Issue - meetings

The Executive Member for Education and the Director of Education and Partnerships submitted a report for the Executive’s consideration. The purpose of the report was to advise that Children’s Services had commissioned a peer review, from the National Association of Virtual School Heads (NAVSH), as part of the Council’s commitment to continuous improvement.

All local authorities were required to have a Virtual School Head in place. A Virtual School was the commonly used term for an individual or team employed by local authorities to support and champion the learning needs of looked after children (CLA) in schools.

A system of peer review had been developed by the National Association of Virtual School Heads (NAVSH) to help Virtual Schools improve and develop.  The Council was keen to regularly access such support to independently assess its position in relation to services provided to support children.

As part of regular engagement with the NAVSH, and in line with the Council’s commitment to ensuring the sector-led improvement opportunities provided by the NAVSH were used to their full potential, Children’s Services had requested the NAVSH to undertake a peer review of the Virtual School.

The NAVSH planned to assess the Council against four core themes, which were detailed at paragraph 5 of the submitted report.

OPTIONS

The Council could have chosen not to access the support and undertake an in-house review or commission external specialists to deliver the review. Those options were not recommended because it was healthy to seek external views from external peers, who were experienced in the running of Virtual Schools. Sourcing alternative specialists would have been a significant cost, while the cost for the NAVSH peer review was kept low to only cover the costs of those delivering the review.

ORDERED

That the proposed peer review be endorsed.

REASON

Utilising the NAVSH resource provided an opportunity to gather views from a range of experienced Virtual School Heads from local authorities in other parts of the country.