Helen Kenworthy's Mission to Make Education Inclusive and Accessible for Students in Alternative Provision
- 5 days ago
- 9 min read
Written by Helen Kenworthy, Artistic Director
Helen champions the arts as a tool for change. Now, as CEO of RYTC Creatives CIC and Give Get Go Education, she mentors young people, creates pathways for them to thrive in the arts, and helps launch successful careers.
There is a particular kind of quiet that settles over a young person who has decided that education is not for them. It is not defiance, and it is rarely laziness. It is the settled conclusion of a learner who has tried, more than once, to fit into a system that was never built with them in mind and who has stopped expecting anything different. For students in Alternative Provision, that conclusion often arrives long before anyone thinks to ask what might change it.
Helen Kenworthy has spent her career refusing to accept that conclusion as final. Her work through Of Course You Can!™ is built on a simple but demanding belief, access to education is not a privilege reserved for learners who fit a standard mould, but a right that must be actively designed for every learner who does not. Making education accessible is not about lowering expectations. It is about removing the barriers that were never the young person's fault to begin with.
Why Alternative Provision needs a different kind of access
Alternative Provision exists because mainstream education, for all its strengths, does not work for every young person. Many students arrive in AP settings carrying a history of exclusion, missed learning, unmet needs, or environments that could not accommodate the way they think, feel, or communicate. By the time they reach a setting designed to support them differently, many have already internalised the belief that education itself is the problem, rather than the way it was delivered to them.
Accessibility in this context means far more than ramps and reasonable adjustments, though those matter too. It means rethinking pace, format, environment, relationships, and expectations so that a young person's differences are treated as information rather than obstacles. Helen Kenworthy's mission begins with this reframing, understanding that a learner who has struggled in mainstream settings has not failed at learning. The system simply has not yet learned how to reach them.
This distinction matters because it changes where responsibility sits. If a young person is assumed to be the problem, the response is usually to manage or contain them. If the environment is understood as the variable that needs adjusting, the response becomes creative, collaborative, and far more likely to succeed. Helen's work consistently starts from the second position, treating every barrier a young person meets as a design question rather than a personal failing.
What accessible, fun, and inclusive learning really means
Accessible learning is often mistaken for simplified learning, as though making something reachable requires making it smaller. Helen's approach rejects that assumption entirely. Genuine accessibility means keeping ambition and rigour intact while changing the route a young person takes to reach it, offering multiple ways in, multiple ways to demonstrate understanding, and multiple paces at which growth is allowed to happen.
Fun is not incidental to this either. It is strategic. Young people who have experienced education as a source of failure or shame are far more likely to re-engage when learning feels playful, creative, and low-stakes because joy lowers the emotional barriers that fear and past failure have built up. Inclusion, meanwhile, is not a single adjustment made once, but an ongoing practice of noticing who is not yet fully able to participate and asking what needs to change so that they can.
This is where child-centred scaffolding becomes essential. It does not remove challenge, complete the work for the learner, or hold them permanently at an easier level. It provides temporary structure that makes a meaningful first step possible. An adult might model the beginning, reduce the number of instructions visible at once, offer a visual example, rehearse an answer verbally, or work alongside the young person before gradually stepping back. The destination remains ambitious, what changes is the support available along the route.
Signs a learning environment isn't working for a young person
Recognising when a learning environment has stopped working is the first step towards making it accessible again. Educators, parents, and practitioners working alongside young people in Alternative Provision often notice some of the following patterns before a young person is able to name what is happening for themselves:
Avoiding or refusing tasks that once felt manageable without an obvious trigger
Describing themselves as stupid, behind, or not a school person
Showing physical signs of stress before or during structured learning time
Disengaging the moment instructions include several steps at once
Rushing through work to finish rather than to understand
Being reluctant to ask for help even when visibly stuck
Engaging only when learning is entirely self-directed or only when it is entirely structured
Showing a noticeable gap between what they can do verbally and what they produce in writing
None of these signs point to a lack of ability. They point to a mismatch between how a young person learns and how learning is currently being asked of them, and that mismatch is exactly what accessible design sets out to close.
Helen Kenworthy's role as an advocate for access
Helen's role within Alternative Provision settings is best understood as that of an advocate first and an educator second, though the two are rarely separate in practice. She works to ensure that access is treated as a design principle from the outset of a lesson or programme, rather than as an accommodation added after a young person has already struggled.
This advocacy extends beyond the individual learner to the wider system around them. Helen works with educators, practitioners, and settings to challenge assumptions about what accessible learning should look like, encouraging a shift from asking whether a young person can keep up to asking whether the environment has been built to allow them to participate.
That advocacy is reflected across Helen’s connected educational pathways. Education Selection Box supports academic learning through personalised and creative approaches. The RYTC uses the arts to strengthen confidence, communication, positive mental health, and self-expression. Give Get Go Education develops training, practical experience, and pathways towards adult and professional futures. The route may differ, but the principle remains the same, start with the young person in front of you, identify what is preventing participation, and build a bridge that allows ability to become visible.
Key qualities of truly accessible learning
Across Helen's work, several qualities consistently distinguish learning environments that are genuinely accessible from those that only appear to be:
Flexibility: Offering more than one route to the same learning outcome
Clarity: Communicating instructions and expectations without unnecessary complexity
Choice: Allowing young people some control over how and when they engage
Playfulness: Using creativity and enjoyment as a genuine route into learning, not as a reward for finishing it
Responsiveness: Adjusting pace and format in the moment based on how a young person is actually experiencing a task
Consistency: Maintaining predictable routines that help young people feel safe enough to take risks
Strength-based framing: starting from what a young person can already do rather than what they cannot
None of these qualities works in isolation. They function as a system, each one reinforcing the others, so that a young person experiences accessibility not as a single accommodation but as the consistent character of the whole environment around them.
Why this matters for the brilliantly underestimated
Many students in Alternative Provision have spent years being defined by the parts of education that did not work for them. Attendance records, behaviour logs, and gaps in attainment often tell a story that has very little to do with what these young people are actually capable of and a great deal to do with environments that were never designed with them in mind.
Helen Kenworthy's mission through Of Course You Can!™ begins from a different premise. It asks not whether a young person is ready for education, but whether education has been made ready for them. For the brilliantly underestimated, that shift in starting point can be the difference between a young person who continues to disengage and one who finally discovers what they are capable of when the barriers are removed.
Being child-centred does not mean allowing a young person to avoid every difficult experience. It means making difficulty purposeful, proportionate, and supported. The aim is not comfort without growth, but safety strong enough to make growth possible. This protects ambition while ensuring that expectations are attached to a route the learner can genuinely access.
11 ways accessible learning transforms outcomes for students in Alternative Provision
Accessible learning is not defined by one strategy, adjustment, or teaching style. Its impact is seen in the way a young person begins to feel about themselves, their abilities, and their place within education. When learning is designed around the individual, barriers begin to soften, trust has space to grow, and students are given genuine opportunities to succeed without having to hide or change who they are.
For students in Alternative Provision, these changes can be especially significant. Many have experienced learning as something that exposes difficulty rather than builds possibility. A truly accessible environment offers a different experience, one where support, creativity, choice, and appropriate challenge work together to help the learner reconnect with education.
The following eleven outcomes show how accessible learning can transform not only a young person’s educational experience but also their confidence, motivation, independence, and belief in what may be possible for their future.
It removes shame from the learning process: When tasks are designed with multiple routes to success, young people are far less likely to associate struggle with failure. This alone can undo years of negative associations with the classroom.
It restores a sense of choice and agency: Offering genuine options in how a young person engages with learning gives them back a measure of control that many have lost through repeated experiences of being told what to do and how to do it. Choice, even in small forms, rebuilds motivation from the inside out.
It meets communication differences with understanding, not correction: Accessible learning treats different communication styles as valid rather than deficient, adjusting instruction instead of expecting the young person to adjust first. This reduces the anxiety that so often accompanies communication in formal learning settings.
It uses play and creativity to lower emotional barriers: Fun is not a distraction from learning, it is often the doorway into it, particularly for young people who associate formal education with failure. A playful task can achieve engagement that a worksheet never could.
It allows pace to be genuinely individual: Accessible environments do not assume every learner should move through content at the same speed. Slowing down where needed and moving quickly where a young person is ready keeps both confidence and challenge intact.
It builds trust between the learner and the setting: When a young person experiences a learning environment that consistently adapts to meet them, trust begins to grow, often for the first time in their educational experience. That trust becomes the foundation for every further step of progress.
It reframes difficulty as information rather than failure: Where a young person struggles becomes useful data about what needs to change, rather than evidence that they are not capable. This reframing changes how both the learner and the adults around them respond to setbacks.
It widens what success is allowed to look like: Accessible learning recognises that success can be demonstrated in many forms, not only those that traditional assessment tends to reward. This allows young people to show what they know in ways that genuinely reflect their understanding.
It gives young people evidence that education can work for them: Perhaps most importantly, accessible learning offers proof, not just reassurance, that a young person can succeed within an educational setting. That evidence, once gathered, is difficult for a young person to unlearn.
It changes how adults around the young person respond to setbacks: When a whole setting adopts accessible practices, staff begin to interpret struggle as useful information rather than a discipline issue. This shift in adult response often does as much for a young person's confidence as any single lesson.
It creates momentum that carries beyond any single subject: A young person who experiences genuine success in one accessible lesson often approaches the next subject with more willingness to try. Over time, this momentum builds into a broader, more resilient relationship with learning itself.
Conclusion
Accessible learning is not a simplified version of education. It is education designed properly, with every learner in mind rather than only those the system was originally built for. For students in Alternative Provision, that distinction can be the difference between a young person who continues to see themselves as failing at school and one who begins, often for the first time, to see themselves as capable.
Helen Kenworthy's mission through Of Course You Can!™ is built on the conviction that this shift is possible for every young person, not only those who happen to fit conventional expectations of what a learner should look like. Making education inclusive, fun, and genuinely accessible is not an act of generosity. It is an act of correction, giving young people the education they were always entitled to.
To explore more about accessible learning and the wider work supporting young people in Alternative Provision, visit here.
Helen Kenworthy, Artistic Director
Helen Kenworthy’s career embodies the transformative power of the arts, from her early roles in the prestigious West End with Bill Kenwright to her impactful work in regional theatre. As manager of the Oxfordshire Youth Arts Partnership, she created pathways for young people to thrive in the arts, with many going on to successful careers. Now at RYTC Creatives CIC and Give Get Go Education, Helen continues to inspire and mentor the next generation of theatre-makers and community leaders, offering invaluable opportunities for growth and professional development.
