Commissioned by
Teaching children in Lancashire who cannot be in school
Commissioned by Lancashire County Council, and by 8 Lancashire schools
Commissioned by Lancashire County Council, and by 8 Lancashire schools
Separately, 1,150 children in Lancashire were on no school's roll and not being educated anywhere else when schools last counted, out of 34,700 across England.
10% of new education, health and care plans were issued inside the statutory twenty weeks in 2025, against 46% across England. A child waiting on one is waiting without a timetable.
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 Lancashire were persistently absent, missing a tenth or more of their sessions, 2024/25.
That is 23.3% of enrolments in Lancashire, against 23.4% across England.
Department for Education, Pupil absence in schools in England, released 26 March 2026.
In 4 Lancashire schools last term, the thing that got arranged was Purple Ruler. Across the authority we are engaged with 8. 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 in Lancashire. It counts every lesson delivered for a child in the authority, whether the place was arranged by a school or commissioned by the council itself. 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 Lancashire part of that, and it is drawn from this authority's own record rather than from anything we say about ourselves.
Lancashire 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. Some of the places counted here were commissioned by Lancashire County Council itself and the rest were arranged by schools, one at a time. The same provision is reaching children by two routes, and only one of them is visible from the centre.
What runs in Lancashire is a full-time online school, curriculum-matched teaching, SEND tutoring and academic tutoring. Named as they appear on an invoice: Academy is a complete timetable for a child who cannot attend any physical setting; Blueprint is lessons built on the child's own school syllabus, so that nothing is lost while they are out of the room; Compass is one-to-one and small groups of up to six, built around SEND and ESOL need, at the pace the child can take; Distinction is aimed at a named subject and an approaching exam. 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. They include Longridge High School, Lytham St Annes High School and Mount Carmel Roman Catholic High School, Hyndburn, and the rest are named in the wall above. Each of them arrived separately, which is the point: nobody planned this as a programme. The work in Lancashire 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 Lancashire 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.
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 Accrington, Preston, Lytham St. Annes, Chorley and Blackburn.
Children out of the classroom still sat a real timetable. Across the term we taught 4 subjects in Lancashire, led by the core three.
Every lesson opens with a check on what the child already knows and closes with the same check on what they learned. These are the subjects where we hold enough of them to say something: only the children Lancashire County Council placed with us, across the whole of 2025/26, and only the lessons that began below full marks, because a lesson that opens at full marks cannot rise.
Pale bar: score at the start of the lesson. Solid bar: score at the end.
Purple Ruler lesson records, 2025/26, extracted 27 August 2026. Subjects with fewer than 25 checked lessons are left out: below that a figure is noise, and publishing one would be worse than publishing nothing.
Schools choose the provision that fits the child. These are the four in use across the authority, and how many schools use each.
A full-time online school place for a child who cannot attend any physical setting.
Curriculum-matched teaching that keeps a child on their own school's syllabus while they are out of the room.
One-to-one teaching and small groups of up to six, built around SEND and ESOL need, at the pace the child can take.
Targeted teaching aimed squarely at exams and attainment.
Sixty seconds on each provision this authority's schools actually use, so you can see the room rather than read about it.
Used for: EBSA, behaviour, medical needs, and pupils awaiting placement.
Your own online provision, running to your timetable and your schemes of work, taught live in groups of up to six. It is yours, not a place we sell seats in.
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.
Used for: SEND and EHCP provision where a group is not appropriate.
One to one with a SEND specialist, at any time of day, on a schedule built around what the pupil can actually manage that week.
Used for: Pupils attending school whose attainment has stalled.
Targeted tutoring in a named subject, alongside a pupil's existing timetable.
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.
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. This is Lancashire’s own account of the provision, from the officer who places the children.
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 Lancashire County 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, 93.5% of lessons were taught by that class's own teacher, across the 104 Lancashire classes that met more than once. A class that met once cannot show a change of teacher. Of the 15,231 places booked in the lessons we hold a register for, 11% were attended, so this is a figure about who taught rather than who attended. Purple Ruler teaching and attendance 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.
Every lesson opens and closes with a check on that lesson's content. Across 2025/26, over 2,046 lessons where the child began below full marks, the average score rose by +24.1 points and 65% of those lessons ended higher than they began. Lessons that opened at full marks are excluded, because they cannot rise. Purple Ruler lesson records, extracted 27 August 2026.
Between 3 March and 16 July 2026, across 909 lessons that began below full marks, the average score rose by +25.3 points and 69% of those lessons ended higher than they began. We can put at least 21 different children behind them. Purple Ruler lesson reports.
Each placement produces an attendance and progress record the school and the authority can use as evidence that the duty is being met.
Lancashire County Council already commissions places from Purple Ruler directly, and did so 4,275 times last term. Alongside it, 8 Lancashire schools hold their own arrangements 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.
Every page like this one proves what was delivered and then stops. This is the part a commissioner actually asks about.
Both routes are already open here. Lancashire County Council commissions places directly, and its schools also buy their own. A referral can come either way, and neither has to wait for the other.
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 Bolton, Manchester and Wirral. Reading one of them is the quickest way to judge whether what you have read here is a pattern or a coincidence.
Each has its own page, and all of them are on the index.
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
Take the short version of Lancashire 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 Lancashire
Ross Clements
Looks after our work across the north of England, which includes Lancashire.
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.
16,757 (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. Lancashire County 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.
