Virtual School news
The Virtual School has been tracking and monitoring the education of all Warwickshire children looked after (CLA) wherever they are educated through its online systems and also by visits to all schools where Warwickshire CLA attend.
In 2016 there were some successes with GCSE attainment for Warwickshire CLA being higher than CLA nationally including one young person with 8 A* grades. Also a record number of 21 care leavers have started university. However there is still work to do because the majority of CLA do less well than their peers. This is often due to the legacy of the neglect and abuse they have suffered.
The Virtual School is very keen to encourage CLA to aspire to going to university and recognises that the main barrier to progressing to Higher Education (HE) is poor GCSE performance. Hence we are offering two schemes which enable younger CLA to visit HE institutions and experience some of the wide range of learning opportunities that they could have as an undergraduate. The UniversityGO! programme is for year 7 pupils and involves the University of Warwick and Coventry University and University Explorers is for children in year 6 and takes place on Saturdays at the University of Warwick. Designated teachers of eligible CLA for both programmes will be contacted in the next few days.
Those of you working with CLA will be aware of the need for all of these children to have a Personal Education Plan (PEP) which describes how they will be helped to make better progress. This needs to be reviewed each term together with the child’s foster parents and social worker. Having introduced the electronic ePEP system we are delighted that well over 80% of CLA had a PEP review last term. Where a review has taken place the Virtual School has sent schools £600 Pupil Premium Plus for each child.
Since the new arrangements were established in 2014, the Virtual School has allocated £600 per CLA per term because we believe that schools are best placed to give children the extra support they need. This is set out in the Virtual School Pupil Premium Policy. We are now reviewing this policy and would be happy to receive any feedback from headteachers about this. Please send comments to virtualschool@warwickshire.gov.uk
Further information about the work of the Virtual School is available here.