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Annual Report of Virtual School

A summary of achievements and involvements for the Croydon Virtual School for CLA in academic year 2020-2021.

Minutes:

The Corporate Parenting Panel considered the Virtual School Annual Report which detailed the summary of achievements and involvements for the Croydon Virtual School for Children Looked After in the academic year 2020-2021. The Panel received an overview from the Head of Virtual School, Sarah Bailey.

 

In response to queries raised by the Panel, the Head of Virtual School clarified the following:

 

-        The challenge to increase completed PEPS from 98% to 100% relied on the timeframe a young person came into care as the process would take twenty days to complete. Though there were often a very small number of young children whose PEP was completed out of that timeframe.

-        Post-16 PEPs were lower than it should be as there were no funding in staffing for the Post 16 education cohort. There were also young people in colleges receiving different support for education and training, thus the consistency with the quality in training were difficult to improve. Relationships with colleges had improved greatly which included neighbouring boroughs. Further field colleges were difficult to receive information and building relationships were revised.

-        General attainment (exam) results saw of the total young children -  26% were struggling and 68% were on track to the predictions of trajectory. The general attainment results were not compared to other local authorities as the track targets were set personally to the young people within the school. Benchmark of each key-stage were compared with other local authorities. In detail, young children in the ‘below target’ cohort were a grade below their predicted trajectory, and young children in the ‘significant’ cohort would have had additional mitigated circumstances that affected their trajectory.

-        Good Development Level was a measure for young children in reception at aged 5. Greater Depth was beyond the national expected standard (higher achieving standard).

-        There were three secondary school exclusions in the borough which were rescinded and upheld by governing bodies, and effectively Croydon did not officially have any exclusions from Children Looked After in the academic year. The children were provided further intervention. There were no primary school CLA exclusions.

-        Attendance in schools had been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. The primary school cohort had a very strong attendance and secondary school attendance had dipped hugely. The attendance lead staff member within the cohort helped to improve the young person’s attendance on a case by case basis. It was established that late attendance was marked as a non-attendance (high numbers of young children were marked as absent for being very late); further, during the pandemic, not all schools marked attendance in the same way, meaning some children were marked as absent for home learning and not present in the school building. 

 

 

During the consideration of the recommendations, the Panel discussed the following:

 

-        The role in which the Panel would play to explore how to demonstrate the continuance in supporting young people to success.

 

 

The Chair welcomed the excellently detailed report and presentation from Virtual School and the Panel congratulated Virtual School on the work over the last few years particularly seeing better results in the PEP and SEND expectation and understanding the education sector.

 

The Panel RESOLVED: To note the report.

 

Supporting documents: