Purple Ruler
Schools in the area ofRoyal Borough of Greenwich

Teaching children in Greenwich who cannot be in school

Arranged by schools in Greenwich

In Greenwich

Greenwich 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: 100 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 Greenwich who needs an education, health and care plan waits beyond the twenty weeks the law allows more often than not: 31% 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

328lessons deliveredSessions that ran and were completed. Cancelled and flagged sessions are excluded.
1school with lessons running this termOut of 1 Greenwich school engaged with Purple Ruler.
32separate days of teachingProvision ran across the term, not in a single block.
17school placements to dateEvery place taken up at a school in Greenwich across the whole of our work there.
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. Every place counted here was arranged by a school, so attendance and progress for those children are reported to the school that arranged the place rather than on this page.
Where we work

1 Greenwich 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. They are in Eltham.

Harris Academy Greenwich logo
Harris Academy Greenwich
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 6 subjects in Greenwich, led by the core three.

Maths
101
English Combined
100
Science
99
PSHE
16
Physical Education
7
Creative & Aesthetic Studies
5

Provision in use across Greenwich

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 C

Compass

One-to-one teaching and small groups of up to six, built around SEND and ESOL need, at the pace the child can take.

1school
The opportunity

What this could be if Greenwich ran it as one thing

One school's arrangement, or the authority's.

That school found us on its own, and it works. But the arrangement belongs to the school rather than to Greenwich, so no other school in the authority can use it, and the authority has no view of which of its children are in provision. An authority-level arrangement changes both.

  • A single route into provision for any Greenwich school, instead of each school negotiating alone.
  • Pooled capacity, so a place is available the week a child needs it rather than the term after.
  • One reporting line back to the authority, covering every child placed through it.
  • Pay for what runs. No minimum, no empty seats held open.
Royal Borough of Greenwich

Talk to us about Greenwich

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 Greenwich 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 Greenwich 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.

3,552 (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, which are held by the schools.

Marks and attribution. Royal Borough of Greenwich's mark identifies the authority this report covers. Purple Ruler is not commissioned by Royal Borough of Greenwich. School marks are the property of their schools.