New Honorary Norham Fellow

Congratulations to Dr Alun Rees on his appointment as our Department Honorary Norham Fellow.

A valued collaborator with the Rees Centre, Alun has contributed to several reports and evaluations, including work on Virtual School Heads and the PP+ evaluation.

He set up one of the first Virtual Schools for Looked After Children in Leeds. As Yorkshire and Humberside’s representative to the National Association of Virtual School Heads’ (NAVSH) pre-cursor body, he was a member of the DfE’s Ministerial Expert Group of Virtual Schools.

Before leaving Leeds in 2014 he graduated from the regional ADCS Leadership Programme and extended the principles of a Virtual School to the (sadly unsustainable at the time) ‘Leeds Virtual College for Vulnerable Children’ with a roll of some 8000 children with a social worker or at risk of exclusion..

After Leeds he took up a six month visiting practitioner ‘fellowship’ within the Rees Centre, where he wrote ‘The Virtual School Handbook’. This remains the foundational text on ways to meet the duties of a Virtual School Head.

While continuing his association with the Rees team he has supported 10 different local authorities across England as interim Virtual School Head and/or with their broader inclusion work.

He has also provided policy support for NAVSH and supported school staff and senior teams to better understand, and mitigate, the impacts on children and young people of unmet attachment needs, adverse childhood experiences, and broader trauma and loss.