Square Peg

We exist to effect change for all those children and young people who are ‘square pegs’ and don’t fit an increasingly inflexible education system. What should change, the square peg or the system? Too often it’s the square peg that’s forced into a round hole in this one-size-fits-all system. Every child deserves to enjoy learning, whatever that means for them as an individual, but our education system is far from individual. A growing number of children & young people therefore struggle to attend. This may be due to unmet Special Educational Needs or Disabilities (SEND), bullying, trauma, physical illness or severe anxiety. School attendance difficulties are often poorly understood, compounded by current challenges within education and the various support systems, and often have severe consequences for both child and family. Absence and exclusion are two sides of the same (unmet need) coin. The spotlight falls on behaviour and exclusion yet there are nearly 10x as many persistent absentees (771,863) as there are pupils with more than one Fixed Period Exclusion (78,898). 335,375 persistent absentees miss 25+ days and 60,247 miss half the school year. 42.8% of these absences have no recorded reason and 41% are recorded as unauthorised. This is unacceptable. Square Peg works across three main areas – legislation/policy, academia/practice and campaigning/awareness - in order to effect change. We focus on building connections, with influencers, innovators and experts across a range of disciplines with relevance to school attendance. We work closely with another parent-led organisation, Not Fine In School, which supports the same families, with whom we instigated a legal challenge against the DfE in 2019. We have secured national media coverage and established a network of 100+ contacts. In April 2020 it became a CIC.