Do you know what a Virtual School is? I will assume that regular readers of this blog will know, but for the newcomer or casual readers, it is the local authority service that provides support for the education of both Looked After Children, and those children previously looked after. Recently the role of the service has been extended to include all children with a social worker and, even more recently, children in kinship care.
In many respects the virtual school embodies the very essence of local authority Children’s Services, bringing together support for children in need and their education. In that respect, it is disappointing that too often the Head of the Virtual School is often only a third-tier officer not reporting directly to the Director of Children’s Services.
The extension of the work of virtual schools to include children with a social worker has been the subject of a recent research report looking at the outcomes of extending the role of the virtual school to encompass all children with a social worker.
The report indicated that attendance, and the consequences of challenging behaviour – suspensions and exclusions – have featured significantly in the work of virtual schools with this new group of young people. Improved attainment, has been less of an outcome. The effects of covid-19 on both attendance and exclusions may well have meant less resources for improving attainment of this group; or that improving attainment may just take longer, and be a consequence of improvements in attendance. Either way, I would have liked to see more discussion about the age at which a child is linked to a social worker, and whether it is easier in the primary sector than the secondary schools to improve attainment?
In many ways, the report makes disappointing reading more than 15 years after the government department at Westminster responsible for education added children’ services to its remit under the last Labour government.
Too often there has been a lack of awareness of the educational needs of these vulnerable young people on the part of schools and social workers, and a real lack of data to allow effective tracking of such young people’s education attainments, partly because of data protection issues.
I understand that concern, and there is an interesting vignette in the report of child that had a social work for a brief period because of domestic abuse being offered extra maths teaching by their new school because of having been a ‘child in need’ for a brief period. The mother had hoped for a new beginning at a new school. This illustrates the complexity of the challenges in working with these young people and their families.
Many ofsted reviews of Children’s Services highlight challenges with inter-service working, and this report also has concerns. My worry is that in education, the growth of MATs and the downgrading of local authority roles, has made it more challenging for the development of policy around the education for all children with a social worker. The almost total absence of any contribution for elected cabinet members to the review worries my immensely. As with the NHS, local political input is seen as of little effect and not worth considering.
Personally, I think that view is wrong, and a strong local political sense of place in both education and social work with children is vital, as those that have read my demand over the years for Jacob’s Law, and the success of the Clause in the new Bill on in-year admissions will understand.
John Howson 