Care-experienced young people four times less likely to go to university

Closer collaboration between local authorities and higher education is among recommendations for tackling barriers in 'Pathways into and through higher education for young people with experience of children’s social care', by the Centre for Transforming Access and Student Outcomes (TASO).

Young care-experienced people are also more than twice as likely to drop out of university than their peers, according to the research by TASO, which includes academics from Kings College London and Nottingham Trent University, as well as a team from Oxford University’s Rees Centre.

Those with experience of care are more likely to start university later in life rather than at 18 and do so through their jobs, finds the report. More than a third of care leavers and a similar proportion of those with experience of care during their lives entered university through a vocational pathway, compared with around one in eight of the general population.