What schools ask us most at events: Answering the key questions about our primary offering
Over the past year, the Academy21 team has attended events and conferences across the country, speaking with multiple senior school leaders, SEND specialists, and local authority colleagues.
These conversations have been wide-ranging, but they share a common thread. Whether in primary or secondary settings, leaders are navigating increasingly complex challenges around attendance, inclusion, SEND, and capacity – and actively seeking solutions that are both practical and sustainable.
While each school context is different, the same themes recur: how to maintain continuity of education, how to support pupils who cannot attend full-time, how to fund provision, and how to ensure that any intervention genuinely works in practice.
Based on these conversations, we’ve brought together the questions we are asked most often and answered them in detail, drawing on how Academy21 is being used by schools and local authorities across England and Wales, as well as our direct experience supporting thousands of children.
Primary schools: an often-unclear pathway
In primary settings, leaders talk about increasing anxiety, more pupils struggling to attend consistently, and a growing number of young people whose needs do not sit neatly within traditional classroom structures. At the same time, there is often less familiarity with alternative provision at this stage, particularly in an online format. Questions tend to begin at a foundational level, but they are no less important for it.
Who are Academy21, and what do you actually provide for primary pupils?
Academy21 is the leading online alternative education specialist. We offer a comprehensive Key Stage 2 curriculum through live, adaptive, and teacher-led online lessons, enabling pupils to continue their education when they are unable to attend school full-time. With us, schools can protect continuity at a point where it is at risk of breaking down and at a critical stage in children’s development.
Pupils log in at set times, join a small class, and are taught by qualified teachers who are experienced in personalising learning to meet a variety of needs and in managing behaviour in the classroom. We provide the structure and, importantly, the space for younger pupils to break the cycle and start afresh. This structure is critical at these early educational stages.
How does it actually work for a primary pupil day to day?
Our provision is fully adaptable to the school’s and the pupils’ needs. Your student may join us part-time to study select subjects, or study the full curriculum with Academy21. Depending on need, they can access their online lessons fully from home, from home for some lessons and from their physical school for others, or fully from their physical school.
Hybrid learning is often the ideal solution for students who need a break from the current setup but still benefit from maintaining connections with their peers and teachers at their mainstream school.
On a day-to-day basis, depending on the arrangements, they could log in from home or from an inclusion base within your school in the morning, then join their regular classes and mingle with their peers in the afternoon. Because Academy21 lessons are fully online, there’s full flexibility to adapt to existing timetables.
Our Key Stage 2 curriculum already includes PSHE, wellbeing and oracy. If your students need more support, we also offer a range of academic and pastoral support courses.
Which pupils is this genuinely suitable for at the primary level?
Academy21 is most effective for primary pupils who are experiencing barriers to attendance that make full-time classroom learning difficult, and the reasons for this vary deeply. Students could have a specific learning need, a medical condition, be facing unfortunate circumstances at home, or have mental health challenges, such as anxiety, that prevent them from engaging with mainstream education. but who are still able to engage with structured teaching in an alternative format.
What defines suitability is not a single label, but a pattern of need: reduced attendance, increasing distress around school, or a pupil who is physically on roll but not meaningfully accessing learning.
Can this work alongside school, or does it replace it?
One of the most important aspects of Academy21 in primary settings is its flexibility. For some pupils, learning takes place at home because attendance in school is not currently possible. For others, it takes place within school as part of a reduced timetable. In many cases, as we shared, it sits within a hybrid model, where time with Academy21 is combined with time in school as part of a reintegration plan.
This flexibility allows schools to respond to individual needs rather than applying a single model to all pupils. It also means that the provision can evolve over time, reducing reliance as pupils gradually return to school.
How does this support reintegration, rather than delay it?
There is often a concern that alternative provision could create distance from school. In practice, the opposite is often true when provision is structured correctly. Academy21 supports reintegration by maintaining engagement with learning. Pupils continue to experience success in education, follow routines, and remain connected to a sense of progress. This reduces the likelihood that they will feel overwhelmed or left behind when returning to the classroom.
Without this continuity, reintegration can become significantly more challenging. Pupils may return having missed substantial learning, which can reinforce anxiety and avoidance. For Ellis, removing the daily pressure of the school building reduced his anxiety and created the conditions in which he could engage with learning again.
Read more about Ellis' story
How is Academy21 funded in primary contexts?
Funding is typically arranged through schools or local authorities as part of inclusion budgets. For many leaders, the key consideration is not just cost but whether early intervention through a provision like Academy21 can prevent escalation to more intensive and costly support later.
Academy21 has proven to be cost-effective because it is bespoke and adjustable. Provision can be as short as one week or as long as an entire school year, and can be scaled up or down as needs change. There is no long-term commitment, and progress is tracked continuously.
Contact us
Across primary and secondary settings, the questions schools ask are rooted in the same underlying concern: what happens to a pupil’s education when they cannot attend school? The answer cannot be to pause learning or to accept disconnection as inevitable.
If you have students who are struggling to engage with their learning or attend classes, need further support, or have any other questions about the role of online AP within the ongoing SEND reform, please reach out to our team. We would be happy to have a conversation and see how we can best support you.
