Children with positive care experience outperform at school
The Guardian’s “Social Care Network” has written an article about research into the education progress of “looked after” children.
This research suggests that children who have a good experience in care are associated with better than expected grades. Both children’s services departments and educationalists have started looking at the findings to see how they can help children.
Due to the research being carried out, it has led to a new national tracking tool which is being developed by the National Consortium for Examination Results, The National Association of Virtual School Heads and the Association of Directors of Children’s Services.
The new tool will aim to link social care data which is held for each local authority in England. Data from each council area will be combined into a national dataset . It is hoped that this will then provide information to be able to see what initiatives and support can help children in care do better.
Although the tool started to use baseline date from 2015 it is only this year that the combining of education and social care databases began. Information will start to emerge after this year’s data is entered. From this maybe we can start to focus on what children in care can achieve instead of what they can’t.
You can read the full article here.
