CHILDREN LOOKED AFTER BY LOCAL AUTHORITIES
EDUCATION
OF
CHILDREN
LOOKED
AFTER:
CONCLUSIONS
289. We endorse the comments by the Education and
Employment Committee set out in paragraph 287 above. The current
level of educational achievement by children looked after is appallingly
low. Although such disadvantaged children are never likely, overall,
to match the educational standards of the school population at
large, we have no doubt that with proper support many individual
children could achieve far more of their potential than they currently
do. Many of the problems which afflict the care system in
general are seen in particularly sharp focus in relation to education.
The current legislative framework is largely sound, but due to
a mixture of lack of resources and ineffective organisation local
authorities frequently fail to perform their statutory duties,
and there is currently no mechanism by which the Government can
compel them to do so. The stigma attached to being in care leads
to discrimination within the educational system against children
looked after, and school league table in their current form have
exacerbated this problem. When children either through illness
or exclusion fall outside mainstream education, there is little
effort made to provide alternative education or to reintegrate
them within the system. The relevant agencies—Social Services
Departments and Local Education Authorities—do not work
effectively together. All too often there is no single individual
to take responsibility for promoting the education of a looked-after
child.
290. We recommend that the Government draw up
a strategy for tackling these problems. There should be a new
emphasis on the duty of the whole local authority to ensure not
only that children receive a full-time education suitable to their
age, but also special help and attention to overcome their deficits.
This will mean minimising the extent of exclusions, trying to
preserve continuity of schooling even when the child's home moves,
and encouraging good co-operative links between home, care and
school. The aim should be to enable as many looked-after children
as possible to receive mainstream education, and to minimise the
disadvantages that their special circumstances place in the way
of their benefiting from that education. Given the increased autonomy
of schools with regard to their local authority, SSDs will need
to put effort into establishing relationships with individual
schools in relation to the education of children looked after.
Residential care workers will need to be more actively involved
in the educational activities of looked-after children, in practical
ways such as checking homework. It is important that education
is seen as a central and positive part of looked-after children's
lives.
291. We welcome the Social Exclusion Unit's announcement
of a Government target that by the year 2002 all pupils excluded
from school for more than three weeks should receive alternative
full-time and appropriate education. The setting of targets is,
of course, easily done; what matters is the measures taken to
achieve them. We look forward to receiving specific and fully
resourced proposals from the Government as to how this target
will be achieved.
292. We also welcome, in principle, the Government's
setting of a target for a significant increase in the proportion
of looked-after children attaining academic qualifications. However,
we are worried by the details of the proposal. The Government
suggests that the targets might be set at 50% of all looked-after
children achieving a qualification by 2001, and 75% by 2003. The
best research data currently available indicates that between
50% and 75% of care leavers have no qualifications.[340]
If the lower of these figures is correct, then the Government's
proposed initial target is in fact already being met.
293. Secondly, as the Government itself acknowledges,
"there is a great shortage of data about the educational
circumstances and achievements of children in care".[341]
There is little point in setting targets at all until firm statistics
are available, together with mechanisms for measuring progress
beyond an initial baseline. We therefore recommend that the Government
should ensure that reliable data is collected as quickly as possible
on the extent of educational provision for children looked after,
and on educational outcomes. The Government should then set genuinely
challenging targets against which its measures for improving the
education of looked-after children can be judged. The Government
should, of course, proceed with the implementation of those measures
themselves without delay. We look forward to receiving specific
and fully resourced details of the measures.
294. The Government's focus on educational achievement
measured through qualifications is laudable in itself, but it
should not be forgotten that many children enter and leave care
before reaching the age at which they can sit GCSEs. We recommend
that every looked-after child should have his or her educational
progress assessed at each of the Key Stages.
295. We recommend that the Government should investigate
ways of developing more sophisticated performance indicators,
to assess how far schools are assisting looked-after children,
for instance by including vocational qualifications and other
measures of pupil achievement (such as Duke of Edinburgh's Awards)
as well as GCSEs. We support the proposal to introduce an element
for 'added value' in school league tables.
296. Schools should take active steps to minimise
any sense of stigma which attaches to pupils who are looked after,
who should not be treated differently from other pupils in the
way that educational needs are met.
297. Local authorities act in loco parentis
to looked-after children. Individual parents who neglect their
child's education are liable to legal penalty. We recommend
that the Government should investigate ways in which local authorities
who neglect the education of children in their care should be
subject to appropriate invigilation and penalty.
298. We believe that for every looked-after child
there should be a single individual who will have the responsibility
as acting as an advocate for that child in respect of education,
by monitoring their progress, keeping in regular contact with
their school, and actively promoting their best educational interests.
This individual will also have the wider responsibilities in relation
to the child that we refer to in paragraph 220 above.
299. It is important that educational materials
are available in the child's home. We recommend that local
authorities should make a particular effort to supply such materials
in residential children's homes. We support the proposals by the
Who Cares? Trust that local authorities should take active steps
to promote literacy and encourage reading, that they should ensure
that all looked-after children should have the opportunity to
choose, on a regular basis, books of their own for both leisure
and educational purposes, that libraries should be established
and maintained in homes, with the involvement of the children
living in the home, and that children should be given every opportunity
to become regular users of their local library.[342]
300. In paragraphs 314 and 315 below, we make recommendations
in relation to the issue of educational opportunities for care
leavers.
EDUCATION
IN
SECURE
UNITS
301. During our inquiry we visited St John's Secure
Unit at Tiffield in Northamptonshire. The head of the unit, Mr
Paul Cook, subsequently submitted a memorandum in which he stated
that secure units face "significant problems in providing
the appropriate level of resources to those children statemented
requiring special educational needs or those children for whom
a statement of special educational needs would be advisable".
He argued that a statement cannot name a secure unit such as St
John's as this is not a designated school, despite the fact that
it has professionally qualified teaching staff, is registered
with the DfEE as an examination centre, and is inspected tri-annually
by OFSTED and HMI; and that as a result LEAs will not provide
funding for statemented children in secure units.[343]
302. We raised this seeming anomaly with the Secretary
of State for Education and Employment. He commented that, until
we had drawn it to his attention, he had not realised that secure
units could not be designated in terms of funding for statemented
children. He described this as "an absolutely staggering
fact", and said that
"I am concerned that we act and I will examine
how that can be done. It seems absurd that the children who need
[this funding] most are unable to benefit from it and we should,
therefore, be in a position to be able to apply the same rules
of funding and support for those who require a statement in secure
units as we would anywhere else."[344]
303. Like the Secretary of State, we were astonished
to learn that secure units face difficulty in gaining funding
for the education of 'statemented' children, because they are
not designated schools, despite the range of educational facilities
they provide. We were glad to hear that the Secretary of State
proposes to take action to change the current rules governing
funding for statemented children to rectify this anomaly. We strongly
support the taking of such action.
340 Ev p 41. Back
341 Cm
3957, para 2.19. Back
342 See
A Book of My Own, p 34. Back
343 Ev
p 338 (Appendix 3). Back
344 Q972,
977. Back
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