An alternative school of thought

Working in partnership with Carmarthenshire County Council and
local schools, 2018 was the first year of operation for this
project, taking in pupils from year 10 and 11 whose needs were not
being met by mainstream education. Tragically, several of these
young people were in danger of becoming victims of sexual
exploitation and many had substance abuse issues. Quite a few
weren’t living with parents (who may themselves have health related
challenges to contend with), and a lot of young people had a wide
range of social/emotional difficulties whilst others have ADHD or
autism.

Coming from such troubled backgrounds, it’s unsurprising that
many of the children taken on by the ALC presented a wide range of
challenging behaviours. To begin with, they struggled with children
coming in to school intoxicated and had to persuade them to leave
the drink and drugs behind. “When they come to us, we’re just a
bunch of adults” says Holly Nicholl, who manages the Learning
Centre “and even worse – a bunch of teachers, but we’ve managed to
build some real relationships.”

Their approach is to take away the barriers you’d find in a
typical school environment – no one is asked to call anyone miss or
sir, and there’s a strong focus on team building activities where
whatever is asked of the children is also asked of the adults. The
aim is to build a family atmosphere that these pupils aren’t really
getting anywhere else.

One of the barriers to overcome, Holly says, is “They’ve always
been told “you can’t do this, can’t do that, you’re not going to
succeed, so when they come to us, we say ‘They Can’. Every single
one of them is good at something different, it’s just about knowing
their strengths”

That doesn’t mean there aren’t several educational challenges to
overcome. The Alternative Learning Company may not be a traditional
school, but it’s still an establishment subject to inspections from
Estyn and is accredited by the WJEC to deliver GCSE courses and
offer a curriculum that complies with Welsh Government standards.
However, behavioural needs have to be met before their pupils can
engage with academic work, and in some cases, there are severe gaps
in their educational background.

When learning about the planets and the solar system, one pupil
remarked “I don’t want to learn about these countries anyway, I’m
not going there”. Another didn’t know that beef came from cows,
others didn’t realise that chips came from potatoes, and this is
before you address basic literacy and numeracy issues.

This is one of the challenges – there’s such a wide range of
backgrounds, experiences and abilities and somehow a curriculum
must be tailored to that. Pupils might not know their times tables
or their alphabet, so there can’t be one big curriculum. They try,
but to be successful they must adapt for the individual.

This is the key to The Alternative Learning Centre’s success. Of
the 15 year 11s they took on in their first year of operations, all
of them predicted to become NEET (Not in Education, Employment or
Training), every single one has gone on to further education,
employment or training, which is truly astonishing.

50% of them finished with attendance of 70% or above and
completed 191 units from Agored Cymru, leading to 36
qualifications. They also engaged with community work such as
walking up Pen y Fan to raise money for charity and raising money
for Comic Relief. And this is after the first few weeks, which were
described as “absolute bedlam” with police being called in on 8
separate occasions, but in less than a year this has been
completely turned around.

Marcus* is a pupil who started at TALC in 2018 and had his own
anger management issues but has seen his behaviour markedly improve
as he’s been given the tools to take control of his feelings.

He said “You know in school, if you do something wrong you get
sent out, but here they give you a chance. And I’m not surprised
that everyone’s still here cos they give them chances.

It’s so much better than school. I wouldn’t go back to school.
Everyone’s nice here. I think I’ve learned more here than in
school. I just used to be naughty and get sent out. I come here
every day. I’d even come here at the weekends if I could… but
probably not Sunday though.”

This is fair enough. With the financial tools provided by SBGF,
and the skills, and hope that TALC have given them, it seems like
everyone has earned a decent Sunday off.

 

 

*name changed to protect identity

 

 

 

Alternative Learning Company staff on World Book Day 2019