The role of virtual heads is “vital now more than ever” in a post-pandemic world where vulnerable pupils have further lost out, the government has said.
Virtual heads will from this month support the attendance, attainment and progress of children in kinship care – the latest expansion of their role since the support was made mandatory for councils in 2010.
At that time, heads were restricted to securing and supporting the education of children in care.
The brief has since widened to include previously looked-after children and some strategic responsibilities for children with a social worker. Meanwhile, pressures on the children’s social care system have become more acute than ever.
The latest change is meant to address what Matthew Cooke, a virtual head in Suffolk and the immediate past chair of the National Association of Virtual School Heads (NAVSH), calls “injustices” in the system.
Some kinship arrangements have been supported more than others. In March, the government pledged £3.8 million to support the new duty in 2024-25.
The Conservative government described virtual school head leadership as “vital now more than ever, given the impact the pandemic has had on the learning of all children – none more so than the most vulnerable”.
But not all heads are yet receiving regular engagement from their local virtual schools. Two-thirds interacted with them last academic year, but 15 per cent had never connected with them before that, a recent Teacher Tapp survey shows.
Nor do they necessarily appreciate it when they do.
Realising potential
Lack of engagement is perhaps unsurprising, as virtual heads operate somewhat behind the scenes, rarely meeting the young people they’re responsible for.
And yet in some ways they treat them as though they were their own children. Sue Johnson, the virtual school head for Salford and the current chair of the NAVSH, says she always asks herself when making decisions, “would this be good enough for my child?” One recent experience demonstrates why.
Ali*, a “bright” but “unsettled” year 11 pupil living in a children’s home, was “heading towards gang culture and criminal exploitation,” says Cooke. After a period out of school, Cooke managed to get him a place.
But a dispute with a new head of school “escalated”, and with “no climbdown on either side” Ali faced permanent exclusion.
“Schools aren’t going to take on a year 11 who’s permanently excluded readily,” Cooke says. “Who would?”
One school did agree, and with Cooke’s help “wrapped support around” Ali, who is now thriving. Cooke secured funding for him to attend an independent school for sixth form – an outcome that was unimaginable to Ali a year before that: the school had given him “a completely new view of himself”.
But not unimaginable for virtual heads, who know the challenges of getting schools to take on looked-after children – and are just as familiar with such success stories.
Which perhaps explains how Johnson and Cooke brim with so much enthusiasm.
“It’s amazing how successful young people can be, having gone through adverse childhood experiences that most of us would be completely floored by,” Cooke says.
Exclusions
But Ali’s case also demonstrates the tensions between virtual heads and schools. (“We try very hard not to fall out”, Johnson says.)
Despite guidance stating that the permanent exclusion of children in care should be avoided, there were 60 nationwide in 2021-22. Cooke “avoided” 13 in the 2023-24 autumn term alone.
Schools call with an “expectation that I come up with a magical package” to swerve expulsion. In reality, the magical package is pupil premium plus funding, which schools get to fund “quick access” to educational psychologists, for example.
But Cooke believes the funding, worth £2,570 per pupil in 2024-25, is “starting to run a bit thin. It’s relied on more and more so there’s less of it.”
Without virtual heads’ support, Cooke believes that permanent exclusions of those in care would “shoot up overnight”.
He’s also “very worried” about suspensions. In 2021-22, 13 per cent of looked-after children had one or more suspension, compared with 3 per cent of children overall. “It does nothing for their relationship with the school,” Johnson says.
But the 85 per cent in “stable placements” attend school regularly, and are permanently excluded less (0.06 per cent compared to 0.42 per cent for those in the first year of placement)
Anecdotally, they often take on school leadership roles too, because the care process has made them “familiar with adult meetings”.
“You can have extraordinary change when a young person feels that sense of belonging.”
But not all those in education share Cooke’s views. Until recently he was on the Department for Education’s Attendance Action Alliance, but disagreed with a narrative that children should get the sense of belonging they need to boost attendance by doing well at school.
“It was slightly topsy turvy for me… which was my tuppence worth.”
Virtual reality
Cooke was a deputy head before he became a virtual head role ten years ago. It was meant to be a year’s sabbatical to “gain different experience”, but he never left.
Johnson was a French teacher and school leader in mainstream and special schools for 25 years.
So both can empathise with the dilemmas schools face – as can most virtual heads, once school leaders themselves.
But Johnson says she wishes she’d better appreciated back then the “inter-relationship between schools, the local authority and social care legislation”.
Cooke says there are similarities with the role of other heads, “managing budgets and staff” and being “held to account by a governing body for the progress my children make”.
But he has a “broader range of metrics” with “stability of home life as important as GCSEs”.
Much of a virtual heads’ job involves training designated safeguarding leads and designated teachers, their main links into schools. They also “demystify education” for new social workers.
Johnson describes the training as “like painting the Forth Bridge, it never stops. But we have boundless energy, because it’s what creates change in the system.”
Dirty tricks
Change is slow. Research published last November by the University of Exeter and the NAVSH found some schools “actively resisting the admission of children in care or being unwilling to accommodate their needs”.
Academies have powers to cap numbers in certain year groups. But Cooke believes there is “gaming of the system around admissions”, with schools capping their published admission numbers (PAN) so that in years 9 to 11 they’re “nominally full and can’t take any more children”. He calls this “a dirty trick”.
The result? “Vulnerable kids who aren’t in school can’t ever get back in.”
Dame Rachel de Souza, the children’s commissioner, wants councils to be able to enforce admissions for children in care.
At present, disputes must go through the secretary of state, which can delay a child’s care placement for months. “We haven’t got that time, placements are under extreme pressure,” Cooke says.
Care placement woes
At the other end, local authorities are crippled by the soaring cost of placements. Some, Cooke says, cost up to £85,000 a week. The average is £8,000.
And increasingly, these high-cost placements have no education attached to them because the provider has “ditched its education branch” because it “tended to be found inadequate by Ofsted”.
So virtual heads are driven to place children into alternative provision (AP), which Johnson says has “grown so much lately, it’s a sector on its own now”. The number of pupils in AP rose by 20 per cent to January 2024.
Johnson believes that AP can be “absolutely essential for a time”, but has concerns about “children in for long periods with no real endpoint”.
Legislation hasn’t caught up with the growth. Cooke believes the existing AP framework “isn’t fit for purpose”, because requirements for a broad and balanced curriculum are “not what some children need”.
He recalls a “wonderful” therapeutic care farm that endured a “brutal” Ofsted visit in which it was accused of potentially running an “illegal school”.
“That puts you off being that sort of organisation.”
Fighting over scraps
For councils, it’s not just cost that presents the challenge. Ambiguous rules around their financial responsibilities for the education of children in care when they move out of area cause disputes too.
Cooke says local authorities that are facing bankruptcy notices are tightening their belts when it comes to their interpretation of these rules. He feels “slightly aggrieved” around the “perverse incentives” in the local authority financial system.
Suffolk’s area SEND inspection last November found “widespread and/or systemic failings”. But Cooke felt the council had been “penalised” for being financially astute, and not being handed a cash bailout on the government’s ‘safety valve’ scheme.
“It made me think, why didn’t we just blow as much money as we can?”
Johnson is concerned about recent local authority cuts to education welfare officer teams at a time when demand for their services in “supporting children back into school” has spiralled.
Virtual heads’ work is also impeded by the “crisis in social work recruitment” and lack of local foster carers.
Leading the change
Little wonder, among all of this, that attendance for children in need is in a state of “national crisis”, as Cooke describes it.
The persistent absentee rate for that cohort in 2022-23 was 44.4 per cent, more than double that for looked-after children (20 per cent) or the overall persistent absence rate for all pupils (21 per cent).
Undaunted and enthusiastic as always, virtual heads are undertaking “challenge” work around this, including work with children who cannot attend school for mental health needs. Cooke is deeply concerned that the proliferation of online schools as a solution for these children is a “race to the bottom”.
Meanwhile, as NAVSH chair, Johnson has the chance to make a difference on all these pressing issues. She holds “fortnightly, if not weekly” meetings with the DfE and attended Bridget Phillipson’s recent reception for education leaders.
She believes that “rewarding” schools for being inclusive would “change the system overnight”.
“Nobody’s pretending everything’s hunky dory. We’ve got a SEND system that’s not fit for practice. It’s the perfect storm, but the solutions are coming at the right time.”
She has a “definite feeling of being listened to” by those in power, with legislation catching up to the problems.
* Ali’s names has been changed
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