6 March 2025
Young people with experience of children’s social care are less likely to enter and progress through higher education, according to our new report published today: Pathways into and through higher education for young people with experience of children’s social care.
The study found that care leavers – and those who have ever been in care – are four times less likely to enter higher education by age 22, and are also more than twice as likely to drop out compared with their peers in the general population.
The research, undertaken by the Rees Centre, shows that the pathways to higher education for young people with experience of children’s social care tend to vary depending on type and period.
In a call to action for the sector, TASO is recommending that higher education providers support the entry and progression of these students – for example through additional funding in the form of a student premium for care leavers.
Those with experience of children’s social care who progress to higher education are more likely to attend later in life, and to take a vocational route to get there. These findings point to a need for all higher education providers to accept students from vocational routes, and to set strategies for recruiting mature learners. This call is relevant to all providers, but especially high-tariff or more ‘prestigious’ universities, where care leavers are notably underrepresented.
Across most measures, care leavers – and those who have ever been in care – have the lowest engagement with higher education of any of the five groups with experience of children’s social care. However, care leavers have the second highest entry rate at age 18/19 of all the five groups. One reason for this could be that a higher level of support is made available for this group in the transition from post-16 settings to higher education.
TASO is calling for higher education providers to:
- accept more students from vocational pathways
- evaluate their interventions to improve their support for these groups; both in entering and progressing through higher education
- ensure that their retention activities focus on these students
- work closely with local authorities to ensure students have appropriate accommodation options during both term time and non-term time.
Omar Khan, CEO at TASO, said:
“The fact that so few people with experience of children’s social care attend higher education – and are more likely to drop out when they do – should be a concern and a motivation for action for everyone in the sector. We’ve found promising evidence that there are ways to better support these groups – by recruiting mature learners, those from vocational pathways, and strengthening retention strategies. At TASO, we want to see higher education providers evaluating their interventions to attract and support care-experienced students, so we can start to build a picture of what works to benefit these students.
“We also need closer collaboration between local authorities and higher education providers to ensure they are collectively meeting their duty of support to care leavers, where the state has a corporate parent responsibility. One clear area where more joined-up working could be needed is around accommodation – ensuring that care experienced students have somewhere suitable to stay during term time and the holidays.”
Leon Feinstein, Professor of Education and Children’s Social Care and Director of the Rees Centre, said:
“It is striking but not new to find that very many children and young people who have interacted with children’s social care services are also disengaged from education. Yet this study in population data finds that many do go into higher education and of those many have come through vocational routes.
“The solution for universities lies not in reducing academic standards, but in designing more differentiated pathways, and responding to the additional needs of this whole group as part of widening participation programmes in universities, and enhanced transitional support by local authorities. The biggest effect on higher education entry and also as an outcome in itself would be achieved by an enhanced further education offer.”