A Different Class? Educational Attainment: the views and experiences of looked after young people
Introduction
Over many years, there has been a recognition that "…the education of looked after children is not as good as it should be." (HM Inspectors of Schools & Social Work Services Inspectorate, 2001)
Thankfully, the Scottish Executive is committed to closing the opportunity gap for Looked after children in Scotland.
On 22 October 2001 The First Minister announced additional funding of up to 10 million to provide books, equipment and homework materials for every looked after child in Scotland. More than 11,000 children in care received between 500 and 2,500 worth of support.
The funding was intended to ensure that all looked after children are provided with an educationally rich environment. Ministers wanted the money to be targeted towards improving educational attainment by helping local authorities to implement the plans they had for the education of looked after children and enabling them to maximise their potential.
Who Cares? Scotland was commissioned to establish what looked after young people want from the education system. The aim of this consultation exercise was therefore to record the experiences of a large number of looked after young people from across the country. Through this record, we sought to provide baseline data on their self reported achievement, as well as qualitative information on their educational aspirations and motivation. To explore why these young people become disengaged from the education system, and whether they noticed any improvement from the 10 million investment in this area. Finally we sought the advice of the young people on how the educational attainment of looked after young people might be improved.
The report is therefore structured in sections according to the key aims of the consultation. For reasons of confidentiality, the comments of young people have been anonymised. The term "looked after" is used throughout the report and refers to young people who are, or have at one time been looked after and accommodated by the local authority. Equally the term "Young People" is the preference of the author and is used to describe all the children and young people who took part in the consultation, ranging in age from 7 - 18 years old.
The terms official and unofficial school leaver were used to distinguish between young people who were of school leaving age and had legally left education, and those young people who legally should still be in full time education irrespective of their age.