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National Education ePEP the PEP to Success

Service Overview

We are market leaders supporting local authorities with educational & attendance monitoring for looked-after children. The company has a dedicated team of developers and support specialists who passionate and highly experienced with supporting the largest to the smallest authorities in the country.Gary Daniels managing director originally developed ePEP (Electronic Personal Education Plan) platform over 18 years ago. We have continually developed and enhanced the cloud based platform to accommodate the changing environment and changes to legalisation. We are confident we offer the very best dedicated service to support Virtual Schools with disadvantaged children.

The National ePEP Single Sign-on has become the total online package to track and monitor looked after children’s educational progress and outcomes, through the online ePEP single sign-on. The service includes the collection of live attendance data daily or weekly and the collection of termly key stage attainment data. Involving social workers, designated teachers, providers, support specialists and most importantly parents and carers to work and communicate securely online with the local authority.

We are a young person focused company that is culturally aligned with many ethnicities and diverse groups. Supporting Looked After Children, Children at risk of Sexual Exploitation, Children Missing Education, Post Looked After Children, Youth Offenders, Children with Specialist Educational Needs and Children in Need. Our expertise is not limited and we are keen to support other vulnerable groups to improve outcomes.

The ePEP platform provides a holistic area to record and measure the child’s educational performance, achievements, targets, aspirations, outcomes, concerns and self well-being. Helping professionals identify and implement interventions for improving educational quality and achieving better outcomes.

We continually work with young people to ensure their voices are heard by adapting the software to meet their expectations and changing needs. This has enabled us to offer a Young Persons Portal within ePEP to securely record important events, achievements and to capture bespoke answers to questions set by the Virtual School. Young People can also connect to ePEP Portal via a secure mobile APP which is optional.

We have worked extensively to support authorities in these challenging times by developing the streamlined COVID-19 PEP in partnership with Birmingham Council. This is now included within the ePEP standard features to support all teachers and professionals with in-out of school education. Our aim is to be as flexible and responsive as possible to meet all our clients requirements.

Our ePEP Attendance Collection Service integrates directly into the PEP and provides a simple and effective solution by sending external notifications and alerts to attendance officers. Authorities using the new automatic collection service have quickly benefited from the improved percentage and quality of DFE attendance data, linking into the PEP attendance profile page.

The eGOV support team will provide extra support to ensure designated attendance officers take up the new service and the complete daily or weekly electronic register. We can guarantee a quick improvement with PEP and attendance quality, teachers have welcomed the new remote approach and provided positive results across the country.

We provide access to our Self-Report Builder for clients to use within the platform for a completely unique approach to analysing data. This powerful application allows professionals to easily produce tailored reports, configure threshold alerts, conduct data mining, analyse and drill-down on all aspects of collected PEP and attendance data. Bespoke reports can be automatically generated weekly or shared between colleagues. Individual cohorts, school data, PEP completion, key-stage results, collected attendance, attainment data plus much more can be downloaded. This feature which has proven to be invaluable for many authorities.

Customisable Dashboards are available to quickly drill-down on key areas of focus and concern with large or individual cohorts. Attainment, progress, PEP completion, targets, attendance, quality assurance ratings, Look-up tables, drop-downs menus can be edited be the client to analyse the dashboards.

For more information visit:

https://www.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/g-cloud/services/529063108447110

Statutory-Guidance

Statutory Guidance ePEP

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.

Government-Statistics-Looked-After-Children

Government Statistics: Looked-After Children

Government Statistics from May 2010 onwards are available on GOV.UK. You can find our archived statistics on the National Archives. Note: the search function is not available on archived content so please use the filters on the left of each page.

A document reviewing the comparability of government statistics of children looked after by local authorities in the different countries of the United Kingdom was published on 30 May 2014.

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

Gov.uk original source >

DFE-Clarify-Virtual-Head's-Responsibility

DFE Clarify Virtual School Head’s Responsibility

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.
Children's-Homes-Data-Pack

Children’s Homes Data Pack

Children’s Homes Data Pack

The Department for Education published the Children’s Homes Data Pack in September 2013.

Executive Summary

This pack presents data about children’s homes in England. It provides information on the children in the homes, the homes and their quality, their location and ownership, their cost, and the children’s homes market. The Government believes that transparency is an essential tool in driving up quality and much of this information is being published for the first time.

The data in slides 18, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 31 and 36 is available in the spreadsheets that accompany this pack.

Children’s homes fulfil a number of purposes and cater for a range of children’s needs, from late entrant adolescents with challenging behaviour, who have spent long periods of time out of school and may quickly return to their family, to young people at risk of CSE (child sexual exploitation), children and teenagers with complex mental health problems, and respite provision for disabled children.

Provision is mixed between local authority-owned homes, and homes owned by the private and voluntary sector; most local authorities (LAs) make use of both. There are a variety of private provider ownership structures, including private equity and venture capital, family-owned companies and individual social entrepreneurs.

For the first time, we are publishing the inspection judgements awarded to the homes of the largest private providers. We also present a comparison of the inspection judgements of LA-owned and privately owned homes, which suggests little difference in quality. Costs in both are high relative to alternatives (e.g. fostering).

The data shows where there is under-supply and over-supply of places in local areas; and how LAs vary in their use both of out-of-area placements, and placements far from a child’s home. These may be in the interests of the child; but they may also increase risk.

The data in this pack poses challenges for local and national government and all providers of children’s homes. More data, and further analysis, will be published in future as it becomes available. The Government is working with Ofsted, LAs and providers to improve the market, match local supply with demand and understand better how cost and quality affect individual children’s outcomes.

Summary and Context

The national market is not dominated by any single large provider, with the largest 20 private companies between them

providing just over a quarter of all placements. However in some LA areas single providers own a significant proportion of the supply.

The data suggests that the geographical supply of places in general does not match demand. The picture is complex as some homes cater for highly specialised needs and hence draw children from a wider area.

We also need a better understanding of the different types of specialist provision, the quality and location of these homes.

Forthcoming research1 suggests that LAs lack information as to the location, quality and precise specialism of places available. Furthermore, LAs (working singly or in partnerships so that they have the necessary scale) could do more to effectively forecast their demand for services, and engage with the market as to the level of need they predict and the range of services that they require.

The Government’s Conclusions and Next Steps

The Government wants to ensure the best placements and outcomes for children in residential care.

Greater transparency will help, which is why we are publishing this data pack.​The data pack poses questions for central Government, local authorities and private and voluntary providers.

The Government is working with Ofsted, LAs and providers to explore improvements in themarket. We will set out proposals later in the year.

Press the link to see the Children’s Homes Data Pack