Electronic-Personal-Education-Plan

PEP completion rates increase

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PEP completion rates have significantly increased for authorities using ePEP’s new feature (Mandatory Data Fields).

System administrators can now customise the professional section within ePEP’s user matrix to ensure Social workers and Designated teachers complete important data requirements and questions.

The system alerts professionals if targets are not completed

PEP’s are not completed within  timescale, and when a PEP meeting has been organised. The ePEP alert notification is sent via external e-mail and duplicated to the internal messaging system.

The PEP meeting can be completely organised remotely allowing the administrator to set the venue and time of the meeting.

Invitations will be automatically sent to all individuals connected to the child via e-mail, saving a significant amount of time on the telephone.

The platform can link directly into databases for education social care.

Collecting vital information about the child before the meeting takes place this saves any duplication from the social worker or designated teacher.

Communication between professionals online plays a significant role with increasing the speed and efficiency of PEP completion.

The Social worker can support the Designated teacher prior to the meeting ensuring the child’s voice is heard. Teachers can also track termly attainment automatically with information gathered from the Sims database or any other supplier. Attainment data it can also be collected manually on the child by the designated teacher. Historical results for all Key stages are chronologically recorded within ePEP.

Reports can be generated into XML spreadsheets or graphically illustrated within the main ePEP dashboard.

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FFT & The Fischer Family Trust

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Who are FFT?

FFT is a non-profit company established in 2001 with links to the Fischer Family Trust. We are solely focussed on providing accurate and insightful information to schools which enables pupils achieve their full potential and schools to improve. We have been processing the National Pupil Database for the DFE since  2004 and providing analyses to all schools and LAs in England and Wales for over for 10 years.

What do FFT do?

FFTLive is a powerful online reporting system used by school leaders. We process data for all schools and pupils in England and Wales and provide online reports which analyse pupil results and pupils progress across all subjects and key stages, comparing performance to similar schools and the national average. FFTLive provides estimates of future pupil performance using FFT’s unique models which have been developed over 10 years. Last year FFTLive was used by over 75,000 unique school users to view 4 million reports.

FFT provides data and analyses to all schools and LAs in England and Wales. Our estimates are used by teachers to inform the setting of ambitious and aspirational targets for students. We analyse pupil results and pupil progress and provide school leaders with insightful data to support school improvement and self-evaluation.

Government Data Processing

FFT has managed the National Pupil Database for the DFE since 2004. Working in partnership with RM, our data analysts match and process pupil results and census information and calculate school performance indicators. We also match and process additional education datasets including data student outcomes from further and higher education. In Wales, FFT has contracts with the Welsh Assembly Government to process data and calculate value added progress indicators for all pupils and schools.

Schools & Academies

You can access FFT Aspire data and support in one of the following ways:

  • Option 1: Via your Local Authority (including Academies) – please contact your LA for further details
  • Option 2: Via FFT direct through an individual School subscription
  • Option 3: Via FFT direct through a School Group subscription (discounted rate for groups of 10 or more schools)

Because we process national census and examination data on behalf of the Department for Education, your data is automatically updated online each term as new pupils enter and leave your school. So, you get the latest data for EVERY pupil in your school – plus much more!

Individual School Subscriptions Costs Direct From FFT: 

£250 plus vat for Infant Schools

£300 plus vat for Primary Schools

£1,250 plus vat for Secondary Schools

What your FFT direct school subscription includes
(options 2 & 3)

  • 1 year’s online access to FFT Aspire
  • Access to all FFT reports and data
  • Access to new Governor Dashboard and Self Evaluation reports
  • Automatic census and exam updates every term
  • Automatic access to all new FFT Aspire innovations – including new features, new reports and enhancements
  • The ability to create and manage your own FFT Aspire accounts for school staff
  • Access to FFT training and support materials
  • FFT email support
  • Free autumn update service – early estimates for new pupils entering your school in autumn

For more information on FFT direct subscriptions or to subscribe via FFT, please email subscriptions@fft.org.uk or call 01446 776262.

Local Authorities

To access the full range of FFT data for your LA and schools including FFT Aspire and your own FFT database, please email subscriptions@fft.org.uk or call 01446 776262.

Academy Chains & Sponsors

If you’d like to access FFT Aspire school and Sponsor level data, please email subscriptions@fft.org.uk or call 01446 776262.

All content provided is copyright of FFT. Please find links below to the source information and use the following useful links provided to find out more.

FFT Aspire Subscriptions >

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Widgit Symbols

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One of the great features of ePEP are the sections for the young people to complete using interactive avatars. The young person has numerous options to choose from, children with reading difficulties or a visual impairment significantly benefit from the spoken questions by the avatar.

This technique guarantees for whatever reason the child cannot read or has difficulty communicating by the written word to have their say.

The company has worked closely with Gloucestershire Council in developing a questionnaire for youngsters who have difficulty communicating using symbols used by Widgit Symbols software. Many local authorities already have access to Widgit software so can freely use the questionnaire in the SEN module of ePEP. This technique using symbols might look simple compared to ePEP’s under-water environment, however this could over excited SEN children. The symbols have been an overwhelming success with young people enabling them to easily participating with the familiar language.

Many SEN special schools are also very familiar with these symbols.

More Information about Widgit Symbols

The ever expanding Widgit Symbols Set has been terms of the past 30 years and now contains more than 12,000 symbols, which cover an English vocabulary of over 40,000 words. Widgit’s simply-drawn, colourful symbols each illustrate a single concept, in a clear and concise way, and cover a range of topics (including many curricular areas) wide enough to make them suitable for symbol users of all ages and abilities.

Widgit Symbols are used all over the world, supporting 17 languages, increasing the accessibility of written text, giving readers of all literacy levels greater access to information. As the Widgit Symbols Set is designed specifically for written information, Widgit Symbols users can develop a real independence in the reading and writing.

The new Widgit Symbols Set was launched in October 2002. This is a result of a two year development project involving many practitioners.

More information on the design rules and schema

More information about the development project

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widgit-symbols

Information about Widgit Symbols from www.widgit.com

Pupil-Premium-Plus

Pupil Premium Plus

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Additional funds for children in care become available from April 2014 through the Pupil Premium Plus (PP+). Besides increasing the amount to £1900 per child, the funds will be available from the first day a child comes in to care.

The Virtual School head in each local authority will be responsible for administrating the Pupil Premium Plus (PP+). Any spend will have to be accounted through the child’s personal education plan and will have to be targeted on the educational needs of the young person. If the local authority fails to distribute the allocated funds they will be clawed back by the government.

It is statutory that every child in care, in education, should have an up to date Personal Education Plan. The government is making it a requirement that details of the Pupil Premium will need to be recorded in the PEP and how it addresses their educational needs This will make the local authority and schools more accountable.

Schools can expect Ofsted to look in detail how the Pupil Premium is spent for individual children in care.

Department of Education Pupil Premium website

Ofsted School Inspection Handbook

Statutory-Guidance

Statutory Guidance ePEP

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Statutory Guidance and Personal Education Plans

There are four pieces of statutory guidance that determine what a PEP contains, how it should be used, who does what and when it needs to be completed and reviewed.

For social workers,  The Children Act 1989 Guidance and RegulationsVolume 2: Care Planning, Placement and Case Review,covers the PEP and how it should be completed from a social care view point.

Being part of the care plan Independent Reviewing Officers (IROs) need to review PEPs. TheIRO Handbook says IRO’s need access to a completed PEP at least three days before the care planning meeting. Something ePEP easily accomplishes as IRO’s can have access to a young person’s EPEP at anytime.

Local authorities have a statutory duty in Promoting the Educational Achievement of Looked After Children. This guidance cover their role in supporting the PEP process.

The post of Designated Teacher, like the Special Needs Co-ordinator, is statutory in schools. The school governing body has to make sure their school is meeting all its lawful obligations regarding children in care.

These are defined in, The Role and Responsibilities of the Designated Teacher for Looked After Children: Statutory Guidance for school governing bodies. Chapter 4 of the guidance is about Designated Teacher and their role in its completion. It gives a good overview of the whole process.

There is no single clear cut guide, just for PEP’s. It is a matter of reading the four bits of guidance together about PEPs that gives an overall view of what is expected.

From time to time the DfE re writes or updates parts of guidance, such as the guidance on the Pupil Premium ,which did not exist when the above guidance was published.

The PEP is part of the care plan and school record.

Where they are used effectively, PEPs improve the educational experience of the child by helping everyone gain that clear and shared understanding about the teaching and learning provision necessary to meet the child’s education needs and how that will be provided.

For this reason the school and local authority (through strong links between the designated teacher and, for example, the local authority virtual school head) have a shared responsibility for making the PEP a living and useful document.

The role and responsibilities of the designated teacher for looked after children:  Statutory Guidance for school governing bodies, section 4.1.4.

The PEPs have come about because children in care, overall, fail in education. The PEP is a tool to help focus on a child’s progress through education.

The ePEP platform has been developed with local authorities, schools and young people to meet the government’s PEP requirements but brings greater transparency on everyone’s roll in making a child’s education a success.  EPEP is a very flexible platform, catering for children in early years, statutory school age and post -16.

Local authorities can individually program facets of the ePEP environment to respond to localised need. Thus being able to tailor how professionals and young people access and complete the PEP.

Provided an ePEP user logs on to the internet, an ePEP can be opened at any time, this allows easy on the move, office, school or home access.

Pupil-Premium-Resource-Tracking

NEW Pupil Premium Resource Tracker

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The Virtual School Heads will be responsible for managing the Pupil Premium. The Pupil Premium must be used for the looked after child’s educational needs as described in their Personal Education Plan (PEP). 

ePEP online has launched the new Pupil Premium Resource Tracker developed with Stoke-on-Trent and Kent County Council.

The Pupil Premium Resource Tracker (PPR) enables local authorities to track expenditure against individual targets for looked after children. The Virtual School will now be able to see how much money has been spent on different types of interventions based on the Sutton Trust (categories).

From the financial year 2014 to 2015, the VSH will have control for funding for looked-after children. The ePEP will link directly to funding for the young person – Pupil Premium Plus, currently set at £1900 per annum which will only go to schools with a high quality up to date PEP: so ‘no PEP: no Premium’

Virtual Schools will be expected to distribute Pupil Premium Plus termly and this will need to link to a termly PEP, which fits with education timescales. Pupil Premium Plus will be available to a larger number of LAC (the criteria has moved to the first day in care, increasing the average local authorities expenditure from 120k to 700k).

From September 2014 we would like to encourage local authorities using paper based PEP’s to consider using ePEP online (the Electronic Personal Education Plan). The system is being used with some of the largest authorities within the country including Lincolnshire, Gloucestershire and Kent County Council.

Once ePEP is up and running, there will be a reduction in workload for social workers but higher expectations in terms of termly PEPs, quality and completion rates.

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DFE Clarify Virtual School Head’s Responsibility

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FAQ ‘s – Pupil Premium and the role of the Virtual School Head.

The Department for Education clarified how the Virtual School Head (VSH) has a pivotal role in distributing and monitoring the pupil premium for looked after children on the 20 March 2014.

The pupil premium will be managed by the Virtual School Head who will be responsible for its distribution and effectiveness in raising achievement and will be accountable to the Director of Children’s Services and/or Chief Executive and the Lead Member for Children.

There is no requirement for an authority to pass the funding on to school to meet the needs identified in the personal education plan. The expectation is that funding will go to schools via the Virtual Head.

Key points of the guidance:

  • The virtual school head decides how the funding is distributed
  • The VSH is expected to pass on the pupil premium to a child’s education setting  to meet additional needs set out in the PEP.
  • The pupil premium can be passed on termly or annually.
  • Funding not used by the end of the financial year goes back to the department.
  • The VSH decides the amount of funding – it can be higher or lower than the £1900 of grant allocation per child.
  • Funding can be pooled.
  • The pupil premium should not be used to fund central services – it is to be used expressly to raise the achievement of disadvantaged pupils.
  • The pupil premium does not replace the personal education allowance.
  • The pupil premium is more focussed on support to improve the educational achievement of LAC and close the gap between LAC and none LAC.
  • The pupil premium should always support the educational achievement as described in the personal education plan.
ePEP-Attendance-Tracker

ePEP Attendance Tracker Hits Target

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We have recently added the ePEP Attendance Tracker feature allowing third party suppliers to feed weekly or live attendance figures directly into the ePEP via our new API plug-in.

The ePEP Attendance Tracker also allows teachers to manually enter attendance data before the PEP meeting takes place, including notes and explanations on why the child might have been absent. The live attendance information can be recorded weekly or monthly and is displayed through the NEW Control Panel and within the Professional section.

Attendants can now be tracked graphically on individual children, year groups or total number of children with schools by the Virtual School.

The two main suppliers for providing within and outside attendance data are Welfare Call Ltd and Contact Group Ltd.

Both organisations have full access to our ePEP API plug-in. Reports can be directly accessed from within the ePEP platform by the Virtual School, designated teacher and social worker, manual attendance data can recorded if no third-party supplier collects data for your authority.

The ePEP system will alert professionals via e-mail externally if the child’s attendance drops below 85%.