Attendance Coding for Off-Site Alternative Provision: What Code B Means in Practice
Of all the practical details in an off-site placement, attendance coding is the one that most often goes wrong — and it is entirely avoidable. It usually goes wrong for administrative reasons rather than disagreement: the placement starts on a Monday, the register is set up by someone who was not in the meeting, and six weeks later there is a query from the local authority that nobody can answer.
This is a short, practical note for attendance leads, SENCos and commissioning officers. It is not legal advice, and the statutory position is set out in the Department for Education’s guidance and the pupil registration regulations rather than by us.
Code B in one sentence
Code B records off-site educational activity — a pupil who is not on the school site but is taking part in educational activity that the school has approved and arranged.
The important consequence: a session coded B is not an absence. For attendance purposes the pupil counts as being in education. That is the point of the code, and it is why getting it right matters to a school’s figures as well as to the family.
Who stays responsible
This is the part most worth being clear about, because it is occasionally assumed to work the other way round.
When a pupil attends alternative provision off site, the commissioning school remains responsible — for the pupil’s education, for their safeguarding and welfare while they are off site, and for maintaining the register. The provision supplies the information. The school records it.
We are a provision, not a school. We do not hold the statutory register for any pupil, and we would be wary of any provision that suggested it did.
What “approved” actually requires of the school
Code B is not a code a school can apply and then stop thinking about. Broadly, the school needs to be satisfied that the activity is genuinely educational, that it is properly supervised by people the school is content to approve, and that attendance at it is being monitored — with steps taken when a pupil does not turn up.
In practice that means the school needs three things from the provision: safeguarding and staffing assurance before the placement starts, a daily attendance record it can rely on, and same-day contact when a pupil is missing. If a provision cannot give you all three, the coding is the least of the problems.
The evidence a provision should be giving you
For what it is worth, here is what we commit to under our service level agreements, as a benchmark you can hold any provision to:
A daily register to the commissioning school by 10:00. Not weekly, not on request. Every day, in time to matter.
Immediate first-day absence contact. If a pupil does not arrive, the school hears from us that morning, not that afternoon.
A weekly written progress report — what was taught, what was completed, how the week went, discussed with the young person before it is sent.
Participation in termly reviews, alongside the school and the local authority.
Risk assessments completed before the placement starts, covering the site, the activities and the individual young person.
That last point is worth pressing any provision on. Risk assessments produced after a placement has begun are a bad sign.
Part-time timetables and the sessions in between
A common arrangement is two or three days at a provision and the remainder at the home school, or at home. The days at the provision are straightforward. The remaining sessions are where coding queries tend to arise, particularly if a reduced timetable is in place.
Reduced timetables are expected to be temporary, agreed in writing with parents, and given a review date — and how the non-attending sessions are recorded is a matter for the school’s own attendance policy and the DfE guidance, not something a provision should be advising on. Agree it in writing before the placement starts and it stays a non-issue.
Dual registration is a different mechanism again, used where a pupil is registered at more than one school. An independent alternative provision is not a second school, so this generally does not apply to placements like ours — but it is worth checking rather than assuming.
Where to check the rules
Two documents matter, and both are free:
Working together to improve school attendance — the DfE’s attendance guidance, which became statutory in August 2024 and sets out the attendance and absence codes and how they are to be used.
The Education (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2024 — the underlying legal framework for admission and attendance registers.
If there is a difference between what you read here and what those documents say, they win. And if your local authority has its own attendance guidance, read that too — practice varies more than it should.
Getting it right at the start
Almost every coding problem we have seen could have been prevented by one sentence in the placement agreement stating which code applies to which session, agreed by the school, the local authority and the provision before day one.
We are happy to have that conversation as part of setting up any placement, and to put our reporting commitments in writing.
If you would like to see the setting and how our reporting works before referring anyone, you are welcome to visit — schools and local authorities can arrange a quality assurance visit at any time. Our full policy set is published on our policies page, and referrals can be started at make a referral, where we respond within 48 hours. If you are new to this, our guide to what alternative provision is covers the basics.
