Raising attainment for looked after children

Their key challenge is to bring social care and education data together to effectively monitor progress and initiate remedial action where their progress falls below expectations.

If you want to be able to draw on available data sets to help interrogate progress at child, year group, key stage, whole school population level, or even by needs group such as SEND, and be informed by events that might be contributing to this from the child’s available social care data, you need to get sophisticated! This was the objective in developing the Virtual School solution in Liquidlogic Early Years and Education System (EYES). Built on the Liquidlogic Children’s Platform which caters for Early Help, Children’s Social Care and Education, Health and Care Planning, this has resulted in a solution that is truly unique in today’s market.

This diagram illustrates just some of the information sources that feed into the Virtual School dashboard, all drawn from the Liquidlogic single solution.

The dashboard supports Virtual School users to group the cohort by category (children placed in area/out of area/children placed from other areas), establishment attended and year group. The Liquidlogic Virtual School also offers a wealth of information in other areas, including:

• Demographics

• Legal status

• Placement information and time in placement

• SEN provision and primary need

• Attendance

• Exclusions

• Personal Education Plan (last and next due)

• Involvements

The dashboard can be interrogated to analyse academic attainment which can support the Personal Education Planning process for each child, but it is also a powerful tool to support the Virtual School in its more strategic objectives centred on raising the attainment of its looked after child population.

Data collection

A key challenge for many Virtual School Heads is collecting the data – this can be an issue even from schools within the local authority. Liquidlogic’s unique partnership with Groupcall supports daily updates from schools into EYES using the well-established Xporter solution. In August 2017, Bristol City Council took the Liquidlogic Early Years and Education System (EYES) live. A pilot programme in Bristol has since successfully seen the collection of data for ‘looked after child’ pupils placed in non-Bristol schools - a first of its kind in the market and a clear win for Virtual School teams.

Present in 97 per cent of schools across the country, Groupcall Xporter is well placed to support the vast majority of local authorities in collecting data from almost all schools, no matter where the child is placed. The benefits are clear: accurate and timely collection of key data without telephone calls or rekeying of data. Groupcall can also support the automated collection of data from education provisions which use spreadsheets and/or databases. This data collection is in recognition of the fact that not all providers have a management information system that schools commonly use.

Personal Education Plans (PEPs)

Personal Education Plans are usually produced by a child’s social worker, in consultation with the child’s school and with support and oversight of the Virtual School. Having easy access to Personal Education Plans and the ability to quality assure them is another key feature of the solution, as they are made available from within the child’s Virtual School Record.

For the social worker, the benefit is that the child’s attendance and attainment data can be imported into the PEP when preparing for the review. Following this, the child’s school simply provides the commentary on it, which they can do through the Liquidlogic EYES establishment portal.

Virtual School: the future On 16 June 20211, the DfE published guidance for the expansion in scope for Virtual Schools. This is set to include all children who have a social worker safeguarding and promoting their welfare.

The challenge around the data management for this area of the local authority’s duties is therefore likely to increase, with more children being supported and potential changes in reporting requirements; for example, the ability to view academic progress and attendance in additional categories such as children looked after, children in need, children with complex needs and disabilities.

It may also result in an increase in cross-boundary liaison, where children in need or subject of child protection plans might be residing out of the local authority area and/or attending schools out of the area.