Boarding boost for children in care

In the 1980s, local authorities funded thousands of looked-after children each year to attend boarding schools as a way to boost their life chances. But 30 years on, that number has dwindled to fewer than 100 - a trend that a new Department for Education-funded scheme hopes to reverse.

The Boarding School Partnership (BSA) - made up of the Boarding Schools' Association and charities Royal National Children's Foundation (RNCF), SpringBoard Bursary Foundation, Buttle UK and Reedham Children's Trust - wants to provide councils with the information they need to consider boarding as an option for looked-after children alongside other forms of care, such as fostering or a residential placement (see box).

Funded for three years, it aims to create a dialogue that brings the boarding school charities and local authorities together, and will build on findings from a working party recently set up to review how councils could be encouraged to consider boarding school placements for children either at risk of, or who have just gone into, care.

Supporting vulnerable children

The four charities already support 600 vulnerable children to attend boarding schools through their own schemes. But Colin Morrison, chair of the Boarding School Partnerships and former chair of RNCF, hopes the new drive will kick-start a renaissance in the numbers placed by councils.

"Until about the early 1980s, local authorities in the UK would quite often support disadvantaged children at boarding schools," Morrison says.

"It was a practice that sort of faded out. Most of that work is carried out by charities, but they support relatively small numbers of children compared with what local authorities did."

Morrison says that most of the children supported by charities are on the edge of the care system, whereas local authorities have responsibility for young people "just the other side of that who have been taken into care".

"Local authorities have a lot of children in their care who are rather similar to the young people the charities are helping," he says. "So that made me want to say to them, ‘let me show you the work we're doing here and what boarding school can achieve for many of these children'."

However, Morrison admits that while charities are dedicated to dealing with boarding schools, local authorities have a range of possible options for young people who need support and care.

"Boarding schools will never be the majority of those options," he says. "I concluded that the difficulty local authorities had getting back into this work was that they didn't have the expertise in this area - what children are best suited to boarding schools, what schools are available and what arrangements need to be made."

This lack of expertise and knowledge is a key barrier to getting more local authorities interested in considering boarding schools for looked-after children.

Morrison accepts councils will not have the resources to invest in acquiring these skills, but says that the partnership will be able to fill this void by offering advice on costs, how to use different funding streams and taking advantage of bursary schemes - all things in which the charities have expertise.

"The difficulty is expecting them to acquire that expertise and knowledge for what would sometimes be an occasional placement. This is our way of giving them the most expertise," he adds.

Tracking progress

Another key part of the initiative is how it will start building up an evidence base on improved outcomes by tracking the progress of children.

"We need the research and proof that this work is really effective," he says. "Our intention is that local authorities will get more knowledge and confidence, and over time many more young people will benefit from boarding schools.

"There is a lot of proof from charities that for the right child in the right school at the right time, boarding can transform their lives."

Morrison says that research from RNCF found that vulnerable children it supports to attend boarding school outperform their peers academically.

"We believe that is a function of these young people who are disproportionately hungry, determined and enthusiastic to be there - they know how bad life can be and can't believe their luck and want to make the most of it," he adds.

In addition to improving children's attainment, Morrison believes there are financial benefits for authorities.

According to the BSA, annual boarding fees at a top independent school are around £35,000, significantly lower than the cost of a place at a residential children's home.

In addition, for a young person in care who misses out on the chance to attend boarding school, Morrison says poorer life outcomes could lead to greater expense for the local authority.

"We know about the outcomes of children in care and how difficult a time they have, so that's a big social cost as well," Morrison says.

How partnership will work

• The Boarding School Partnership will aim to link charities, local authorities and boarding schools
• Support will consist of a website, launching in early 2017, and a statistical service to show evidence of impact of placing vulnerable children in boarding school for local authorities
• The website will contain case studies of young people who have experienced assisted boarding, as well as information on local assisted boarding charities that could offer help to authorities
• There are also plans to eventually offer training for professionals involved in evaluating the placements

Source: Boarding Schools Association