New study finds care-experienced young people face higher education hurdles

According to new research published today by the Rees Centre at the Department of Education, University of Oxford, four times fewer care leavers and others with experience of children’s social care enter higher education by age 22.

The report, 'Pathways into and through higher education for young people with experience of children’s social care', also reveals that they are more than twice as likely to drop out, compared with their peers in the general population.

Published by the Rees Centre and Centre for Transforming Access and Student Outcomes (TASO), the research shows evidence that pathways to higher education for young people with experience of children’s social care tend to vary depending on the type, and period, of experience with children’s social care.

Key findings:

Care leavers, those who have ever been in care, or those ever on a child protection plan are around four times less likely to enter higher education by the age of 22, compared with the general population.
‘Children in need’ are between two and three times less likely to enter higher education by age 22, compared with the general population.
Over one in six care leavers withdraw from higher education. Care leavers are two and a half times more likely to drop out of higher education than their peers.
Proportionally fewer care leavers (13%) attend more selective or prestigious universities, compared with the general population (35%).
Those with experience of children’s social care are more likely to start higher education later in life, rather than progressing directly to higher education at 18 as the general population is more likely to do.
36% of care leavers and 33% and of those ever in care took a vocational pathway to higher education, compared to 13% of the general population.

Professor Leon Feinstein

Professor Leon Feinstein, Rees Centre Director and Professor of Education and Children’s Social Care, said: 'It is striking but not new to find that very many children and young people who have interacted with children’s social care services are also disengaged from education. Yet this study in population data finds that many do go into higher education, and, of those, many have come through vocational routes.

'The solution for universities lies not in reducing academic standards, but in designing more differentiated pathways, and responding to the additional needs of this whole group as part of widening participation programmes in universities, and enhanced transitional support by local authorities.

'The biggest effect on higher education entry and also as an outcome in itself would be achieved by an enhanced further education offer.'

For those young people that do progress to higher education, they are more likely to attend higher education later in life, and take a vocational route to get there.

These findings point to a need for all higher education providers to accept students from vocational routes, and to set strategies for recruiting mature learners.

While care leavers – and those who have ever been in care – have the lowest engagement with higher education by age 22 of any of the care experienced groups for most measures, care leavers have the second highest entry rate at age 18/19 of all five groups with experience of children’s social care.

One reason for this could be that a higher level of support is made available for this group in the transition from post-16 settings to higher education.

The report 'Pathways into and through higher education for young people with experience of children’s social care' is available via TASO.