Raising Educational Achievement for Vulnerable Children

report written by Lisa Keay, Research Officer,research in practice

This symposium report is divided into the following sub-sections. If you wish to make a shortcut to any particular sub-section then please double-click the relevant heading.

introduction

speakers

presentation 1: Review of Current Research by NFER

post-presentation discussion

presentation 2: Report by the Social Exclusion Unit

post-presentation discussion

presentation 3: Parallel Workshops (Agency-Led)

presentation 4: The Role of SCIE

conclusion

bibliography

introduction

This symposium set out to explore how to raise educational achievement for vulnerable children [1] . It began with a review of current research focusing on children 'looked after' and their achievements at Key Stage 4 (14-16 year olds). This review was followed by a report on the education of looked after children presented by the Social Exclusion Unit. After lunch there were five agency-led sessions. These sought to demonstrate examples of best practice informed by research messages. The symposium closed by exploring the role of SCIE in raising the quality of practice around promoting good educational provision.

speakers

Felicity Fletcher-Campbell is Principal Research Officer at the National Foundation for Education Research (NFER), and UK National Co-ordinator, European Agency for Development in Special Needs Education. She reviewed current research focusing on educational outcomes for children 'looked after'.

Phil Hayes is a Policy Officer from the Social Exclusion Unit and he presented the findings of the SEU report on the education of children in care.

Amanda Edwards is Head of Knowledge Services at the Social Care Institute for Excellence. She outlined the role of SCIE in raising the quality of practice around good educational provision.

Agency-led Workshops: See relevant subsection for a summary of the content and facilitator(s) of each session.

presentation 1 - Educational outcomes for vulnerable children: A review of current research focusing on children 'looked after' by Felicity Fletcher-Campbell

This presentation was based on research carried out by the NFER in 2002. It sought to clarify the Key Stage 4 (14-16 year olds) achievements of 'looked after' young people. To undertake this study, the researchers focused their attention on the KS4 results of all young people in care in 11 local authorities in the summer of 2001. This sample was taken from 11 local authorities chosen because they had more sophisticated data management systems than other authorities. Despite this, the data collected from these authorities turned out to be partial, frail and not easy to access. Consequently, it was inadequate for effective decision making about a child's educational future. These data sometimes presented conflicting accounts around cases. For example, the school, social worker, carer and young person did not always agree about the KS4 results. The difficulties encountered in carrying out this research can be found in the report which is available at http://www.dfes.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/RB434.pdf : (new window)

The speaker presented the following findings from this research:

(i) educational placements - issues to be addressed:

• informed by inadequate data
  
• for the benefit of adults rather than the young person
  
• decisions did not routinely involve the young person
  
• inadequate scrutiny of messages within placements
  
• reactive rather than proactive support for the young person

(ii) positive school factors that need to be maintained or nurtured:

• stable tutoring throughout secondary schooling
  
• effective identification of needs so that appropriate support is given
  
• range of support opportunities, e.g. stable care as well as stable school placement; afterschool clubs, extra tuition, etc.

(iii) failure to meet educational needs:

• SEN not assessed/identified/met
  
• SEN exacerbated by care placement
  
• AEN (additional educational needs, e.g. second language) neglected
  
• minimum rather than maximum support

(iv) Key Stage 4 and Beyond:

• alternative accreditation not recorded
  
• career aspirations unknown for two-thirds of sample
  
• no evidence of available support post-16

Overall, this presentation underlined the difficulty of acquiring reliable data that could inform decision-making by policy makers and front line practitioners.

post-presentation discussion

The post-presentation discussion raised a number of pertinent issues:

audience comment: the difficulty of ensuring educational achievement for children in 'out-of-borough' placements.

speaker response: acknowledged that this was a 'vast' problem that was known to government and that further work was needed in this 'dire' area.

audience comment: target setting can be inappropriate because focus is on how many achieve GCSEs. These statistics do not recognise or take account of the severe learning difficulties experienced by many children in care.

speaker response: acknowledged this as a problem and pointed out that data sets were emerging but were not yet ready to be widely used; this may improve in the next 5 years or so.

presentation 2 - Social Exclusion Unit: Report on the Education of Children in Care by Phil Hayes

The Social Exclusion Unit (SEU) was set up in 1997 to be a catalyst for change in Whitehall. Social exclusion is a shorthand term for what can happen when people or areas suffer from a combination of linked problems such as unemployment, poor skills, low incomes, poor housing, high crime environments, bad health and family breakdown. The aim of the SEU is to reduce social exclusion by producing 'joined-up solutions to joined-up problems.' Thus, its brief is to (i) develop policy in areas that span traditional Whitehall boundaries, (ii) support effective delivery on the ground, (iii) evaluate the impact of Government policy. As this is the second term of the Labour Government it is understandable that the SEU's recent projects focus more on the impact of current Government policies than the early reports.

The SEU disseminates the key messages emerging from the children in care project through:

• Practice Guide aimed at Members, senior officers, middle managers and frontline staff [2]
  
• highlighting different approaches councils have taken to tackling the five key problems
  
• attending conferences, workshops, seminars

The main aim of this presentation was to discuss the emerging findings from the SEU's project and show how research informed the SEU's Children in Care project. This project started in March 2001. Its aim was to build on the success of the Quality Protects programme, as well as identify barriers to change by focusing on two key issues: (i) low attainment levels among children in care (ii) poor life chances for care leavers. In order to tackle this brief the SEU began by identifying and specifying their target group, i.e. 'who is in care'. This was presented in the form of five key facts:

• At any time around 60,000 children in care
  
• Over a year around 100,000 spend time in care
  
• Most common reason - abuse or neglect
  
• On average, children in care are getting younger and staying in care for longer
  
• Certain groups significantly over-represented

Next, the SEU looked at the attainment statistics in education. The reason why this focus was chosen was because of the dramatic differences between educational attainments in care, compared to the average child. This is graphically illustrated below:

To tackle this problem of educational underattainment, the SEU consulted a wide range of people and agencies. Their research included five area studies covering a broad range of communities. The areas covered were (i) Midlands, East Midlands and Herefordshire, (ii) London Borough of Greenwich, (iii) Dorset, (iv) Leeds, and (v) Brighton and Hove. These areas included two rural counties, Herefordshire and Dorset. As part of their research the SEU also consulted young people. They sent out 32,000 questionnaires via the Who Cares? Trust and received 2000 returns. Some of this target group are very hard to reach. An analysis of the returns can be found at http://www.socialexclusionunit.gov.uk/young_people/cic_consultation.htm: (new window) . The SEU also engaged in written consultation with key stakeholders, such as professional researchers and were guided by an external advisory group. Although no magical solutions were found, they identified a number of key issues:

• too many young people's lives are characterised by instability
  
• young people in care spend too much time out of school or other learning environments
  
• children do not have sufficient help with their education if they get behind
  
• primary carers are not always expected, or equipped, to provide sufficient support and encouragement for learning and development, and
  
• many children have unmet emotional, mental and physical health needs

The progress that resulted from these findings included:

• raised awareness of children's needs
  
• improved outcomes for some children
  
• innovative practice - joint training for designated teachers, social workers and carers
  
• help for carers to support education: books, ICT equipment, library tickets
  
• additional funding ('bursaries') for children's support needs in school

The research also identified some obstacles to improvement including:

• attitudes
• capacity - people, skills, leadership
• resources
• practice
• structures

The new target set by the SEU as a result of this research is to improve life chances for children. This included substantially narrowing the gap between the educational attainment and participation of children in care and that of their peers by 2006.

The success criteria of reaching this target is defined as follows - this target will have been achieved if, by 2006:

• outcomes for 11 year olds in English and maths are at least 60 percent as good as those of their peers
  
• the proportion who become disengaged from education is reduced, so that no more than 10 per cent reach school leaving age without having sat a General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) equivalent exam, and
  
• the proportion of those aged 16 who get qualifications equivalent to five GCSEs graded A*-C has risen on average by 4 percentage points each year since 2002; and in all authorities at least 15 per cent of young people in care achieve this level of qualifications.

These criteria have been set in such a way as to be relevant to top performing local authorities whilst realistic for those local authorities that are struggling. The SEU acknowledges that within these targets, individual children should have separate and challenging Personal Education Plan (PEPs). However, they believe that children in care need to be represented in national targets, otherwise their concerns can be ignored. Finally, the SEU believe the targets are already making senior management in local authorities take notice of children in care's education as they are aware of more than one Chief Executive raising the issue with frontline staff.

post-presentation discussion

The post-presentation discussion raised a number of pertinent issues:

inappropriateness of the '1 GCSE target'

the importance of vocational courses in engaging children in care with their education

the lack of support from schools in raising educational achievement

the problem of school admissions policies for children in care

foster carers are not always equipped to encourage and support educational achievement

targets do not take into account how long a child has been 'out of' the educational system

audience comment:

the SEU was accused of misunderstanding why children in care do not get more than 1 GCSE. In particular, they were criticised for not counting certificates acquired on vocational courses in alternative educational settings.

speaker response: agreed that a wider definition of which alternative qualifications were equivalent to GCSEs would be helpful and DfES is considering this, but insisted that targets needed to be set now, so that the problem of under attainment could move forward. The speaker also felt that more children in care were capable of gaining GCSEs and more should be done to support placements in mainstream schools (where appropriate) and that the 'GCSE/GNVQ' target would help to support this. Also, the example given by the audience involved a young person out of compulsory education for 18 months. It was unacceptable for children in care to miss so much schooling and the engagement target would ensure local authorities focused on keeping children in school.

audience comment: problems frequently experienced by children in care meant that they could not cope with the demands of this traditional form of study. It was also felt that children in care responded much better to GCSEs when they sprung out of the demands of a vocational course. Finally, it was argued that vocational courses can often engage children in care enough to encourage them to remain in education.

speaker response: acknowledged that the targets take a national view and that some local authorities suffer as a result of this. But he also insisted that more children in care should be taking GCSEs. Thus, whilst it may be appropriate for an individual to take a vocational course, generally speaking, more should be taking GSCEs.

audience comment :whilst raising educational achievement was a significant goal in Social Service Departments, this is not always shared by individual schools, i.e. it is not part of their national targets. It is therefore important to work with schools to raise expectations for children in care.

speaker response: agreed that this was a problem and that there needed to be more planning and support from Whitehall to promote the targets within education. The speaker also thought that the Green Paper would address some of the underlying issues.

audience comment: there needs to be more pressure on schools to prioritise children in care, especially with regards to the admissions' process.

speaker response: there are no overnight magic solutions to this problem, but guidance has just come out and the SEU was discussing with OFSTED how to cover the report recommendations in inspections. As regards admissions, changes had recently been made to the admissions guidance prioritising children in care.

audience comment: Foster carers are not always skilled to support children in their schooling; they need to have more training and support.

speaker response: The SEU was sensitive about this issue in its report since it didn't want to scare foster carers off as many local authorities face difficulties in recruiting carers. However, more needs to be done to support children's education in their home environment and the SEU report makes recommendations on training and support for foster carers to help them do this.

audience comment: children come into care with an educational history and this needs to be taken into account when considering targets, e.g. how long has the child been out of the school system?

speaker response: Agreed that the problems are long term and that they begin before the child actually goes into care. The Green Paper should cover pre-care experiences.

presentation 3 - Parallel Workshops (Agency-Led)

personal Education Plans
Explores the process of consultation with schools, social workers and young people in order to create Personal Education Plans. The session sought to show how using first hand, local evidence alongside researching the guidance and good practice in other authorities, user-friendly Personal Education Plans can be developed.

facilitators: Lee Borowitz, Team Manager; Alan Preston, Monitoring Officer, Education Support Team, Newham Social Services

listening to Young People
Gives description of consultations with looked after young people on issues of education and schooling, drawing out the advantages of doing so and also the difficulties involved in the process. Furthermore this session looks at the research methods involved in conducting such consultations and in particular, methods of establishing effective communication with young people.

facilitators: Jacki Higgs, Assistant Team Manager, Multi-Agency Support Team for Looked After Children, Lisa Palmer, Education Support Worker, Reading Social Services and Housing

developing a " Listening School"
The NSPCC believes in a whole school approach to promoting emotional well being. The school ethos and management style should accord value and respect to all members of the school community. The listening and responsive school will ensure that all members of the community participate in the development of appropriate policies. This workshop looks at a pilot project run in Lancashire and explores the process of audit, action planning and evaluation.

facilitator: John Stead, Education Programme Co-ordinator, NSPCC Resource Centre

raising eEducational achievement through supporting carers
Reviews work done with carers in Derbyshire by a dedicated team of teachers, managed through the Social Services Department. One aspect of the team is to explore raising educational achievement through supporting carers.This session sought to look at carer plans, learner guides, IT & carers and forming partnerships.

facilitators : Joe McNelis, Operations Manager (Children); Shirley Robinson, Co-ordinator, Support to Carers Team,Derbyshire County Council Social Services Education Support Service

raising educational achievement for children in the care of Plymouth City Council
Looks at the political context and research that informed Quality Protects and Education Protects and gives Plymouth's response to the guidance. It sought to explore the development of the Plymouth Looked After Children's Education Team (PLACE) and show how evidence based practice was used to inform planning.

facilitator: Lynda Leehane, Co-ordinator Plymouth Looked After Children, Education Team, Plymouth Social & Housing Services

presentation 4 - The role of SCIE in raising the quality of practice and educational provision by Amanda Edwards

This presentation began by outlining the role of SCIE in the field of social care. Thus, the 'unique' purpose of this agency is 'to find out what we know', by creating a knowledge base within social care. This knowledge base is then to be translated into guides for policy, practice, and service delivery, thereby making its findings accessible to all. SCIE seeks to disseminate and promote this knowledge so that 'new thinking' and new ways of working are encouraged in social care.

The speaker acknowledged that this ambitious agenda could only have an impact by working with other people to share and spread knowledge. This is reflected by SCIE's inclusive approach to knowledge. Thus, it accepts as sources of knowledge: quantitative research, qualitative research, experience of service users and carers, practitioner wisdom, as well as think tank pieces, inspection and reviews. This inclusive approach is based on the premise that no one source of knowledge is inherently more valuable than another. One of SCIE's tasks is to synthesise and bring together these different sources of knowledge.

SCIE's working methods fall into to five main areas:

• user involvement in all activity
• practitioner and first-line manager involvement
• open commissioning process
• testing and evaluation
• independent QA framework

Having outlined the aims and methods of SCIE, the speaker identified and discussed SCIE's products. Nearly all of these are commissioned pieces of work and they include research reviews, practice reviews (these reviews collect examples of good practice, which are not gathered elsewhere, but which can provide a useful source of knowledge/information. So far, two practice reviews have been undertaken by SCIE including one on innovative fostering schemes), practice guides (for frontline management), resources guides (e.g. on learning organisations), position papers (swift policy analysis, e.g. implications of child care registration for private fostering agencies), and the electronic library (eLSC).

Of these products the speaker drew the audience's attention to SCIE's project on fostering as particularly relevant to the focus of the symposium. SCIE has completed practice and research reviews in the area of fostering and is now starting to identify findings and implications for practice with the aim of developing a practice guide. This will be followed by active dissemination and support for implementation.

The speaker argued that this research project will improve practice because:

• the practice guide is backed up by the comprehensiveness and quality of the knowledge review
  
• SCIE will work with young people, foster carers, etc. to implement this knowledge
  
• dissemination will be further ensured by SCIE's resources being used in training, by manifesting SCIE's findings in policy, and by active publicity by SCIE

More generally, the speaker stressed that SCIE is keen to make the eLSC http://www.elsc.org.uk : (new window) a gateway to social care knowledge, by making it useful and accessible to all, including to those with disabilities. However, there are certain difficulties in realizing this, including:

• ambivalence/existing culture of practice knowledge
• dispersed workforce
• technology - sometimes an obstacle
• little tradition of CPD
• undeveloped knowledge base compared to health

Having identified these difficulties, the speaker listed the following challenges for SCIE:

• establishing credibility - becoming a trusted source of knowledge in social care
  
• dissemination -> implementation -> practice change
  
• useful and useable products
  
• beyond the bookshelf and the web

The speaker concluded by arguing that developing social care knowledge and guidelines for practice is a continuous process. In particular, it depends on establishing a culture of mutual learning between SCIE and the practice world, if outcomes are to be improved. The potential prizes to be gained from this collaboration are considerable, and include:

• a confident workforce who will know why they do what they do. This will become increasingly important as practitioners begin to work with more informed users
  
• this knowledge base will become part of the fabric of social care
  
• you know when SCIE has achieved its goal when someone says 'it was their own idea'

There was no post-presentation discussion.

conclusion of symposium

The underlying message that came out of this symposium was that whilst there is a great deal being done to raise the educational achievements of children in care, there is still much to do. In particular, policy makers and practitioners need to acknowledge the very distinct learning difficulties faced by these children; only then, can their educational achievements be appropriately planned, measured and recognised. This message was upheld by an audience keen to highlight the limitations of national targets and the importance of Personal Education Plans (PEPs) in improving educational achievement. Another key message of the day was the importance of collecting adequate data and information if the decision making of practitioners and policy makers is to be improved. Where inadequate data is available inappropriate decisions can and are made at the expense of these vulnerable children and young people. Finally, the symposium underlined how far evidence informed practice is at the heart of all new inquiries being conducted by government bodies, such as NFER, SEU and SCIE.

bibliography

[1] 'The educational performance of children in need and children looked after', Quality Protects Research Briefings, Rosemary Hunt, research in practice.

[2] 'A Better Education for Children in Care'. This Practice Guide published by the Social Exclusion Unit, is an "issues" booklet that has seven fact sheets covering, early years, access to education, support in education, support at home, post 16, health, and targets.

This practice guide can be obtained by contacting: khalida.uddin@odpm.gsi.gov.uk or by phoning 020 7944 2176.