What is the Virtual School?

Attendance monitoring and tracking has always been a priority for the Virtual School for Children in Care. If our young people are not attending school they will not be progressing and fulfilling their educational potential.  It is crucial to mention that Attendance is everyone's responsibility and in consequence we have joined up with our colleagues in the Attendance Team to improve outcomes for our young people.

Additionally, in line with the extension of the Virtual School head role to include Children with a Social Worker (September 2021), the Virtual School was tasked with working strategically to ensure there is culture of high aspirations for children with a social worker and to promote their educational outcomes including their engagement with education. As part of this work, the Virtual School has joined up with the existing support offered by the Attendance team to further the understanding of barriers to and supporting the improvement of attendance of children with a social worker.

This partnership has included the additional resource of funding an Attendance Entitlement Officer (AEO) with responsibility across all of the Virtual School cohorts.

The offer of support is structured in a tiered response aligned to the offer of Virtual School support for all cohorts.

The work of the linked Virtual School AEO allows targeted school and pupil-level work in response to our attendance data and dynamic bespoke pupil-level support when requested by a Virtual School adviser.