To receive the annual report of the Virtual School Governing Body for 2019-2020.

The Cabinet Member for Children’s Services, Councillor Law, and the Headteacher of the Virtual School, Jane Inett, outlined the submitted annual report of the Virtual School for 2019/2020, which was the 10^th annual report and the result of ten years of development from the team.  Members noted that the Virtual School was exemplar and had helped to enable strong achievements from our cared for young people.  The ethos of the team was to help our cared for young people achieve the most through putting in appropriate support through Personal Educational Plans (PEPs) and ensuring that they have the correct tools e.g. during lockdown they were provided with access to additional learning websites, laptops and making weekly calls to carers to see how things were going, to ensure that they could make the most of their time out of school, with over 80% returning to school by the summer term.

Members noted that normally the Virtual School was judged by attainment at the end of the academic year, but there were no league tables for the last year and no national comparisons as the children had not sat their formal tests.  This meant that based on the end of year data the position at key stage 4, GGSE, may have been improved as sometimes the scores increase following a formal maths test.

The Board was advised that the ambition was for all PEPs to be rated at ‘good’ to ensure that the schools really know their children and are putting in the appropriate support for them. 

Members of the Board asked questions in relation to the following:

·                     how to ensure the PEPs are ‘good’ – the Headteacher of the Virtual School reads all the PEPs and advised of the processes that were in place where this was not the case such as contact was made with the school to ensure that appropriate action was taken to increase the PEP to a ‘good’ rating to ensure the best outcomes for the young person and the importance of a ‘dedicated teacher’ to support the person;

·                     is there SEND (Special Education Needs and Disability) screening when children come into care and how does the Virtual School ensure the physical school is aware of the needs of the child – when a child comes into the Virtual School a check is carried out to see if they have an ECHP (Education, Health and Care Plan), school action or support for the child would be identified in their first PEP.  The Virtual School has a SENCO (Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator) who oversees all those children with an ECHP;

·                     there are high numbers of cared for young people within the Youth Offending Team (YOT) is the Virtual School aware of this – this information is not always known to the Virtual School, however, some of the young people may be care experienced rather than cared for, often these individuals may have speech, language and communications issues.  There was currently only one cared for young person within the YOT which is in post 16.  The YOT has a dedicated speech and language therapist who supports young people; and

·                     has the number of children attending schools out of area changed and do you record children moving schools – there were fewer children out of area which was normally 50% of the young people, out of area covered any school outside of Torbay so even neighbouring areas are classed as out of area.  Details of the school moves were set out at the end of the annual report.  Stability of school is really important to the young person and the Virtual School only supports moves when it is in the best interest of the young person.

There was support for the child informed approach, trying to maintain cared for young people in mainstream schools working towards positive outcomes and it was suggested that more could be done to work with the community to see what additional support they could offer working towards better outcome for our young people.

The Board formally expressed their thanks and appreciation to the Headteacher and colleagues from the Virtual School for all their help supporting children who are in our care.

(Note:  prior to consideration of the item in Minute 3 the Chairman, Councillor Bye, declared a non-pecuniary interest as a Council appointed governor of the Virtual School.)