Understanding the Educational Outcomes of Young People in Care

Judy Sebba and Aoife O’Higgins The Rees Centre

What the session will cover

• The Rees Centre

• The state of research in the children’s social care field

• Some evidence on what influences educational outcomes in young people in care

• Some emerging preliminary findings from the Nuffield-funded research on educational progress

Rees Centre for Research in Fostering and Education

The Rees Centre aims to:• identify what works to improve the outcomes

and life chances of children and young people in foster care

We are doing this by: • reviewing existing research in order to make

better use of current evidence• conducting new research to address gaps• working with service users to identify research

priorities and translate research messages into practice

• employing foster carers and care experienced young people as co-researchers

Centre is funded by the Core Assets Group but has grants from a range of other funders

The current evidence base in children’s services (adapted from Stevens et al, 2009, p.286)

Methods (selective)used in 625 studies

No of studies

% of studies

Qualitative 230 37

Mixed method 108 17

Longitudinal 74 12

Quantitative dataset analysis 16 3

Non-randomised trial 8 1

RCT 3 <1

Systematic review 2 <1

Analysis of designs used in studies

• Analysis based on 5 research reviews in Rees Centre series, a much larger review on mental health interventions in looked after children for NSPCC and Aoife O’Higgins systematic review;

• Our reviews are essentially ‘what works’ reviews so published reviews are referred to in the conceptual background and discussion but not included in the in-depth review;

• Unlike some well-established systems for systematic reviewing we do not exclude studies on the basis of their methodological approach but we do attempt to give more robust studies greater weight in the conclusions.

StudiesincludedinReesCentrereviews(categoriesnotmutuallyexclusive)

Review No.of

studies

Qualitati

ve%

Survey

(n>30)%

Longitudin

al%

Secdata

analysis%

RCT

%

Non-

randomtrial%

Preand

postmeas%

Mixed

method%

Stevensetal(2009)

1625 37 4 12 3 4 1 1 17

Motivationtofoster

32 31 59 3(1) 6(2) 0 0 3(1) 9(3)

Peersupport 33 88 36 0 3(1) 0 0 0 15Impactcarers’children

17 71 47 0 0 0 0 0 18(3)

Parent&childfostering

27 81 11(3) 0 18 0 0 0 22

RoleoftheSSW

22 81 45 0 9(2) 0 0 0 32

Mentalhealthinterventions2

75 12 1(1) 0 0 52 15 19 9

Factorsassociatededuc.outcome

34 0 44 6(2) 50 0 0 0 0

Issues and implications

• The evidence base does not yet allow us ‘to intervene with the most benefit and the least harm’

• A key criterion in making decisions about research designs must be ‘fitness for purpose’ but the basis for national policy making (e.g. RCTs & replications) and the need by practitioners for quick answers that tell them what to do can be in direct conflict;

• The questions we address in the Rees reviews are all generated from the field which limits the number of RCTs used in the studies that address them;

• Possible that large scale surveys are being replaced by secondary data analysis as the development of large scale datasets and access to them improve.

• So we want to describe some work linking large datasets in order to identify what influences educational outcomes.

• But before we do this, let’s get a perspective from a young person who has experienced the care system.

The schooling experience of a young person in care

“I entered care at the age of 5. By the time I was 6 and had begun primary school I had had 15 different foster placements. That’s 15 different houses, sets of rules and family values. Early school life was very difficult from being left at school late until someone collected me to turning up late without the correct equipment or kit for that day because I had spent the night upset in a home I didn't know.”

“Secondary school was no easier the only difference being I was no longer interested in education but instead my only goal was to go home to my mum. I’ll never forget the receptionist at my school as she was the only consistent person in my life and always remembered to ask how my mum was doing.”

Educational outcomes of looked after children in England

DfE (2013b) Statistical First Release 11 Dec 2013

• 15% achieve expected grades at 16 years (Key Stage 4) compared to 58% of all children – a 43% gap

• Twice as likely to be permanently excluded

• Three times as likely to have a fixed term exclusion

• BUT achievement gap is smaller at Key Stage 2 (age 11) (26% for Maths, 23% reading, 28% writing)

In addition

• Only 7% access Higher Education (DfE, 2013a) compared to around 50% of general population

• Educational experiences and outcomes contribute to later health, employment (22% unemployment rate), involvement in crime(27% of those in prison; Social Exclusion Unit, 2002)

Educational outcomes of looked after children in England(Source: DfE, 2013)

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

12 to 18months

18months to

2 years

2 to 3years

3 to 4years

4 to 5years

5 to 6years

6 years ormore

Pe

rce

nta

ge a

chie

vin

g

Length of time in care

5+ GCSEs at grades A*-C

5+ GCSEs at grades A*-cincluding English andmathematics

Research on the education of children in care

International research confirms the attainment gap between children in care and their peers (Trout et al., 2008) and the high prevalence of special educational needs and exclusions (Scherr, 2007).

The reasons for this are not clear:

- Is the care system detrimental to children’s education?

- Are there pre-care factors which predispose children to low educational outcomes?

Pre-care factors

• 75% from single parent families

• 75% receive benefits

• 80% are in rented accommodation

• 60% living in poor neighbourhoods

(Bebbington and Miles, 1989)

Maltreatment: abuse, neglect, abandoned, behavioural problems… (Eckenrode, 1993; Shonk & Cicchetti, 2001)

What is the impact of these events on educational outcomes of children in the general population?

What happens in care?

• Mental health problems (Perzow et al., 2013)

• Behavioural problems (Colton & Heath, 1992; Flynn et al., 2013)

• Learning impairment (Geenen & Powers, 2006)

• Placement instability (Wise et al., 2010; Zima et al. 2000)

• School changes (Burley & Halpern, 2001)

• Low expectations (Heath et al., 1993)

• Risk taking behaviour, e.g. substance misuse. (Shin, 2003)

• Caregiver support (Pears et al., 2012)

• Caregiver expectations and aspirations (Flynn et al., 2013; Wise et al., 2010)

• Caregiver home / school based involvement (Cheung et al., 2012)

Some interventions to support the education of children in care

In the UK:

• Letterbox Club (Griffiths, 2009)

• Paired Reading (Osborne et al., 2010)

Internationally

• Tutoring (Forsman & Vinnerljung, 2012)

The Educational Progress of Looked After Children in Secondary Schools

Aim

To identify key care and educational factors that are associated with the progress of children in care from KS2 (end of primary school) to the end of KS4 (end of secondary school) and their attainment at KS4

Purpose

To inform the resource priorities of central and local government, the practice of professionals and the databases used to monitor outcomesIn collaboration with University of Bristol and funded by Nuffield Foundation

Research design

How are we doing this?

• Linking national data sets on the education (National Pupil Database) and care experiences of looked after children in England (SSDA903)

– to explore the relationship between educational outcomes, the children’s care histories and individual characteristics, and practice and policy in different local authorities

• Interviews with 36 children in six local authorities and with their carers, teachers, social workers and Virtual School staff

– to complement and expand on the statistical analyses, and to explore factors not recorded in the databases (e.g. foster carers’ attitudes to education, role of the Virtual School)

Dealing with the data

• Databases are constantly evolving

– outdated codes

– idiosyncrasies in data submissions

• Formatting data

– provided with a mix of episode vs. annual vs. individual level data

– ‘missing’ data (e.g. for Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire)

– skewed data (e.g. children on a series of short-term respite breaks)

– creating variables from raw data (e.g. what does ‘placement length’ mean?)

– creating categories within variables (e.g. placements since KS2)

Database analyses

• Determined by research questions, theoretical relationships and available data

• Regressions – which factors predict better or worse educational outcomes?

• Multilevel modelling – what is the relative contribution of factors at different levels?

Local authority

School

Individual child

Approaching the analysis

• Variable creation, analysis, interpretation

– an iterative process

• Describing the cohort

• Identifying key predictors

• Examining influences at different levels

– challenge of finding data

• Interpretation of findings

– looking at combinations of variables provides a clearer picture

– acknowledging the bias in our sample

Description of our cohort [preliminary analysis]

• 7,852 looked after children eligible for GCSEs in 2013

• 45.6% female

• 78.5% white

• 64.8% first entered care aged 10 or over

Career type Per cent

Entry aged 0 to 4 9.8

Entry aged 5 to 9 20.3

Adolescent entrant 29.5

Adolescent abused 26.5

Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Child

2.5

Disabled 11.4

Placement histories

• 26.7% had been in care for under a year; 16.8% for 9 years or more

• 25.3% had only had one placement; 4.0% had 11-15 placements

• 49.7% had been in most recent placement for under a year

• 36.5% had always been in foster care; 2.9% always in kin care; 15.0% always in residential care;

• Of those in care at end of primary school, 70.5% were in foster care; 11.2% kin care; 14.4% residential care

• Of those in care at end of GCSEs, 55.6% were in foster care; 7.0% kin care; 32.1% residential care

Placement type

• Using ‘8 best GCSEs’ as an outcome (scores range from 0-464)

• Controlling for KS2 attainment, gender, ethnicity, age and reason for first entry to care, and duration of last placement

• Compared to young people who left care during Year 11, young people who remained in the following placement types did:

– foster care

• Better by an average of 41.0 points

– kinship care

• Better by an average of 11.8 points

– residential care

• Worse by an average of 29.3 points

Multi-level modelling

• Three-level model

– child; school; local authority

• Compared children in care for 12 months continuously with all children

• Taking account of:

– KS2 attainment; gender; ethnicity; proportion eligible for free school meals (school and local authority levels)

• Variation in KS4 attainment of looked after children at local authority level was not statistically significant

– suggests that variability existed at the school level, rather than the local authority level

• Two-level model revealed differences between local authorities

Qualitative Work

• Database analyses helped us identify six local authorities: – three in which looked after pupils’ attainments and progress are

noticeably better than the average

– three in which they are worse

• Managers have been asked to identify six pupils = total sample 36– to avoid us matching them up to their NPD data

• We will ask young people if we can approach:– foster carers/key workers/residential managers (36)

– social workers/family placement workers (36)

– designated teachers (36)

– Virtual School Heads (6)

Qualitative Work

• Interviews will be conducted by care leaver researchers and foster carers

• indicative topics for interviews:– identifying the type of support provided for looked after

children by schools

– engagement of foster carers/key workers/residential managers and social workers with schools

– contribution of the Virtual School to improving outcomes

– backgrounds and attitudes of foster carers/key workers/residential managers

– pupil motivation and behaviour (adults’ interviews only)

– involvement of Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (adults’ interviews only)

Informing policy and practice

• Project results will enable us to make recommendations, e.g.:

– timing of placement changes

– relative importance of placement and school stability

– relative importance of ‘quality’ and size in selecting schools

– selection and training of foster carers and residential staff

– use of data to predict performance and target interventions

– difficulties with current data system

– other useful forms of data that could be collected

References

• Conger, D., & Rebeck, A. (2001). How children’s foster care experiences affect their education. New York City: Vera Institute for Justice.

• Department for Education. (2013a). Statistical First Release: SFR36/2013. London: DfE. Retrieved from http://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/244872/SFR36_2013.pdf

• Department for Education. (2013b). Statistical First Release: SFR50/2013. London: DfE. Retrieved fromhttp://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/264385/SFR50_2013_Text.pdf

• Flynn, R. J., Tessier, N. G., & Coulombe, D. (2013). Placement, protective and risk factors in the educational success of young people in care: Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses. European Journal of Social Work, 16(1), 70–87.

• Pecora, P. J. (2012). Maximizing educational achievement of youth in foster care and alumni: Factors associated with success. Children and Youth Services Review, 34(6), 1121–1129.

• Social Exclusion Unit. (2002). Reducing offending by ex-prisoners. London: SEU.• Stone, S. (2007). Child maltreatment, out-of-home placement and academic

vulnerability: A fifteen-year review of evidence and future directions. Children and Youth Services Review, 29(2), 139-161.