Residential care is rarely a first option for children. Often, it is the most vulnerable children with the most complex and challenging needs who are placed in residential care.
They are the ones who need the most support and care, which is why it’s so concerning that they are being so routinely failed.
Just 7.2 per cent of looked-after children achieved the grade 5 ‘good pass’ threshold in English and mathematics GCSEs, compared to 40.1 per cent of non-looked-after children; children in residential care at age 16 scored over six grades less at GCSE than those in kinship or foster care.
This launchpad stage can be the make-or-break moment for life outcomes. How have these children been left so far behind with so little support?
The Education Committee, which I chair, has released a new report into residential care which found a number of unacceptable system-failings lead to poor education outcomes for children in care.
9 per cent of children in homes are in unregulated education. That means no Ofsted checks to find out if they are being taught well, at the right level, or have the right support to help them gain qualifications.
Often, we heard, this “education” amounts to tutoring or online schools. Both are important tools to help aid learning, but the best place for a child’s education is in the classroom.
Worse still, a further 6 per cent are not in education, training, or employment at all. That’s a worrying proportion of children in care homes receiving education we wouldn’t dream of for our own kids.
For all we know, this could be the tip of the iceberg. The Department for Education’s data is so poor that, as we were told: “If you ask anyone how many children in care are missing education within the country currently, no one would be able to tell you.”
This poor regulation extends beyond education as well. There are over 6,000 young people in care living in unregulated accommodation, an 80 per cent increase since 2010.
These homes can be unsupported and unsafe. One care-experienced witness told the committee of “armed police at our door” and “paedophiles”. The witness said: “I feel like it put me in danger.”
Is it any surprise that, under these conditions, the child’s educational and career outcomes suffer? You would hope, then, that local authorities and schools would do everything possible to get children in care to the front of the queue for the best education, especially considering the extra support that many need.
Indeed, there’s statutory guidance clearly stating that schools rated Good and Outstanding by Ofsted should be prioritised for looked-after children.
But as we heard in our committee, children in care are less likely to attend the best schools and face an adversarial system where some schools discriminate against looked-after children with a culture of impunity which enables this.
One care-experienced young witness recounted a head teacher putting her name in a “drawer” of troubled children, who would either end up pregnant or incarcerated. How can we solve this problem blighting some of the most disadvantaged children?
Our committee has identified key recommendations which would put the system on the children’s side. First, sanctions are desperately needed for councils that place children in unregulated education or allow children to be left without a school place.
Capped Ofsted ratings should be leveraged on those councils that leave their children out in the cold. Second, those schools who block admissions from looked-after children, or who fail to secure good or outstanding outcomes for looked-after children, should be sanctioned, again, through Ofsted ratings.
Third, Virtual School Heads, vital local authority professionals with a duty to promote the education of children in care, are in a unique position to advocate for them.
They must be given stronger statutory powers to champion the education of looked-after pupils. And Pupil Premium Plus, which currently ends at age 16, must be extended to age 18.
The needs of looked-after pupils do not suddenly cease to exist when they turn 16. It is wrong that the funding is just switched off.
Fourth, the Department for Education needs to tackle the data black hole.
Without the right data on where children in care are being educated, how much education they are missing, and what kind of education they are receiving, the government will continue to fight this issue in the dark.
Finally, the private owners of care homes need to be taken on. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) found that “the largest private providers of placements are making materially higher profits, and charging materially higher prices, than we would expect if this market were functioning effectively”.
This profiteering by some providers leads to a market that provides cut-price care at eye-watering prices, operating in the interests of offshore investors rather than vulnerable children.
Our report recommends that the government consider handing children’s homes to not-for-profit community interest organisations, who can put their profits right back into the children.
41 per cent of 19–21-year-old care leavers are not in education, employment or training (NEET). 33 per cent experience homelessness and just 22 per cent, aged 27, are in employment. 24 per cent of prisoners have been through the care system. Residential care shouldn’t blight a child’s life chances.
The government must step up and become the pushy parent these kids need.
Robert Halfon is the chair of the Education Select Committee and Conservative MP for Harlow.