Media Highlights: January 2020
The Shortlist
The Guardian: Researchers ‘surprised by the scale of special educational need among children in care’.
The Guardian: Care leaver shares his success story.
The Sunday Times: Children in Care subjected to “illegal” accommodation.
The Times: Children’s Commissioner calls for independent review of the care system.
The Guardian: Government urges Directors of Children’s Services to prioritise adoption.
Evening Standard: Launches The Excluded campaign to tackle rise in permanent exclusions.
The Summary
Children in care have higher rates of SEN than official figures show
The Guardian published a report conducted by the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health which found that four out of five children taken into care in England during their school years required support for special educational needs (SEN) at some point between the ages of five and 16. Researchers were ‘surprised by the scale of special educational need among children in care’.
Care leaver: “education is your ticket out”
A former care leaver shared his success story in The Guardian…After being adopted due to domestic violence, drugs and neglect, he graduated from Sheffield Hallam University and is now making an impact as a social care worker. “Being in care has made me realise you are in charge of your own destiny and education is your ticket out”, he said: “I want to show that care leavers can do well despite what they’ve been through. The way I see it, you have to strive to be more than what society gave you. You have to prove people wrong.”
Children in care - a crisis of accommodation
The Sunday Times revealed the shocking housing conditions children in care are experiencing as the number of illegal care homes in the UK increases. Sian Griffiths reveals that school inspectors have found children in council care living in Travelodges and Airbnbs and being looked after by unqualified staff, including former bouncers, as the care system comes under increased strain from victims of gang crime and county lines drug dealing. An Ofsted report published on 21 January calls for powers to close down illegal “children’s homes” after finding the majority of 150 homes inspected were not registered with Ofsted.
The Times published an investigation piece on the number of children in care in England being relocated to Scotland due to lack of secure accommodation, finding that more than a third of children placed in Scottish secure homes came from England in 2018. The report highlights that Children’s Commissioner Anne Longfield has called again for an independent review of the care system.
An opinion piece in The Guardian highlighted the issue of children’s homes being run poorly by private equity companies, who are failing to meet Ofsted standards. The article highlights that the pressures felt by local authorities mean that companies can make a profit out of children. This could be justified, they say, if allowing modest profit-making resulted in better quality and more reasonably priced care than the state could provide.
London Evening standard launches campaign to tackle rise in exclusions
The London Evening Standard undertook an investigation into school exclusions and found a clear link between the 70% rise in permanent exclusions in the past five years and the catastrophic escalation of youths caught up in county line drug dealing and knife crime. The Standard has launched a £1m campaign that gives London secondary schools with exclusion rates higher than the national average the chance to apply for grants of up to £150,000 to develop on-site inclusion units.
Government calls for Local Authorities to prioritise adoptions
The Guardian reports that the government has written to Directors of Children’s Services across England urging them to prioritise adoption for children in the care system and to ensure that prospective adopters are not turned away when they are actually eligible. The announcement, which follows persistent decline in the number of adoptions, was welcomed by Adoption UK, but critics said it was a sign of the governments obsession with adoption at the cost of neglecting other forms of care including kinship care.
Oxford improves access to further education
Oxford University made headlines by reporting that 69% of the offers it made for courses beginning in October 2020 were to British students from state schools, and that 22% of its undergraduates admitted in October 2019 were British students from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, increasing from 18% the previous year. The University implemented measures to its application system to improve recruitment and outreach.
Marchella of Worcester College wrote an article for The Guardian on how it used contextual data to create a more inclusive approach and subsequently improved its acceptance rates for disadvantaged pupils. While some argue this may discriminate against “better off bright pupils”, Michael Barber, chairman of the Office for Students, said in The Times that this is a big step forward in improving equality of opportunity.
Educational reform to maths GCSE
BBC News noted that Mathematics in Education and Industry is pushing for the introduction of a new maths GCSE for those students in England stuck in a cycle of resitting maths to achieve a grade 4 or above. The proposed new curriculum should focus on "the maths needed for everyday life and work", the charity says, adding that the new exam should be for post-16 students only and carry the same status as the current maths GCSE.
Pedagogy: praise works better
The Times reported on a study published in Educational Psychology which found that in classes where the praise ratio was highest, pupils spent 20 to 30 percentage points longer focusing on the teacher or task than in classes where praise was least used. Academics concluded that whilst there was no magic ratio of positive to negative comments that teachers should use, they should aim to increase their praise and suppress reprimands.
DofE calls for character building
Several sources reported on leaders of the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme calling on the government to do more to support character building in schools. The DofE consulted with young people, teachers, parents and employers to suggest a list of activities (including cooking a vegan meal) people might undertake to build important life skills such as resilience and self-confidence to help them overcome challenges outside of the classroom.
Euan Blair speaks up on the appetite for (and advantages of) apprenticeships -
In The Times, Tony Blair’s son Euan spoke up about the increase in demand for his company’s service in providing apprenticeships for talented school leavers, arguing the offer was an ‘outstanding alternative to University’ due to its skills-focused applied learning approach.
Peter Hargreaves launches million pound charity for young people
The Times reported that Peter Hargreaves, the founder of investment platform Hargreaves Lansdown, is to start a £100m charitable foundation this year that will support young people from underprivileged backgrounds and with disabilities through education and sport.
Investment needed to close skills gap
The Independent reported on a study published by the Learning and Work Institute which warned that millions of people face a future where they have skills mismatched for jobs at a huge cost to people's lives and the local and national economy. The Institute’s CEO Stephen Evans said: “We now need a decade of investment, in order to boost life chances, economic prosperity and to level up the country. That investment needs to be delivered through a partnership between national and local government, employers and trade unions."