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The Local Authorities making the biggest strides in PEP quality all share 12 key steps in their QA process
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The Local Authorities making the biggest strides in PEP quality all share 12 key steps in their QA process.
If you’re from a Virtual School or a member of a Local Authority Educational Team, this blog is one for you.
Whether you’re looking to refine your existing PEP quality assurance process or build a robust QA strategy from the ground up, these are the 12 steps that make all the difference.
You’re juggling a lot – when it comes to Personal Education Plans for looked after children, you know just how time-sensitive, complex, and crucial they are. With multiple professionals involved. From social workers and designated teachers to the young person themselves, ensuring each PEP is not only completed on time but meets a high standard of quality and compliance is no small feat.
We get it. At Invision360, we work closely with virtual schools across the country, and we’ve seen the challenges you face first-hand. That’s exactly why we worked closely with Gloucestershire Virtual School to further develop our PEP Quality Assurance module.
The auditing module gives visibility, consistency and control in a statutory process that can often feel fragmented.
Check out the full case study of Gloucestershire Virtual School, with insightful feedback from Karla Broady, Assistant Headteacher for Children in Care.
‘Most importantly, this module hasn't just helped us to work more effectively. It's allowing us to write superior PEP reports, which will have a significant impact on improving outcomes for children and young people.’
Before we jump into the 12 key steps to improved PEP quality and compliance, first, a summary of the challenges VSHs face when quality assuring PEPs.
We already know Virtual Schools face 14 challenges when creating PEPs. The challenges don’t stop once the plan is created, it extends to ensuring each child’s PEP is of the highest quality.
Which of these barriers to PEP quality sound most familiar to you and your virtual school?
As a Virtual School Head, you play a key role in meeting the statutory responsibility to ensure every looked-after child has a high-quality, timely PEP – as set out in the DfE’s Promoting the Education of Looked After Children (2014).
This is no small task – and with the sheer volume of PEPs, the necessity of termly reviews and the number of professionals involved, quality assurance can quickly become overwhelming.
That’s where these 12 practical steps come in. They’re not just ideas – they’re essential for improving consistency, compliance, and, ultimately, children’s outcomes.
These are the proven strategies being used by forward-thinking virtual schools that are already seeing the impact.
Here are some recent data sets from Local Authorities who have implemented our PEP QA module:
Go digital with Invision360, seamlessly aligning with your case management systems to bring everything under one roof.
‘The module has met our objectives by helping us to improve our efficiencies. It's saved us so much time because those manual processes are no longer there.’
Karla Broady, AHT at Gloucestershire Virtual School
Ditch the spreadsheets and highlighters – centralised QA means no more scattered documents.
Ensure your assessments align with national benchmarks for real accountability, you cannot underestimate the power of benchmarking for improved LA accountability.
Capture a child or young person’s views on their PEP clearly, while also seeing which professionals contributed and how.
Real-time reporting helps you flag progress issues early to your wider team, case social worker or school-based designated teachers.
Let AI do the heavy lifting, giving your team time back to focus on evaluating and supporting progress.
Did you know we’re also known for our AI processes within the EHCP drafting process?
With trusted systems and standards, your team can work flexibly while still hitting deadlines – an unexpected benefit the Gloucestershire Virtual School team found when using the PEP QA module.
‘One of the other unexpected benefits of working with Invision360 is that we've developed new ways of working that suit individual people. We can let our education advisors know when PEP plans are coming out, as well as what deadlines they need to work to and which areas of focus need to be considered. From there, the education advisors can manage their QA processes in the ways that suit them. Some people prefer to do one per week; for others, they can do them all in one go.'
Karla Broady, AHT at Gloucestershire Virtual School
Remove subjectivity and gain confidence that every PEP is reviewed fairly, regardless of who completes it.
‘We have many different people quality assessing PEPs, and it can be challenging to maintain objectivity. Previously, we would have to QA our own reports or those of a close colleague because QAing a PEP where you know the student, you've been to the meetings, or you've been heavily involved with the school is very different to QAing a PEP where you don't know anything about that young person.’
Karla Broady, AHT at Gloucestershire Virtual School
Use clear visuals, graphs and data to quickly spot when children and young people are falling behind in their outcomes. Act quickly to make necessary changes to ensure improved pupil progress.
Visual dashboards make it easy to check the PEP status and progress in real-time. Local Authority Education Teams and VSHs have complete visibility of all PEP cases.
Help your team prepare for reviews and meetings with proactive prompts through Invision360.
Invision360 supports your team with online training to build confidence and embed the QA process.
If these 12 steps resonate with the challenges your team faces day to day, why not take the next step?
Share this article with your extended Virtual School team or your Local Authority Education Team leadership. It's a conversation worth having.
If you're ready to see how the PEP QA module can transform the way you manage and improve PEP quality, book a call with us.
We'll walk you through how it works, how it saves time, and how it fits seamlessly with your existing systems.
Our mission is to improve the processes for the most vulnerable – SEND and look after children.
More articles you’ll like:
The benefits of EHCP benchmarking for Local Authorities
Personal Education Plan: 14 challenges for virtual schools to overcome
