Virtual School Kent

1. Virtual School Kent

2. Corporate Parenting What is good and effective corporate parenting? Corporate parenting recognises that public agencies are accountable for discharging parental responsibilities, and that good results depend on children/young people receiving the support that they need to fulfil their potential throughout life. Corporate parents are represented by elected members of the local authority and senior officers, within Kent County Council, including all the directors and other members of Kent County Council’s Pioneers Group. The job descriptions of all senior officers now includes a specific reference to their role as corporate parents. Good corporate parenting is about doing what any parent should do to promote the safety and welfare of their child; keeping children at the centre of everything that we do. Effective corporate parenting involves working across agency boundaries. It requires everyone involved in the child/ young person’s life working together (with minimal bureaucracy) to provide the quality of care necessary to achieve the best possible outcomes for the child/young person in all aspects of their lives, especially in relation to their education and health. Level 3: Specialist responsibility - lead elected members for children/ Director of Children’s Services and Managing Director Level 2: Targeted responsibility - corporate parenting groups Level 1: Universal responsibility - all elected members.

3. Locality Team The rationale behind this locality based model is to create a VSK team around our looked after children and stakeholders in each area. This model, coupled with the work we are doing with the LAC nursing team, including working closely together in areas will enable VSK to really deliver holistic support.

4. FSC AREA NORTH FSC AREA EAST VSK LOCALITY MODEL VSK Locality 1 Sevenoaks Dartford Gravesham VSK Locality 3 Thanet Dept. Head VSK Locality 4 Canterbury Swale Asst. Head CiC Nurse CIC/YCL FELO Support Officers VSK Locality 5 Dover Placed OOA EWO Admin Support VSK Locality 2 Maidstone Tonbridge & Malling Tunbridge Wells VSK Locality 6 Ashford Shepway FSC AREA WEST FSC AREA SOUTH

5. Attainment & Progress

6. What Ofsted Said 07-8.06.12 Ofsted Thematic Inspection of the Impact of the Virtual School • Weaknesses are being tackled rapidly and robustly by the Virtual School. The last 18 months have seen significant change in key areas and show strong ambition and clear, well informed and focused corporate commitment at all levels, and from partners to improve the provision and outcomes • At KS4 in 2011 results 5A-C GCSEs including English and Maths shows significant increase in that over twice as many young people gained this qualification than in the previous year. • Tenacious monitoring and the follow up of absence shows fewer LAC absent from school and a reduction in persistent absence that shows the local authority on course to meet or exceed the 2012 targets set by government. You have ambitious plans for that and there has been a clear improvement as has been acknowledged by Head and Designated Teachers. • The role and remit of the Virtual School is clear, unambiguous and high profile. The service is very strongly led and properly resourced. Its integrated and cohesive structure is suitable for purpose. Responsibilities and accountabilities are clearly defined and effective in practice. Strengths are known well and areas for further development show a thorough understanding of the needs of LAC. You are developing a service entirely on the needs of LAC; it’s not there for any other purpose. • Strong and effective strategic and operational partnerships with other services and agencies, health, schools and FE in particular, as well as involvement in numerous internal and external projects, membership of fostering and adoption advisory panels and work with foster carers play a key role locally in the education of LAC. These partnerships are securing for example much improved retention in FE after the age of 16, enabled innovation that has improved access to health services and helped with the early identification of speech and language and mental health difficulties and special educational needs. • Strategic planning for Virtual School is comprehensive, thorough, links well to other key plans shows clear direction for the service and good progress overall. Reporting to various bodies is regular, full and informative. Governance that already secures appropriate support and challenge is now under review to ensure more rapid decision making. • The Virtual School team comprises expert, committed, very hard working, enthusiastic and highly respected educational professionals who are entirely focused on the benefits of holistic cross service and multi-agency direct work with LAC to improve educational and wellbeing outcomes. • Locality teams each working with raising attainment plans, the pivotal role of assistant heads, considerable specialist expertise including LAC with learning difficulties and /or disabilities, have well targeted interventions and schools and partners report a transformed service following government intervention. They point to a well organised, well co-ordinated, cohesive proactive highly accessible and responsive service that has expanded with considerable cost efficiency. Designated teachers are supported in their role very well and high quality bespoke and practical training develops their expertise and the capacity of schools. Similarly a wide range of training opportunities for foster carers enables them to support the learning and behaviour of LAC in their care. The corporate parenting panel and the Virtual School are successful in promoting accountability and ensuring that schools are answerable for outcomes for LAC. • LAC report very positively on the high quality of support they receive from the Virtual School. They identified proactive and approachable professionals who communicate effectively in between themselves and take full account of the views of young people in deciding what help is needed. The local authorities’ website for professionals designed by a LAC is comprehensive, accessible and informative to educational professionals as well as to other services and partner agencies. The needs of individual LAC and their circumstances are met very well. Age appropriate PEPs are accessible, comprehensive in structure, accompanied by clear and detailed guidance for their completion and take good account of the views of LAC. Ambitious plans are in hand to promote the engagement of LAC in their learning; success is now celebrated formally and will include a rewards system throughout the year as an incentive. • The service is doing all the right things, with the right people, in the right way in the right place with the resource and expertise that is needed and because of that morale is high, teams are working together including with health. You know what the targets are, you know what the future is and you know what the problems are. You are on the case in all the areas and prioritising effectively.

7. What Ofsted Said 12.06.12 Ofsted Fostering Inspection • Outcomes for children and young people are good. • Children and young people receive the help and support they need to attend school and reach their full potential. The energy and drive committed to the virtual school over the last two years is paying real dividends. Attendance and attainment figures are rising. Exclusions are on the decline; a 40% reduction is noted this year and the inclusion strategy is seeing more children in mainstream schools. Foster carers are excellent role models; many use their own continued training and development to demonstrate the value of learning to those in their care. A high percentage of children and young people say they enjoy learning because they get the help they need. Individual needs are very clearly captured within personal education plans. • Attending the most appropriate school and remaining settled in a current school is heavily featured when placing a child in a new foster home.

8. What Ofsted Said 18.03.13 Ofsted Adoption Inspection • Major restructuring has resulted in significant improvements in many areas. The service is now much more effective and there are some elements of sound and consolidated good practice; for example, in management monitoring, developments in education policy and the virtual school. • The agency is committed to partnership working and works closely with colleagues in education, health and other adoption agencies. This contributes to positive outcomes for children. This provides a ‘team around the child’ and effective collaborative working to support children and adoptive families. • Good progress has been made on most of the 13 previous recommendations. For example, the service now has an education policy in place to support adopted children. The developments in the educational support for looked-after children are much more robust than formerly, so this has been fully addressed. These areas were all facilitated through the Virtual School.

9. What Ofsted Said 23.08.13 Ofsted Looked After Children’s Services Inspection • Significant achievements have been made to improve outcomes for children and young people. For example, the reorganisation of services for looked after children into four locality teams and better collaborative working arrangements with key partner agencies are evident in the progress being made by the council. The council has made a substantial financial investment into services for looked after children despite its widespread budgetary constraints. The development of the Virtual School Kent (VSK) has clearly had an impact on reducing fixed term or permanent exclusions and improving attendance, achievement and attainment. This is evidenced in the educational progress children and young people are now making. • Health outcomes for looked after children and care leavers have improved since the last inspection and are now adequate. Information sharing is improving and is leading to more consistency in health provision for looked after children. Health needs of children who live out of authority are monitored through Virtual School Kent (VSK). This works effectively with looked after children nurses in other authorities to ensure that health assessments are completed in a timely way. • There is improving performance in dental checks and review of health assessments. Significant work has taken place to improve the timeliness and take-up of health assessments and initial dental consultations. This has included undertaking visits to the child’s placement and telephone consultations. A named looked after children’s nurse with specialist skills to support 16+ male UASC living in Millbank assessment centre provides continuity for these young people. • Educational outcomes for looked after children are adequate. As a result of the development of the Virtual School Kent (VSK) there have been improvements in the achievement of looked after children since the SLAC inspection, in 2010. There is an upward trend in attainment at the end of Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 4. More looked after children reach Level 4 in English at the end of Year 6 and gain five A* to C grades in their GCSE examinations, including English and mathematics. However, results in Key Stage 2 mathematics were low in 2012 due to pupils leaving the authority just before the Standard Assessment Tests (SATs). Most looked after children make average progress from their starting points and a few make good progress. Support workers from VSK make a strong contribution to pupils’ accelerated progress, particularly in primary schools. Designated teachers receive a good range of training especially in how to meet the learning and emotional needs of looked after children. The headteacher of VSK gives good and strong leadership to this service. His determination to give the best possible education to all looked after children has resulted in an effective re-structure and expansion of the staff team. VSK effectively monitors and supports looked after children placed in out of county placements. The headteacher with his senior leadership team provides a good level of challenge to schools. They collect information about all looked after children and hold schools to account for how they meet their learning and emotional needs. The outcome of this is improvements in achievement and attendance and a reduction in the number of looked after children having fixed term or permanent exclusions from school. One headteacher said, ‘It is not fair to call it the virtual school because schools get real support from real people when we need this.’ VSK has recently introduced an awards ceremony to celebrate the achievements of looked after children. This is very popular and carers and the children greatly value the recognition that this gives to their hard work and commitment to learning.