Purple Ruler
Commissioned byEnfield Borough Council

Teaching children in Enfield who cannot be in school

Commissioned by Enfield Borough Council, and by 1 Enfield school

In Enfield

Enfield has fewer children missing education than most of England

0.2% of pupils here, against 0.4% nationally. The number is small and it is not nothing: 110 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 Enfield who needs an education, health and care plan usually receives it inside the twenty weeks the law allows: 67% of new plans were issued in time in 2025, against 46% across England.

Why this matters

The duty sits with the authority. The children sit in your schools.

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

The term in numbers

What we delivered, spring term 2026

2,114lessons deliveredSessions that ran and were completed. Cancelled and flagged sessions are excluded.
1school with lessons running this termOut of 1 Enfield school engaged with Purple Ruler.
55separate days of teachingProvision ran across the term, not in a single block.
6school placements to dateEvery place taken up at a school in Enfield across the whole of our work there. Children Enfield Borough Council placed directly are counted in the lessons above, not here.
2,584lessons in Enfield in totalEverything Purple Ruler has taught in the authority since the work began, of which this term is the most recent part.

Where the lessons came from

114bought by schoolsPlaces arranged by 1 school in Enfield, one child at a time.
2,000bought by Enfield Borough CouncilPlaces the authority commissioned directly, in its own name. Of these, 1,385 under Enfield Borough Council and 615 under its elective home education arrangement.
What is counted. A lesson counts once it has run and been completed. Sessions that were cancelled, or flagged for review, are left out, so these are lessons delivered rather than lessons attended. Attendance and progress for the children Enfield Borough Council places with us are reported to you separately rather than on this page. Where a school arranged the place, they go to that school.
Where we work

1 Enfield school already works with us

These are the schools in the authority that have brought Purple Ruler in for at least one child. Individual referral numbers are each school's own business, so they are not published here.

Oasis Academy Enfield logo
Oasis Academy Enfield
What we taught

A full curriculum, not a holding pattern

Children out of the classroom still sat a real timetable. Across the term we taught 4 subjects in Enfield, led by the core three.

English Combined
724
Maths
723
Science
604
Science Combined
63

Provision in use across Enfield

Schools choose the provision that fits the child. These are the four in use across the authority, and how many schools use each.

Category A

Academy

A full-time online school place for a child who cannot attend any physical setting.

1school
Category B

Blueprint

Curriculum-matched teaching that keeps a child on their own school's syllabus while they are out of the room.

1school
Category D

Distinction

Targeted teaching aimed squarely at exams and attainment.

1school
The opportunity

What this could be if Enfield widened it

The route already exists. The question is who else uses it.

Enfield Borough Council already commissions places from Purple Ruler directly, and did so 2,000 times last term. Alongside it, 1 Enfield school holds its own arrangement with us, negotiated separately. The two are not joined up, and neither is the picture of which children are in provision. Widening the central arrangement is a smaller step than starting one.

  • One arrangement covering every Enfield school, so a school does not have to negotiate its own.
  • The provision you already buy, extended to the children who are still waiting on something to be arranged.
  • One reporting line back to the authority, covering every child placed through it, whoever referred them.
  • Pay for what runs. No minimum, no empty seats held open.
Enfield Borough Council

Talk to us about Enfield

We can walk through this term's delivery, the schools involved, and what an authority-wide arrangement would look like in practice.

Book a 30-minute conversation at purpleruler.com/book · hello@purpleruler.com

This is the short version

Every figure here is drawn from the same record as the full Enfield page, which also carries what the children said, what the record shows lesson by lesson, the safeguarding and quality mechanisms, and the route from referral to first lesson.

Read the full Enfield page

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. Placement and school counts cover all Purple Ruler work in the authority to date.

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.

4,937 (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. Enfield 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.