Commissioned by
Teaching children in Bolton who cannot be in school
Commissioned by Bolton Council
Commissioned by Bolton Council
0.2% of pupils here, against 0.4% nationally. The number is small and it is not nothing: 80 children were on no school's roll and not being educated anywhere else when schools last counted, and each of them is one place that has to be found.
A child in Bolton who needs an education, health and care plan receives it inside the twenty weeks the law allows in most cases: 86% 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 Bolton were persistently absent, missing a tenth or more of their sessions, 2024/25.
That is 23.1% of enrolments in Bolton, against 23.4% across England.
Department for Education, Pupil absence in schools in England, released 26 March 2026.
In Bolton last term, the thing that got arranged was Purple Ruler, commissioned by Bolton 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 Bolton, every lesson of it commissioned by Bolton Council directly. Every figure counts only sessions that actually ran.
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 Bolton part of that, and it is drawn from this authority's own record rather than from anything we say about ourselves.
Bolton sits level with the country on persistent absence. The children who cannot attend are not an unusual number here, only an unsolved one, and the question the section above raises is the ordinary one every authority is holding: what happens between a place being needed and a place being found. Every place counted here was commissioned by Bolton Council itself, for children it placed. There is one arrangement and the accountability for it sits in one place.
What runs in Bolton is a full-time online school, which appears on an invoice as Academy: a complete timetable for a child who cannot attend any physical setting. The timetable here runs well past the core. Alongside English, maths and science we have taught creative studies, PE and PSHE, which is what makes it a school day rather than a holding pattern. The work in Bolton is growing rather than settled. A meaningful share of everything we have ever taught here happened in this one term.
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 Bolton 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.
The figure above worth pausing on is not how many lessons ran but who taught them. It is overwhelmingly the same teacher each week rather than whoever was free. For a child whose year has come apart, and who has usually had a great many adults pass through it, that consistency is not a detail. It is often the thing that makes the rest possible.
No Bolton 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 284 lessons across 54 separate days.
Children out of the classroom still sat a real timetable. Across the term we taught 6 subjects in Bolton, 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.
Oscar Marshall, Lancashire County Council. The provision described here is the same one running in your area, commissioned the same way.
The duty is fixed and it is quick: provision has to be in place by the sixth day of an exclusion. What an authority needs from a provider is therefore not a brochure but a response, and the things that decide whether a placement works are the ordinary ones, which are speed, accuracy and being told what is happening without having to chase it.
The point he closes on is the one worth keeping. There may be numbers on a screen, but at the end of each of them is a child.
Oscar Marshall, Lancashire County Council. Just under three minutes on the six-day duty, and on what an authority needs from a provider it places children with. Captions are on the picture throughout.
One partner account is published in full, and it is not this one. The Centre School, a specialist school in Cambridgeshire, expected online teaching to do less for its most complex pupils and found the opposite.
Read the accountIt 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 Bolton 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.
Across spring term 2026, 93.0% of lessons were taught by that class's own teacher, across the 6 Bolton classes that met more than once. A class that met once cannot show a change of teacher. This measures the teaching we delivered, not whether a child was present. Purple Ruler teaching records.
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.
Bolton Council already commissions places from Purple Ruler directly, and did so 284 times last term. No Bolton 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.
Bolton 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 Manchester, Lancashire and Wirral. 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 Bolton 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 Bolton
Ross Clements
Looks after our work across the north of England, which includes Bolton.
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.
5,125 (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. Bolton 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.
