Top universities fail to deliver Government promise on support for care leavers

The Who Cares? Trust is disappointed to discover that that the best universities in the country are failing to deliver on the Government’s promise to provide support to help care leavers access higher education.

Our analysis of Access Agreements (published today by Office for Fair Access – OFFA) for the top 20 English universities[1] reveals that 40% of them do not include specific support for care leavers.  These Access Agreements were designed to justify top universities setting fees of £9,000 a year.

Worse still, only three of the top 20 English universities have set any kind of target or milestone for increasing participation of care leavers.  This means that OFFA will have no way of telling how successful the support universities are promising to deliver is.

Our analysis shows that the quality of support offered by universities varies considerably, which is a concern in itself.  Some are only making minimal changes to their existing pastoral approach while others are promising to provide specific bursaries, fee waivers and personal support for care leavers.  

We believe that care leavers deserve better. We want:

• All universities which have not included specific support for care leavers in their Access Agreement to publish a statement of what support they intend to make available
• OFFA to undertake detailed analysis of all Access Agreements to identify best practice in widening participation for care leavers
• Government to strengthen the requirements for Access Agreements in 2013/14 to reflect the needs of care leavers
• Higher Education Statistics Authority (HESA) to publish data on the number of care leavers accessing each university.

[1] Based on the Guardian University League table for 2012/13

News

• Is more support needed for children who run away or go missing from care? - 26-Mar-2012
• Government policies on access to further and higher education abandon care leavers to the whims of localism, says report - 16-Mar-2012
• The Trust calls for Government to look wider than adoption - 14-Mar-2012

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