Purple Ruler
Schools in the area ofLeicestershire County Council

Teaching children in Leicestershire who cannot be in school

Arranged by schools in Leicestershire

In Leicestershire

340 children in Leicestershire were missing education

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 Leicestershire, against 0.4% across the country.

A child in Leicestershire who needs an education, health and care plan will almost always wait beyond the twenty weeks the law allows: 20% 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

785lessons deliveredSessions that ran and were completed. Cancelled and flagged sessions are excluded.
8schools with lessons running this termOut of 8 Leicestershire schools engaged with Purple Ruler.
59separate days of teachingProvision ran across the term, not in a single block.
159school placements to dateEvery place taken up at a school in Leicestershire across the whole of our work there. Children Leicestershire County Council placed directly are counted in the lessons above, not here.
4,650lessons in Leicestershire 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

780bought by schoolsPlaces arranged by 8 schools in Leicestershire, one child at a time.
5bought by Leicestershire County CouncilPlaces the authority commissioned directly, in its own name.
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 Leicestershire County 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

8 Leicestershire schools already work 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 Leicester, Loughborough, Coalville and Hinckley.

Beauchamp College logo
Beauchamp College
Humphrey Perkins School logo
Humphrey Perkins School
Limehurst Academy logo
Limehurst Academy
The Castle Rock School logo
The Castle Rock School
The Cedars Academy logo
The Cedars Academy
The Hinckley School logo
The Hinckley School
The Martin High School Anstey logo
The Martin High School Anstey
The Newbridge School logo
The Newbridge School
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 13 subjects in Leicestershire, led by Maths, English Language and English Combined.

Maths
358
English Language
136
English Combined
112
Science
77
English Literature
31
Science Combined
21
History
14
ESOL
10
Engineering
10
English as an Additional Language (EAL)
10
Biology
2
Food & Nutrition
2
Geography
2

Provision in use across Leicestershire

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.

6schools
Category B

Blueprint

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

7schools
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.

3schools
Category D

Distinction

Targeted teaching aimed squarely at exams and attainment.

6schools
The opportunity

What this could be if Leicestershire ran it as one thing

8 separate arrangements, or one route in.

Every one of these schools found us on their own. That works, but it means Leicestershire is buying the same provision 8 times over, with no single view of which children are in it. An authority-level arrangement changes that.

  • A single route into provision for any Leicestershire 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.
Leicestershire County Council

Talk to us about Leicestershire

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 Leicestershire 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 Leicestershire 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.

8,968 (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. Leicestershire County Council's mark identifies the authority this report covers. Purple Ruler is not commissioned by Leicestershire County Council. School marks are the property of their schools.