The symposium has described three pieces of research on the education of children in care. Luke and Berridge’s papers provided findings from the investigation of the relationship between young people’s experiences of the care system and their educational outcomes. By complementing statistical analyses of datasets with in-depth interviews of young people and those important to their education, this study was able to identify some key factors such as placement changes and exclusion that are strongly associated with outcomes. Similarly, secondary data analysis and longitudinal data analysis in Canada enabled Tessier and colleagues to identify risk and protective factors associated with the educational outcomes of children in care. Finally, Winter and colleagues used a randomised trial in Northern Ireland to test the efficacy of the Letterbox Club, a widely used book-gifting scheme that until now has been subjected to evaluations limited to pre- and post-test designs.
Our theme in this symposium concerns the need for more robust research designs if we are to make progress in improving the educational outcomes of children in care. Seven years ago Stevens et al. (2009), reported an analysis of 625 studies on children’s services in which robust designs were rarely used - randomised trials and systematic reviews each accounted for less than 1% of the studies, quantitative dataset analysis 3% and longitudinal analyses 12%. Have we made progress since that time? There seems to be more studies employing secondary data analysis, longitudinal data analysis (though rarely the more expensive prospective studies) and mixed methods perhaps?
Further analysis is needed to explore some of the questions that the studies reported in this symposium have identified in order to understand ways of improving outcomes. What are the educational experiences of those who move in and out of care and how does this relate to the different ways in which we conceptualise stability? What is the role of behaviour in the education of children in care and how might engaging young people further in its measurement help to prevent or address difficulties? What can be done to address the needs of young people who enter care in their teens often with a poor educational trajectory? What risk and protective factors have been shown to have an impact on changing a young person's educational trajectory?
The importance of complementing much-needed larger scale quantitative research with the perspectives of young people has been demonstrated, for example, the young people provided perspectives on the on-going influence of the birth family that the researchers might otherwise have missed. Research which explores these young people’s experiences within the wider theoretical perspectives of attachment, resilience or childhood might increase our understanding.
Finally, there is very little robust research on the effectiveness of interventions to enhance educational outcomes of children in care (Forsman and Vinnerljung, 2012). Recent interventions suggest that training foster carers in paired reading (Osborne et al., 2010; Vinnerljung et al., 2014) might be a promising way of addressing some of the limitations identified in the Northern Ireland RCT. More robust evaluations of educational interventions are needed if we are to progress in addressing the outcomes of children in care.
Forsman, H. and Vinnerljung, B. (2012) Interventions aiming to improve school achievements of children in out-of-home care: a scoping review. Children and Youth Services Review 34(6): 1084–1091.
Osborne, C., Alfano, J., and Winn, T. (2010) Paired reading as a literacy intervention for foster children. Adoption and Fostering, 34, 4, 17-26.
Vinnerljung, B., Tideman, E., Sallnäs, M., & Forsman, H. (2014). Paired reading for foster children: results from a Swedish replication of an English literacy intervention. Adoption &
Fostering, 38(4), 361-373.
Education and qualification of children and young people in care , Program evaluation and quality in child welfare
