Help for alternative provision staff

Running an alternative provision: today, registers, rota, referrals, placements, compliance and settings.

Start your day on Today: Today is the first page you see when you sign in to an alternative provision. It shows who’s booked in today, which registers still need taking, placement reviews that are due and the latest notes…
Add or import your pupils: An alternative provision keeps its own roll in Student Radar. Add pupils one at a time, or import a list from a spreadsheet. Each pupil gets a secure record for notes, behaviour, safeguarding,…
Record a pupil leaving or returning: When a pupil leaves your provision, record it in Student Radar so they come off the roll and their later sessions stop. Their record isn’t deleted: notes, files, placements and attendance stay, so…
Take today’s register: In an alternative provision, you take a register for each session on the rota. The Daily Register lists today’s sessions, shows which registers still need taking, and lets you mark each booked…
Build your usual week and lay down the rota: The Weekly Rota shows who is delivering each session, where, and with which pupils. Most provisions run a similar timetable every week. Set that up once as your usual week, then lay it down onto…
Assign staff to a session or cancel a session: A session on the Weekly Rota that has pupils needs at least one member of staff. Use the rota to staff sessions that come from a pupil’s placement plan, change who runs a session, or cancel a…
Record session attendance and read participation: Attendance Tracking brings together two views of a pupil’s attendance at your provision. Booked attendance shows who came to the sessions they were booked into, from your own session registers.…
Export statutory attendance evidence: Commissioning schools, local authorities and inspectors may ask your provision for evidence of a pupil’s attendance. Attendance Reporting shows your recent attendance and lets you download it as…
Record a new enquiry: When a school, local authority or family gets in touch about a possible placement, record it as an enquiry in Referrals. You can save it with whatever you know so far, even if it’s only a phone…
Move a referral through to placement: Every referral moves through five steps: Enquiry & triage, Referral assessment, Professional visit, Young person visit and Placement confirmation. At each step you record what happened and choose…
Turn on your referral portal and share the link: Your referral portal is a secure online form that schools, local authorities and others can use to send you a referral. You turn it on, then share its link, for example on your website or in an…
Customise your referral workflow and forms: Your referral workflow sets the stages every referral goes through, the answers and evidence each stage needs, and the forms your staff fill in along the way. You build those forms in Custom…
Record a placement and share updates with the commissioning school: The Placements page lists every placement, grouped by the school that placed the pupil with you. Record each placement here: who referred the pupil, who’s paying, how the pupil is registered and…
Prepare and sign off a review pack: A review pack is the report you give a commissioning school about a pupil’s placement for a period, such as a month or a placement review. Student Radar fills in the figures from your records…
Set placement rates and raise invoices: Billing turns your placements into invoices. You set a rate for each placement, saying who pays and how it’s charged. Then, for each period, you generate draft invoices, check them, send them to…
Write and sign off a risk assessment: Risk Assessments holds a written risk assessment for each pupil on your roll. You record what could cause harm, who is at risk, how likely and how serious it is, and the controls you have in…
Set up and record daily check-ins: Daily Check-ins is where staff score each pupil against a short set of measures, such as engagement or work completion, for every session they’re booked into. A provision leader chooses the…
Track progress drivers: Progress Drivers tracks each pupil’s progress in the areas your provision works on, such as confidence, wellbeing and life skills. Staff review a pupil against each area, using a levelled scale. A…
Evidence your compliance duties: The Compliance Checklist lists the duties an alternative provision in England is expected to meet and be able to show: registration and placements, safeguarding, attendance and behaviour, health…
Keep your Single Central Record: The Single Central Record lists everyone who works with pupils at your provision, including volunteers, agency staff and trustees, with the pre-appointment checks and training recorded for each of…
Set up your provision profile and activate AP operations: An alternative provision is set up in two separate parts:
Change the words used for pupils and schools: Alternative provisions don’t all use the same words. You might call the young people you work with learners rather than pupils, or call the school that places a pupil with you their home school.…
Invite and manage staff: In an alternative provision, adding a member of staff and giving them a login are two separate steps. First you add them to your staff directory. Then, if they need to sign in, you invite them,…