In this section:
The focus on improving outcomes for pupils in our schools also extends to the work of the Virtual School and College and improving outcomes for children we care for (CWCF), whether they be in Portsmouth’s schools or colleges or in other local authorities.
The Virtual School and College takes a lead role in ensuring that all children and young people we care for have educational provision that meets their need and that they receive the support they need to fulfil their potential. Every young person has a Personal Education Plan (PEP) or Personal Opportunity Plan (POP – post 16) which is reviewed at least once a term. Every young person has a named education advocate to support them on their education journey.
The Portsmouth Virtual School and College team comprises of:
- Virtual School headteacher (VSHT) – Tina Henley
- Deputy headteacher – Victoria Reynish
- Senior advocate (PLAC) – Sarah Major
- Senior SEND advocate – Sarah Pearce
- Education advocates – Annette Bradshaw, Alanna Burchett, Paisley Cliffe, Lucy Head, Lisa House, Michelle Loveday, Kirstie McQuarrie and Jessica Rodwell
- Positive attendance lead – Jennifer Giles
- Careers and progression advisor – Ann-Marie O’Brien
- Data officer from the education team – Laura Oakley-Brown
- Business support officer – Sue Presdee-Davis
The Virtual School Headteacher (VSHT) is the lead ensuring that arrangements are in place to improve the educational experiences and outcomes for all Portsmouth CWCF.
The Virtual School and College monitors the educational progress and attendance of all Portsmouth CWCF providing advice and support to those children and the adults working with them. In particular, the team supports social workers, foster carers and designated teachers in planning for both good educational outcomes and holistic opportunities and enrichment. The team also provides training and development for a range of stakeholders including schools, foster carers and social workers. Personal Education Plans (PEPs) and Personal Opportunity Plans (POPs) are completed electronically provided by Welfare Call.
The Virtual School headteacher will provide advice, support and guidance to support our care experienced young people (Year 14 to aged 25) and their supportive network as well as professionals supporting young people who have, or previously had had a social worker.
About
What is a virtual school?
- A virtual school has no building. Students are enrolled at real schools and remain the responsibility of that school.
- Virtual schools exist across the country to help to improve the educational outcome of children and young people who are looked after.
- Statutory since September 2014.
- The virtual school approach is to work with children we care for as if they were in a single school:
- providing support and challenge to the schools they attend
- tracking their progress, attendance and attainment
- supporting them to achieve as well as possible.
Why are we here?
We are here to:
- support the child/young person, the school and foster carers.
- challenge the schools to ensure the best possible provision and support is given to the child/young person.
- ensure that all who work with CWCF, and care experienced young people have high educational aspirations for them so that they are given the best opportunities to engage, progress and achieve their full potential (in and out of the local authority schools and academies).
The attainment and progress of this group of children continues to be considerably lower than that of their peers.
What do we do?
The team takes the lead role in:
- Seek to develop an in-depth understanding of the child’s educational needs and challenges
- Advise on, secure and maintain best possible educational provision according to the identified needs
- Raise awareness of attachment issues and barriers to learning with schools and providers
- Collect and analyse engagement, progress and achievement data to track, monitor, support and challenge
- Coordinate, chair and process high quality and robust PEP/POP meetings and documentation
- Advise on, track and monitor the use of Pupil Premium Plus and its impact
- Deliver training to partners: DTs, FC, SW and external partners
- Challenge low expectations, stereotypes and misconceptions around this group of children and young people
How do we do it?
- Keep a school roll for 0–18-year-olds with individual allocated Education Workers
- High quality and robust termly PEPs (leading on 2/3 per year) and POPs (leading on 1/3 a year)
- Tracking and monitoring of attendance and attainment
- Allocate Pupil Premium Plus to support identified need
- Develop and maintain close working relationships and regular contact with our students, carers, social workers, schools and wider agencies
- Ensure opportunities for children to develop interests and hobbies (in and out of school)
- We endeavour to be proactive, not reactive
Previously looked after children
Why are we offering this support?
In February 2018, the Department for Education produced statutory guidance placing responsibility on local authorities to ‘promote the educational achievement of previously looked after children’ from September 2018.
Virtual schools should be a source of advice and information to any person with parental responsibility, providers of funded early years education, designated teachers and any other person considered appropriate, to help to advocate for these children as effectively as possible.
Who is eligible for this support?
Previously looked after children (PLAC) are defined as those who are no longer looked after by a local authority in England and Wales because they are the subject of an adoption, special guardianship or child arrangements order. The duties also extend to children who were adopted from ‘state care’ outside of England and Wales, if the ‘state care’ was provided by a public authority, a religious organisation or any other organisation whose sole or main purpose is to benefit society.
These duties apply to children who are in early years provision and continue throughout the compulsory years of education, where the child is in provision funded in part or in full by the state.
What support do we offer?
- A dedicated PLAC lead advocate who attends training and disseminates key information from updated government guidance and publications, relevant training courses and any other key information to the Virtual School team and colleagues across other connected services.
- Monitoring of all Portsmouth looked after children on placement orders or those with parallel plans towards adoption to ensure that they have PEPs in place and to ensure key information is communicated between the Virtual School and College and social care around their educational needs.
- Advice and information around educational matters for parents and guardians of previously looked after children on request.
- Formal consultation sessions with parents and guardians (these can also include schools and other key involvements at parent or guardian’s request). Follow up advice may include liaison with key involvements and attendance at a one-off meeting to confirm support plans.
- Generic advice and information for social workers and schools around educational matters for previously looked after children.
- Development of an Education Support Plan (ESP) document and transition plan which are available to all Portsmouth schools and nurseries.
- Regular training and updates offered to designated teachers.
- Development and distribution of guides, documentation and resources to support parents, guardians and education colleagues.
- Close partnership working with neighbouring authority virtual school PLAC leads.
- Close partnership working with regional adoption agency Adopt South, including the development and delivery of training around educational matters.
- Close partnership working with Portsmouth Special Guardianship Support team and the Educational Psychology service.
- Delivery of direct training to adoptive parents with neighbouring authority virtual school PLAC Leads.
Guides and documents:
- Education Support Plan document
- PLAC transition plan
- PLAC guide to starting school
- PLAC transition guide
- Pupil premium guide – when changing from LAC to PLAC
For more information, please contact Sarah Major, PLAC lead for the Virtual School and College:
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 023 9268 8108
Children seeking safety and asylum (CSSAA)
The Ethnic Minority Achievement Service (EMAS) continues to work extensively with the Virtual School and College to support children seeking safety and asylum in the city. These young people are often the most challenging for schools to work with due to their lived experiences and past trauma. We have therefore produced guidance in the form of a practical toolkit for supporting refugee and asylum-seekers in secondary schools.
Whilst the newly arrived young people are waiting for education placements and full-time provision to be secured, EMAS facilitate weekly ‘starting out’ sessions (in Portsmouth) and Seesaw (remotely) to support them to build social, emotional and educational skills.
Where children seeking safety and asylum arrive out of usual transition times, there is also a useful online phrasebook, including some phonetic translations. However, it needs discretion with its use as it covers vocabulary for issues that educational providers will wish to deal with more sensitively rather than giving directly as a resource to students and young people.
Extended duties – Children with a Social Worker and those who have previously had a social worker age 0-18
In September 2021 the Department for Education introduced a role extension for Virtual School Heads to ‘promote the education of children with a social worker and those who have previously had a social worker aged 0-18’.
The new responsibilities for virtual school heads gave them a strategic leadership role to champion the educational attendance, attainment and progress of children with a social worker. This means that they should be:
- making visible the disadvantages that children with a social worker can experience, enhancing partnerships between education settings and local authorities, including with children’s social care, to help all agencies hold high aspirations for these children
- promoting practice that supports children’s engagement in education, recognising that attending an education setting is an important factor in helping to keep children safe from harm
- levelling up children’s outcomes to narrow the attainment gap so every child has the opportunity to reach their potential – including helping to ensure that children with a social worker benefit from support to recover educationally from the impact of the pandemic
The virtual school head role for children with a social worker is a strategic leadership responsibility. Virtual school heads are not expected to:
- work directly with individual children and their families – including tracking and monitoring of individual educational progress, providing academic or other interventions
- respond to requests from parents or carers to offer advice, intervention and support in relation to individual children with a social worker
- take responsibility for children with SEND who do not require or need a social worker, as defined above
What support do we offer?
- Generic advice and information for social workers and schools around educational matters for children with/who had a social worker.
- Development of an Education Support Plan (ESP). document and transition plan which are available to all Portsmouth schools and nurseries.
- Regular training and updates offered to designated teachers.
Guides and documents:
For information, please contact:
Tina Henley (Headteacher)
Email: [email protected]
Work phone: 02392 688076
Work mobile: 07984 579475
Extended Duties – Children in Kinship Care Arrangements
In March 2024 the Department for Education introduced a role extension for Virtual School Heads to ‘promote the education of children in kinship care arrangements’.
The remit of virtual school heads already includes kinship children:
- who are looked-after
- who meet the definition of previously looked-after
- with a social worker.
The kinship strategy adapted the role of virtual school heads to specifically include championing the attendance, attainment and progress of children in kinship care.
Virtual school heads should bring greater focus and visibility to the distinct needs of children in kinship care within their existing non-statutory responsibilities including raising awareness of the needs and disadvantage of children in different types of kinship care arrangements, promoting practice that supports attendance and engagement of kinship children in education and promoting practice that improves the educational attainment of children in kinship care.
The strategic role adaptation does not require direct intervention with kinship children and their carers, but this system-wide approach has the potential to benefit children in all types of kinship placements, including those in informal arrangements.
In addition to adapting the strategic role, as part of their non-statutory function, virtual school heads should expand the provision of advice and information, on request, to all kinship carers with special guardianship orders and child arrangement orders, regardless of whether their child was previously looked after by the local authority.
This will mean that more kinship carers will have access to information and advice from virtual school heads on areas such as behaviour management, exclusions, and admissions. It will be an important step in helping more kinship carers to navigate the education system, in turn helping them to advocate for the educational achievement of their children.
Virtual school heads are not expected to provide information and advice to kinship carers with informal arrangements. The eligibility of pupil premium plus remains limited to looked-after children and previously looked-after children.
What support do we offer?
- A dedicated PLAC lead advocate who attends training and disseminates key information from updated government guidance and publications, relevant training courses and any other key information to the Virtual School team and colleagues across other connected services.
- Advice and information around educational matters for parents, carers and guardians of children in kinship care arrangements on request.
- Formal consultation sessions with parents, carers and guardians (these can also include schools and other key involvements at parent, carer or guardian’s request). Follow up advice may include liaison with key involvements and attendance at a one-off meeting to confirm support plans.
- Generic advice and information for social workers and schools around educational matters for children in kinship care arrangements.
- Development of an Education Support Plan (ESP) document and transition plan which are available to all Portsmouth schools and nurseries.
- Regular training and updates offered to designated teachers.
- Development and distribution of guides, documentation and resources to support parents, guardians and education colleagues.
- Close partnership working with neighbouring authority virtual school PLAC leads.
- Close partnership working with Portsmouth Special Guardianship Support team and the Educational Psychology service.
Guides and documents:
For more information, please contact:
Sarah Major, PLAC lead for the Virtual School and College
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 023 9268 8108
Or
Tina Henley, Virtual School and College Headteacher
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 07984 579475
Contact us
Tina Henley (Headteacher)
Email: [email protected]
Work phone: 02392 688076
Work mobile: 07984 579475