The White Horse Federation: why one trust stopped buying teaching one child at a time
Commissioned by The White Horse Federation
Commissioned by The White Horse Federation
Before the pandemic, in 2017/18, 53,699 pupils in England missed half or more of their school sessions. By 2024/25 it was 176,361, more than three times as many, and 9,906 were permanently excluded in the same year. Behind both figures are students for whom school has become too hard to face, and the answer has usually grown school by school: each school finds its own provision for each child who cannot be in lessons.
That is where The White Horse Federation started, with many students learning online, most of them in Year 11, each place arranged on its own. Tim James, the trust’s SEND and Inclusion Lead: “When you pulled all that data together, it wasn’t necessarily cost-effective … and it certainly wasn’t having the impact, it was just seen as a bit of an add-on.”
So the trust brought them together: one inclusion space, one trust-wide timetable taught live in classes of up to six, separate groups by year, and a bridge back for students experiencing emotionally based school avoidance, the term schools use for students too anxious to attend. “This way, we have far more control over the systems, but also with the fact that you can have a class of six makes it so much more beneficial cost-wise.” The trust estimates the shared model is 50 to 60% more cost-effective than buying provision separately.
What it bought, above all, is sight of every student: “We know where they are, we know they’re accessing learning, we know it’s high quality.” Students who had not been inside a school building for a long time are attending sessions again, and some have gone back into mainstream lessons.
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
No The White Horse Federation 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 690 lessons across 55 separate days.
Children out of the classroom still sat a real timetable. Across the term we taught 3 subjects in The White Horse Federation, led by the core three.
The White Horse Federation already commissions places from Purple Ruler directly, and did so 690 times last term. No The White Horse Federation 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.
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
Every figure here is drawn from the same record as the full The White Horse Federation 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.
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.
Severe absence, 2017/18 and 2024/25: Department for Education, Pupil absence in schools in England, released 26 March 2026.
Permanent exclusions, 2024/25: Department for Education, Suspensions and permanent exclusions in England, published 9 July 2026.
Why the trust bought, and what changed: Tim James, The White Horse Federation, in the filmed interview on this page, and the trust’s own published account, purpleruler.com, May 2026.
This page reports delivery only. It makes no claim about attendance rates or examination outcomes.