How I…
“We’ve learned about how young people like to interact.” Rachael Pryor heads The Hope, Bristol’s virtual school for children in care. She tells Sally Gillen how she and her team have adapted the way they work during lockdown. LIKE many of us, until three months ago Rachael Pryor had never heard of Zoom. Now the video conferencing app has become part of her ‘new normal’, vital to her job as a virtual head teacher at Bristol City Council, where she has responsibility for the education of the 479 children in its care. “My record the week before last was nine hours on Zoom,” says Rachael. The pace and structure of her working life these days is a world away from how things were BC – before coronavirus. Then Rachael and her team of 15 employed at The Hope virtual school – it stands for Helping Our Pupils Excel and was named by the Children in Care Council – would hotdesk at City Hall, but a lot of their time was spent travelling for meetings at the 200 schools and settings attended by children in care, around 33 per cent of whom are outside Bristol. Meetings now take place online. “Sometimes young people feel more comfortable than they do in a room full of adults,” explains Rachael. “In a virtual meeting they can hide or mute themselves. We’ve learned during this period about how young people like to interact.” 16
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Some children have been at home with carers and enjoyed cementing closer, trusting relationships with them. Others have benefitted from school being less busy and demanding. Caring for the carers “Initially some schools assumed that children in care were safe, and understandably prioritised children where there were child protection concerns because of the sense they weren’t safe at home, even though the DfE guidance is clear that children in care should be offered a school place,” explains Rachael. “But if there is no education placement, it can put pressure on the care placement. For example, if you have older carers who have three or four children at home all the time and they’re trying to homeschool, that can create a lot of pressure. We try to impress on schools that although these children may not be immediately in danger, there may be implications for the care placement of the child not attending school.” Some foster carers, especially those who have been shielding, have not wanted the child to go to school. The role of the virtual school has been to be at the
centre of the discussion if there has been disagreement between the carers and the school, and a risk assessment has been created to guide that discussion. “We’ve had to make sure that the right thing has been done for the young person, but also that the care system hasn’t been put under too much strain,” says Rachael, adding that supporting carers with regular calls has been part of the work of The Hope. The predictable, consistent environment needed by children in care, most of whom have experienced trauma, is so difficult to provide during this period, says Rachael. But some have flourished being at home. “It has really made me think of the impact of the demands of school on young people. They have thrived by being in one place and not having the stress of going a long way to school and then managing those interactions in school. We have really learned about the stress of school, and the expectations and demands it places on children.” Managing the impact The attainment gap, a perennial problem for children in care, is of course getting
