Personal Education Plans (PEPs)

Every child or young person who is looked after by Wandsworth must have Personal Education Plan. You might sometimes hear people call your Personal Education Plan, PEP for short.

Your PEP is a plan to make sure you get the most out of your education. It is a place for you and other people (your class teacher or Head of Year, your carer, your social worker and others) to keep a record of what you have achieved. It is also a way of thinking ahead about your education and your future and how you can be helped to reach your goals.

One of the ways we try to make sure that everything is going well at school is to hold PEP meetings. These should happen in the first month after you come into care and then about every 6 months after that.

You might be wondering who goes to these meetings. Normally it will be your carer, social worker, teacher and often someone form CLAESS. The meeting will look at how things are going in school, set goals for the future and consider whether you may want/ need any additional support such as tuition or CLIP worker etc.

Designated Teacher role (DT)
A designated teacher is someone in your school, usually a senior member of staff who has knowledge of everyone in the school who is looked after, and keeps an eye out for them - either by attending PEPs or speaking to other school staff if there are problems. Your carer should find out who the DT is when you start at the school and if you have any problems, you should go and speak to this person. If you can’t find the DT in your school, CLAESS does have names of all DTs in Wandsworth Schools and can help you find the DT ub schools outside of Wandsworth too.

Help at school
You can either do this in your PEP or ask your carer or social worker to speak to the school on your behalf if there is something you think they could provide that would help with your education.

Out of school activities
Learning doesn’t only happen in school either. If you would like to take up out of school activities such as playing a musical instrument or dance classes this should also be discussed in your PEP meeting or with your carer or social worker.