Welcome to the Virtual School: Our role

Under the Children and Families Act 2014, every local authority must appoint an officer, employed by them or another authority, to make sure that it properly discharges its duty to promote the educational achievement of Looked After Children, no matter where they live or are educated. This officer is called the Virtual School Head (VSH).  

Local authorities are charged with ensuring that their VSH has the resources, time, training and support they need to discharge their duties effectively. However, each local authority will do this differently.  

In Hillingdon, we are lucky to have a large team who support the work of the VSH, and we are known as the Virtual School.  Our Virtual School team comprises a variety of education professionals, including qualified teachers, teaching assistants, Education Welfare Officers and some who have experience of Virtual Schools in other local authorities. We all support the VSH in a variety of ways which are highlighted elsewhere on our LEAP website. 

Hillingdon Virtual School is quite different to many other Virtual Schools in that all of our statutory school age and post-16 young people have an allocated case worker. The Virtual School Officer (VSO) takes responsibility for arranging, chairing and recording all PEP meetings, which may be different to how other local authorities operate.

Over the next few months, we will be updating the tiles below with a lot more information on Hillingdon Virtual School, our role within education and the support we can offer to Looked After Children, carers, schools and social workers. 

In the meantime, if you have any questions, comments or would like to get in touch with one of our team, please contact us via email us at virtualschooladmin@hillingdon.gov.uk or call 01895 556 886.