Bolton’s Virtual School is committed to raising the educational attainment of all our looked after children, and in doing so reduce any existing progress gaps between our looked after children and their peers. Promoting and enforcing a culture of high aspirations is our top priority. We ensure that children in care have access to high-quality, full time education, and we are committed to working in partnership with other professional, to provide the highest levels of support and ambition for them.
We champion educational stability and ensure that our children and young people’s health, emotional, mental and social well-being is held in mind and that their voice is heard in decisions made around education, future goals and ambitions. We do this by ensuring that our looked after children have an up-to-date, ambitious and personalised education plan (PEP) in place as part of the young person’s care plan.
A Virtual School is not a teaching institution, but a way of bringing together the information about children and young people who are cared for by a local authority as if they were in a single school. That way, their progress can be closely tracked and supported, and interventions can be targeted in a more strategic way. The school has a Headteacher - a statutory post within every local authority - who, as a senior manager within the authority, can support and challenge local authority departments, schools and other agencies to help them do better.
How can Bolton’s Virtual School support you?
- Attend PEP meetings
- Well-being mentor
- Tuition
- Education opportunities
- Liaise with professionals
- Support the process to gain an EHCP
- Provide alternative education packages
- Additional pupil premium funding in exceptional circumstances
- Provide Educational Psychology
- Career’s guidance
- Advice and guidance on education