WH Schools – www.whschools.org.uk

Alternative education is a strategy to provide full-time or part-time education for children and young people exhibiting a wide range of complex obstructions to education.  This includes those excluded or at risk of emotional and mental needs.  Alternative education provision also includes those who   are anxious and unable to attend schools for lack of medical reasons or emerging personality severe anxiety and depression or unable to attend school for a period of time.   Alternative education is also designed for children with school phobic or those who have moved into an area and unable to find a school, children seeking asylum without school place, children who are entering statutory placement and have no school or those waiting to be assessed of learning difficulties and disabilities as well as those with a statement of special educational need or education Health care plan.    Alternative education   encompasses all forms of education, however; it is different in its structure from the mainstream.   The difference between the two is that mainstream is structured with a large scale and hierarchical in terms of students having very little to say to their teachers. It is also highly descriptive concerning students allocation into age-year groups following a structured curriculum and subsequently conforms to disciplinarians, uniforms and rules of punishments. 

On the other hand, alternative education has different formats and includes a small human scale aiming for people to know each other in a small class for effective teaching practices.  It is non- hierarchical, and teachers and students are involved in decision making and also non- prescriptive as learning is age appropriate for students.  There is also freedom of expression for all students. This type of education is facilitated to enable children and young people to progress and achieve their potential in a sustained education or employment.