Agenda item

Melanie Stubbs, Head of the Virtual School, presented an overview of the Virtual School Annual Report for the period September 2022 to July 2023 academic year (for copy of report and presentation see file of minutes).

The Panel noted that at the end of the academic year, the Virtual School had supported 766 children of statutory school age and delivered early years and post 16 young provision. 53% of Durham children had an identified special educational need in 2022-23, however this figure was approximately 3% below the national figure. The Head of the Virtual school highlighted that identifying a special need enabled the right support to be provided and a young person in receipt of an Education Health Care Plan (EHCP) would continue to have access to the funding, if they were to move out of the county.

The number of school moves which had taken place during the year was reported as 52, which was slightly higher than the previous year and a total of 54 school moves were challenged by the Virtual School. Attendances were improving and there had been one permanent exclusion, 40 suspensions and 21 young people had more than one period of suspension. Short term support for suspended young people was available, which relieved pressure on carers.

The Head of the Virtual School provided details on continuing priorities and new priorities for 2023-24. A new priority had been the appointment of a dedicated Previously Child Looked After Officer.  Other priorities include to continue the development of the support for UASC and to provide a cohesive system for children looked after who require a statutory assessment and an EHCP, to ensure needs are met in a timely manner.

The Vice-Chair highlighted the continuing priority to focus on attendance and asked how this would be carried out. The Head of the Virtual School replied that work is carried out with the Attendance Improvement Team (AIT) and Social Workers to promote a positive ethos around attendance and she added that attendance would be discussed in more detail at the forthcoming sub-group meeting. The Head of the Virtual School reminded the Panel that there were concerns, previously, regarding a dip in attendance of year 6 pupils on reaching year 7, however this was much improved due to the success of the new transition work.

The Chair thanked the Head of the Virtual School for the useful Appendix B  to the report which provided definitions for abbreviations used within the report. 

Councillor Deinali was pleased to see the appointment of an officer specifically for previously looked after children and requested further information on their remit.  The Head of the Virtual School clarified that the officer would attend each young person’s final Personal Education Plan meeting when the child is about to move for adoption, to build up an educational profile and they will liaise with the adopter and school, when a young person is moving out of the county, for up to two terms.

In response to a question from Luke as to whether the Education Fun Fund could be used as an incentive to promote school attendance, the Virtual School Head offered to meet with Luke to discuss the matter further.

Resolved:

That thereport and presentation be noted.