CEN & ARE's Celebration 2024 - invite only

Established in 1999, Communities Empowerment Network (CEN) is a charity working for equality and justice in education in England.

CEN aims to support the entire school community with the central focus of protecting the child’s right to be educated in mainstream provision.

We do this in the following ways:

• CEN provides advocacy training to those wishing to join our team of Education Advocates and represent children who have either been excluded from school or who are experiencing problems likely to lead to exclusion

• Through our team of Education Advocates, CEN offers free representation to assist parents in managing the exclusion process with the aim of helping their children reintegrate back into full-time, mainstream education

• CEN supports parents to play an active role in the education and progress of their children, via the delivery of our Parents Empowering Parents (PEP) programme. We host forums, workshops, and other events focused on the importance of early intervention and managing the parents’ relationship with the school to avoid issues that might lead to their child’s exclusion

• CEN assists schools to identify alternative pathways to support students that will not result in academic failure and later social exclusion that can often be a consequence of exclusion

CEN also provides mediation, access to mentoring, and evidence to support research into the effects of school exclusion.