesson counts are taken from Purple Ruler's own delivery records for the term stated, counting only sessions that ran and were completed. Cancelled and flagged sessions are excluded. Places here were commissioned by the authority rather than by its schools, so no school or placement count is reported: a child placed centrally has no school record with us.
Department for Education, Children missing education, Autumn term 2025/26, published 2026-01-15.
Department for Education, Education, health and care plans, calendar year 2025, published 2026-09-17.
3,127 (2024/25): Department for Education, Pupil absence in schools in England, released 26 March 2026.
This page reports delivery only. It makes no claim about attendance rates or examination outcomes.
Marks and attribution. Bedford Borough Council commissions provision from Purple Ruler directly. Its mark identifies the authority this report covers. The report is ours and is not published on the council's behalf. School marks are the property of their schools.
