BREAKING THE CARE CEILING. - Fourteen per cent of care leavers go to university

Ministers have already pledged to ‘close the gap’ between care leavers and non-care leavers by 2030, unfortunately it will take 107 years to do this at the current rate of progression.16 A better target is needed, with a measurable aspiration for the proportion of care leavers going to university by the end of the next parliament. [...] The study found that the extension of VSHs to 18 provided an opportunity to do this, and initial results are positive about the impact that this has had.44 The VSHs also provide activities to raise the expectations of care leavers and looked after children into having higher aspirations for work and education. [...] More than two thirds of the 27 pilot VSHs in the programme had facilitated such activities and feedback was very positive.46 The first main recommendation of the first phase of the evaluation of the extension of VSHs to the age of 18 was that more needs to be done to produce pathway plans and educational targets for children in the care system. [...] In 2014 the Scottish Government launched a Commission on Widening Access to higher education noting that, at the time, young Scottish care leavers were almost seven times less likely to go onto higher education compared to all young people in Scotland.52 The final report of the commission made a series of recommendations for improving access to university for Scottish children in the care system,. [...] If you compare these figures to those of a decade ago, not much has changed – the number of children not in care who progressed to higher education by the age of 19 in 2012 was still over three times that of the number of children in care who progressed (36 per cent versus 10 per cent).