Identifying an appropriate Education Setting

Appropriate education provision 

All education provision should be appropriate to a child's assessed needs. It should be judged as the one which will best support and maximise the child's academic progress and enable them to achieve in line with their peers. 

For the majority of Looked After Children, this will mean a mainstream school, including local authority maintained schools, academies and free schools. However, for some this may mean a specialist school for children with special educational needs or alternative provision. 

When securing a new school place, the child's wishes and feelings should be taken into account, according to their age and maturity. Every effort should be made to enable the child to visit the school informally beforehand. The school chosen should be at a reasonable distance from the care placement; the child should not have to travel for more than one hour each way. The school chosen may not be a school from which the child has previously been permanently excluded. 

It is expected that a range of schools in the area will be researched by the carer and social worker, in consultation with the child's Virtual School Officer. All schools now have easily accessible websites with a range of information, including curriculum and pastoral offer, exam results and extra-curricular activities. Most websites will also have the school's most recent OFSTED reports, but if not, these reports can be easily found by using a search engine. One website link that is useful for researching schools is the government website for school league tables, found here. Carers may also use local knowledge of schools to assist their choice. 

The educational provision for Looked After Children of statutory school age must be full-time, which means 23 or 25 hours of education per week depending on their Key Stage. The school chosen should have an OFSTED rating of 'outstanding' or 'good'. Schools 'requiring improvement' should be avoided and, unless there are exceptional, evidence-based reasons, no Looked After Child should be placed in a school rated 'inadequate'.