Children and Families Bill

Craig Whittaker Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con)]

I congratulate all Ministers who have been involved in this Bill, past and present, on many measures that appear to be a huge step forward. I look forward to monitoring its progress through to fruition.

I want to discuss the role of the virtual school head teacher. Virtual school head teachers are a tried and tested method for improving the attainment of looked-after children. They have been shown to have a positive impact when they are well resourced and focused. The Bill contains a new statutory requirement for local authorities to appoint at least one individual to promote the educational attainment of looked-after children, and it is intended that such people will be the virtual school head teacher. As the chairman of our local charity in Calderdale, Together for Looked-after Children, and of the all-party group on looked-after children and care leavers, I welcome this important step forward, because although the attainment plight of looked-after children has been acknowledged in the past, this Bill finally puts accountability for such attainment on a level playing field.

The local authority duty to promote the education of looked-after children does not cover young people over 18, but local authorities continue to have some duties to support the educational achievement of care leavers up to the age of 25. This support is especially important as care leavers are less likely than their peers to achieve traditional testing points throughout their educational life. Research by Catch22’s national care advisory service and the Who Cares? Trust shows that it is vital that the education of care leavers benefits from the same strategic overview provided by virtual school head teachers as that of looked-after children.

For that reason it is important that the Bill Committee looks carefully at doing one or two additional things to strengthen the role of the virtual head teacher. It should either extend the duty on local authorities to promote educational achievement to include care leavers, or include a new clause to require a strategic overview of duties regarding the education of care leavers between the ages of 16 and 25.

Such an amendment would have several benefits. It would provide a strategic oversight of educational provision for all looked-after children and care leavers, and a framework to link education to broader career planning and the employability responsibilities of schools and local authorities. It would provide efficiencies in service delivery by linking, not duplicating, existing pre-16 and post-16 provision. It would provide a framework to monitor systematically the effectiveness of educational provision for individuals and cohorts beyond the age of 16, supporting local authorities to deliver on the extended performance indicators that will be introduced next year. It would also provide a framework for capturing and supporting the educational needs of looked-after children who enter care post-16, such as the homeless 16 and 17-year-olds under the Southwark ruling and unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, as well as care leavers.

The proposal would improve joint working and information sharing with further education, higher education and other employment, education and training providers. It would also provide educational expertise to train, advise and support social workers and personal advisers who work with care leavers to deliver EET support, including through input into pathway plans and post-16 personal education plans. The proposal would also avoid gaps in the educational support provision of local authority children’s services. For example, one local authority reported recently that young people were unsupported during the summer holidays post-GCSEs until the 16-plus service took over their case.

The proposal would meet the improved standards of accountability under the forthcoming revised Ofsted framework, which will require local authorities to demonstrate how they would support the education of care leavers until they are 25. Ofsted has already had an impact, with one local authority reporting that the remit of its virtual school head teacher had been extended in response to criticism in a previous inspection.

The beauty of these tweaks is that they are achievable with little additional resource. Many local authorities already deliver an extended service, but I accept that there are concerns about the resource implications of an extended statutory duty. Local authorities would be free to decide the extent to which they used the remit of the virtual school head teacher to provide enhanced services to care leavers. The Who Cares? Trust and the National Care Advisory Service envisage that virtual school head teachers will provide strategic oversight of the educational support that local authorities must provide to care leavers, rather than direct casework, unless local authorities find that that would improve services.

More importantly, the proposal would protect the investment in leaving care support by providing a framework to monitor systematically and review the effectiveness of educational support post-16 and providing the evidence needed to evaluate services in order to enable better targeted support and to eliminate ineffective interventions. It would protect the investment in young people’s educational achievements at an earlier age by ensuring that they were supported to complete further and higher education and given the tools to achieve and maintain future economic well-being.

The proposal would also provide a framework for establishing better links with other EET providers, including further and higher education providers and training providers. Local authorities would be able to make better use of the resources for vulnerable groups. For example, they would be able to negotiate effective systems to access bursaries, support services and other schemes that support educational achievement.

This slight change to the Bill would not only join up services for this vulnerable group of young people, but would be cost-neutral in the long run.