A proven service this year, and a county-wide Academy for the next. This sets out what the year changed for Lancashire's pupils, and how one flat, accredited Academy core would carry every child the county must educate into 2026/27.
Lancashire carries a duty no single school holds. Under Section 19 of the Education Act 1996, the authority must arrange suitable full-time education for every child of compulsory school age who cannot attend a mainstream school, whatever the reason. Across the county that means medical needs and anxiety, exclusion and suspension, children missing education, managed moves, EOTAS and EHCP packages, and NEET young people, all at once. The difficulty is turning that duty into one consistent, registered provision that runs reliably for all of them.
A school commissions for the pupils in front of it. Lancashire carries something wider: the Section 19 duty to arrange suitable education for every child of compulsory school age who cannot attend a mainstream school, whatever the reason. The Academy programme makes Purple Ruler one fast, consistent, accredited route across all of them, rather than a different provider per cohort.
Children too anxious or unwell to attend, taught live from home, with a re-engagement journey built in.
An immediate, full-curriculum placement from day one, so excluded pupils don't lose weeks of learning.
A rapid route back into structured, registered learning while a school place is found.
A stable online provision that holds a pupil's education steady through a transition between schools.
Education other than at school, and 1:1 SEND-informed delivery built from the child's EHCP.
Re-engagement and qualification routes for 16 to 19s who have dropped out of education or training.
A supervised base the authority runs, or a pupil's own home. Pupils attend live, marked present, supervised and safe.
Live, qualified teachers delivering the lessons into that room.
That any school or case officer across the county can place a pupil into, on one dashboard you control.
You provide the place and the supervision, or we teach straight into the home. We provide the teaching and the system, and that is how a base, or any setting, becomes a working inclusion provision.
Behind the figures, this is what re-engagement looks like up close, taken from Lancashire tutors' own lesson notes over the past term. Different pupils, different starting points, the same direction of travel. Pupils are anonymised; the words are the teachers'.
"Began the lesson feeling a bit upset, but took the time to regulate himself, then participated really well and stayed engaged throughout. His ability to recover and re-engage was great to see."
"Initially scored 0% in the start quiz, but he responded so well to guidance and support that by the end of the lesson he achieved 100%. Excellent progress."
"A pleasure to teach and engaged positively throughout, he improved from 50% to 100% across the lesson, showing excellent progress and real understanding."
"Keeping great pace with the lessons and working comfortably at foundation level, she should be really proud of that. Keep it up, you're doing a great job."
"Showed improved confidence and a strong consolidation of knowledge, a good grasp of atomic structure and periodicity, and how periods and groups relate to reactivity."
"Approaches every activity with maturity and a thoughtful attitude, a growing understanding of the texts, and contributes well in discussion."
A Year 10, off-roll for months, walks into the base. Registered, marked present, and someone she knows is there. Attendance starts today.
A live lesson begins on screen, a qualified teacher and five other pupils from across the county. Small, calm, real teaching, not a worksheet.
A full core morning, three subjects, with on-site staff beside her, stepping in when she wobbles. The teacher teaches; the room is held.
A short session on the subject she is furthest behind on, built entirely around her.
A balanced timetable, not just the core, so the day feels like school.
Lesson reports and her attendance land on the dashboard. Her case officer sees it; the authority sees the whole provision.
Attendance and confidence build, and a plan to step her back toward school takes shape, evidenced the whole way.
| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10:00 | Sci | Ma | Sci | Sci | Ma |
| 10:55 | Ma | Sci | Eng | Ma | Sci |
| 11:45 | BREAK | ||||
| 12:30 | Eng | Eng | Ma | Eng | Eng |
| 1:25 | PE | · | Creative | PSHE | · |
English, Maths and Science every day, plus enrichment. Indicative, and built around each pupil.
Every child who cannot be in class needs something different. We have five ways to reach them, on one platform, with one dashboard. Here is each in a line, then we go through them one by one.
A full live timetable to place a pupil into.
Live groups on your curriculum, in your name.
One-to-one for the highest need.
Targeted tutoring to a grade.
For when the barrier is emotional, not academic.
Live data, a scored QA rubric, one dashboard.
Inspected over two days against the DfE's eight online-education standards, and met every one. Tap a standard for what the inspector said, with the full report alongside.
Ofsted, 14–15 October 2025 · lead inspector John Nixon HMI · DfE URN 152279.
Everything your team needs to sign us off: delivery models, curriculum, quality assurance, safeguarding and safer recruitment, data protection, reporting and key contacts. Read it inline, or open the full pack.
Aligned to KCSIE and UK GDPR, and mapped to the DfE's online-education expectations.
Open the full pack →A DfE-registered, OEAS-accredited online provision is held to more than three subjects. The DfE's expectation for a full-time placement is a complete week: English, Maths, Science, PSHE, Careers, Creative & Aesthetic Studies and PE, unless a pupil is on a justified reduced timetable. The year ahead is where Lancashire's scale lets us put that whole offer live, not just the core spine.
English, Maths and Science, the GCSE-facing spine that ran all year, structured around Year 11 exam readiness.
Geography and History added to the GCSE offer, so a placement keeps the full breadth of qualifications open.
KS3 widens beyond the core into a fuller foundation curriculum, keeping younger pupils on their peers' path.
PSHE, Careers, PE and Creative Studies, the enrichment that makes provision feel like a school, unlocking as attendance climbs.
Spiritual, moral, social and cultural development run through PSHE, Careers and the wider curriculum, explicitly signposted for Ofsted.
Enrolment, statutory hours and subject coverage mapped to DfE expectations and our OEAS accreditation. Placed pupils sit with us, not on our roll, exactly as the accreditation requires.
The Academy core is the spine the county-wide programme is built on: one flat, fully inclusive weekly rate set for Lancashire. The broader curriculum and the flexible group models flex around it; you budget the core and grow from there.
£100 / pupil / week · 15 hrs core
A full, structured online school day across English, Maths and Science, built around Year 11 GCSE readiness, with reintegration to mainstream as the goal. The broad OEAS-accredited curriculum layers on as attendance grows.
≈ £6.67 / pupil / hour
£29.17 / hour · per group
Small-group teaching across core subjects on a bespoke timetable, across all key stages, the same price whether the group is one pupil or six. The most cost-efficient way to hold a cohort.
≈ £4.81 / pupil / hour at a full group
£29.17 / hour · 1:1
One-to-one provision shaped around an EHCP or high-level SEND need, with pastoral and specialist support built in, for the pupils who need it most.
Adapted to the pupil's plan
When a child cannot attend at all, Academy is a complete online school: live, small-group teaching by qualified teachers, so learning never stops while the right next step is found.
Run your own online provision without building the platform, recruiting the teachers, or carrying the cost alone. We provide the infrastructure and the teachers; the authority keeps the brand and the control.
Some children need more than a group can give. Compass is intensive one-to-one teaching, our Tier 3 support, built entirely around how this particular child learns.
Not every child falling behind is hard to reach. Some are capable, in school, but quietly drifting below their target. Distinction is focused, exam-ready tutoring.
Sometimes a child cannot learn until something else is addressed. Evolve is our therapy and wellbeing support, sitting alongside the teaching, on the same platform.
The work your team carries by hand, welcoming families, chasing welfare, compiling attendance, is built into the weekly price. No hour lost to admin, no separate invoice.
Every family contacted at onboarding, capturing any therapy already in place so support is never duplicated.
Triggered automatically the moment attendance drops below 50%.
Each week, every welfare-call outcome logged against the pupil for your case officers.
One click opens a pre-filled email to the parent.
Individual attendance reporting plus a termly progress report per pupil.
A standing fortnightly review with the authority, attendance, welfare, placements and progress looked at together, so nothing drifts.
Mental-health support added on referral, never duplicated where it is already in place.
This is not a model on paper. Purple Ruler is already an established provision in Lancashire, delivering live teaching to the county's Section 19 cohorts week in, week out, with the re-engagement evidenced in teachers' own lesson notes.
A live provision running now, with attendance, welfare calls and lesson reports flowing every week, not a pilot waiting to start.
The teacher voices earlier in this deck are verbatim Lancashire lesson notes from this term: pupils recovering, re-engaging and climbing.
One accredited provider across every cohort, rather than a different arrangement per child, ready to carry the whole county into 2026/27.
GCSE readiness only counts if it ends in GCSEs sat. The hard case is the excluded or newly-arrived Year 11 with no school roll, where the question is simply where they sit the papers. We have solved exactly this in another authority, and the same model would run for Lancashire.
A local partner school handles exam registration and adds each pupil to roll for the exams only. Purple Ruler carries the OEAS-accredited GCSE preparation all year.
About two months out we share the cohort list so your team decides exactly who is entered, and the authority funds the GCSE entries.
On exam days pupils come into the partner school through a separate entrance to a set-up ready for them, sit their papers, and go home.
By geography and numbers, likely a small network of partner schools or exam centres across the county, a project we scope and run with you, not hand you to solve.
"All discussions have been focused on the child, we remain committed to supporting him under Section 19."
"The provision has been great."
The local authorities and trusts already running this, and a live authority dashboard you can open right now.
Open a live authority dashboard →The same view an authority like Lancashire gets across all of its placements.
Examples of the local authorities, trusts and schools Purple Ruler works with. Not exhaustive.
Not a login and a worksheet. Every lesson runs a closed loop, scored against a rubric built for each programme.
Every lesson captured
Against the rubric
Specific, to the teacher
On the exact metric
Until it meets standard
Plus a monthly scored observation against the rubric; anything below standard raises a ticket that is not closed until it is fixed.
Each programme has its own scored rubric, every metric 1 to 3. Tap one:
👈 Tap to exploreOfsted, 2025: "Each pupil receives carefully tailored, individualised teaching." Purple Ruler meets all the standards for online education. Safe by design too: verified logins, moderated lessons, same-day DSL.
Each programme has its own enrolment link. The first time you give us the placing setting and four contacts, just once; after that, every new pupil takes only their own details, and we handle the rest.
Safeguarding, attendance, IT, finance
You set times; Academy on ours; Compass, give hours
Pupil, parents and setting
48h Academy · 5 days the rest
Attendance, reports, add/remove
Evolve adds one step: consent from parents first, then the pupil.
This model grows the same way everywhere: prove it with one cohort, then scale it across the county. Hear how a whole-trust inclusion hub and an entire borough run exactly this, in their own words.
"It's more cost-effective for us to go through Purple Ruler." — Bal Gill, London Borough of Barking & Dagenham
Lancashire would not have to invent the youth-zone model, there is a local candidate: the Vault, OnSide's new Preston Youth Zone. This is an idea we could explore with their team and yours, an online school inside a real building, modelled on what already works elsewhere.
Named "the Vault" by over 2,000 local young people. Youth zones are busiest after school, so the school day is a natural window to use a purpose-built, well-staffed space. To be clear, this is an idea we are putting forward, not an arrangement in place, shaped together with the Vault's team.
Structured morning routine with youth workers on site.
Purple Ruler teachers, live, in micro-cohorts of six or fewer.
Sport, climbing or the arts, plus a £1 hot meal, then back to it.
Afternoon teaching, stepping out for therapy or 1:1 support as needed.
Attendance climbing, a real setting to phase a staged return from.
The Vault is not a leap of faith. In the London Borough of Barking & Dagenham this exact model, an online school inside a youth zone, already runs at borough scale with Purple Ruler. Here is the borough, and the young people in it.
"It's more cost-effective for us to go through Purple Ruler." — Bal Gill, London Borough of Barking & Dagenham
An online school inside a supervised base, the reach of live remote teaching with the warmth, structure and safeguarding of a real building.
A supervised daytime base, overseen by partner or LA staff, not isolated at home. Belonging as the first intervention.
Sport, climbing and the arts between lessons, so the day looks like a school day, not a screen.
Pupils join lessons in micro-cohorts of six or fewer, then step out for therapy or a meal.
Counselling, mentoring and pastoral wraparound alongside teaching, in the room, not on a waiting list.
£1 hot meals, youth workers and a safeguarded environment you can stand behind to a panel or parent.
Re-entering a physical, social setting is itself a step back toward mainstream, easier than from a bedroom alone.
The two are priced differently, and that difference is the whole decision.
A flat weekly rate per pupil for the core timetable, simple, and the same whatever the group size, but it does not fall as you add pupils. Lancashire's negotiated flat core is set out earlier in this deck.
A group runs at £29.17 an hour however many are in it, so per pupil it falls as the group fills: about £146 a week at three, and £73 at six.
The real cost change for 2026/27 is not the rate, it is the shape. Moving placements onto the flat Academy line turns a bill that moved with group sizes and hours into one predictable, fully inclusive number you can set before the year starts.
The flat core is not a flat offer. Behind one price sits a multi-tiered system that meets each pupil where they are and grows as they re-engage. Attendance is the dial: therapy for the lowest attenders, the academic core as they return, a wider curriculum as attendance climbs.
The same live data, shown four ways. Open any of them.
A dedicated parent space explains the welcome, the daily routine, attendance, safeguarding and who to contact, so families are never in the dark. It opens live below.
Full page: help.purpleruler.com/parents
Getting a disengaged pupil to show up is the hard part, and we own it. Here is what happens around every placement.
| Student | Yr | This week |
|---|---|---|
| Maya T. | 10 | 92% |
| ✓ On track · no chase needed this week | ||
| Jaylen C. | 9 | 88% |
| ✓ On track · no chase needed this week | ||
| Sofia M. | 9 | 84% |
| ✉️ Emailed parent · Tue 09 Jun · confirmed back Thursday | ||
| Aisha K. | 11 | 76% |
| 📞 Welfare call · Wed 10 Jun · spoke with parent, lessons resuming Monday | ||
Behind every placement is a real child and a real report. This is the half-termly report each pupil receives, benchmarked to age-related expectations, ready for parents or a panel.
| Subject | Lessons | Attended | Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | 28 | 25 | 89% |
| Maths | 28 | 22 | 79% |
| Science | 21 | 14 | 67% |
Illustrative example, pupil anonymised. Every enrolled pupil receives a report in this format each half-term, benchmarked to age-related expectations.
A proven year behind us, and a county-wide Academy, a full curriculum, a flat budget you set, and a real place to grow into, ready to design together for 2026/27.
Ross Clements · Purple Ruler
Ross.c@purpleruler.com · +44 1227 913300
Purple Ruler · Ofsted-registered, DfE URN 152279 · figures from live delivery records; per-seat pricing confirmed in a formal quote.