What does the Oxfordshire Virtual School do?

Every local authority in England has a virtual school that acts on behalf of children in care in their county.

The job of the virtual school is to support the academic achievement of the pupils.

Students attend schools across the county, whatever type of school is appropriate for them.

Statistically and historically, children in care perform lower than their peers – historically children in care achieve 30 to 40 per cent lower than their peers in Oxfordshire.

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If you take Year 11 GCSEs as a currency, historically, performances are lower – our job is to close that gap.

We’re delighted in recent years that the gap has been decreasing, particularly this year.

This year, teacher assessed grades seemed a fair reflection and benefitted our students.

In every local school, there’s a designated teacher responsible for monitoring the performance of our children in the care setting.

Most of our teachers are leaders in their own school and often they are a headteacher in a primary school or a deputy head at a secondary.

In terms of school age, we have around 500 primary and secondary pupils and over 500 post-16 students in college, work or training.

We also have a small number of early years where some of our work is with speech and language acquisition and development.

The key statutory work that the school does includes monitoring attendance and making sure our children are enrolled in a school.

We have two meetings together a year with each student and other work is in training and supporting foster carers and kinship carers.

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We’re very keen to link with the enormous cultural capital here in Oxfordshire by going to museums and galleries, and the experience is something that the children may not have had access to.

These kinds of things add confidence and resilience to pupils so we provide that in every way we possibly can.

In recent years, we’ve built strong relationships with the University of Oxford and Brookes University so the pupils are exploring and experiencing this intellectual excellence.

We have a number of projects with the universities, one with Magdalen College saw 23 children selected and once a term they visit the college, although obviously that’s been a bit different this year, but they get to experience the lectures, meet the students and explore the college.

We have one boy who shines with potential and he’s very interested in cooking and wants to be a chef, so we set him up with the chef at Magdalen and even though he’s in Year 8, he’s on an accelerated programme, usually for Year 10 and 11.

He wants to succeed and shift the expectations that have been put on him in the past.

With Brookes, we’re launching a project in January for Years 9 and 10 and they will have regular preparation for university, in terms of GCSE and A Level advice and with applications, being able to sell themselves at interviews.

Exam results this year were down to the really good, thorough work by the teachers making sure pupils get the opportunities they deserve.

One of the big things for us this year was to connect with our foster carers and our kinship carers in response to Covid-19, and the need for home to be central to education and learning.

The very nature of being in care means these children have suffered trauma and we need to make sure our adults who are suffering secondary trauma, that we are providing the care and guidance to them – they’re not always thanked but there’s some really good eggs, really good people with good hearts who are fighting for the futures of our children in the county.

Another big area for us is post-16 learning, we don’t get money for post-16 so all our work there is around advice and guidance so we work with providers so that there are opportunities for our post-16 students, whether that be vocational, academic or work placements.