Adela Kay, Assistant Headteacher at Aspire Virtual School, has conducted in-depth research on a variety of pressing issues affecting children and young people within our community. For September’s research, you’ll find summaries and links to key reports that highlight national concerns around literacy, youth violence, and the experiences of looked after children. These resources are intended to help equip you in addressing these issues. These reports provide important insights into the current challenges our young people face and offer guidance on how we can better support vulnerable children within our schools and communities. The topics covered include:
- Literacy Attainment Gaps
- Youth Violence
- Looked After Children
- Youth Offending
Literacy Attainment Gaps
This blog post from the FFT compares KS1 results with GCSE passes in English. It is an interesting longitudinal look at the impact of missing end of Key stage goals on long term achievement at GCSE. For the vulnerable cohort who start school below their peers and maintain the gap through their school careers, it is really important to recognise that missed learning at a previous key stage can have long term repercussions. When I delivered data last year to secondary schools, I asked them to consider how they could fill the gaps for young people who had not achieved EXS at the end of KS2. It is important to remember that the English and the Math curriculum carry on regardless into KS3 and KS4 and if gaps in understanding aren’t resolved they can be perpetuated as the data in this blog post suggests in “How Attainment Gaps in Literacy Change Over Time.”
Youth Violence
The “YEF: Education, Children, and Violence -May 2024″report was published in May, so a bit outdated by my standards but I have only just read it. It looks quite useful and has an accompanying toolkit for schools to try and disrupt patterns of violent behaviour. There is a short introduction via podcast here “Beyond the Headlines” by the Youth Endowment Fund which gives some useful statistics but the main report I have linked above.
Looked After Children
Ofsted have published a Social Care Blog post on the registration process and issues it has raised around supported accommodation. I think it throws up some interesting questions for our older young people around appropriate homes and care for 16 plus year olds. “Supported Accommodation: It Can be Right for Some Older Children, But Not for All” – Ofsted: Social Care
There has also been a report in the BBC about the belongings of young people in care being moved in bin bags and their things going missing as a result. The National Youth Advocacy Service is running a campaign asking Local Authorities to pledge never to ask a young person to move their belongings in binbags or throw away a young person’s things without their consent. This is part of a wider movement around supporting young people when their placements have to change, I recently went to a conference where former care leavers spoke, and it was raised then as a memory of feeling like they were also rubbish being ‘put out’. I think it is really something to consider in terms of how we value our in care young people, as young people who deserve the care our own children would deserve. The news story can be found “Children in Care Made to Pack Up Their Lives in Bin Bags” – BBC News and the campaign My Things Matter.
Youth Offending
The report “Why Child Imprisonment is Beyond Reform: A Review of the Evidence”, comes from a specific lobby group, and many of the pledges seem somewhat contradictory. On the one hand, they advocate for the permanent closure of all Youth Offender Institutions (YOIs) and Secure Training Centres (STCs), yet on the other, they discuss improving the quality of care while children are imprisoned, which feels paradoxical. As a Virtual School, we would wholeheartedly endorse the key recommendation of providing 30 hours of education or purposeful activity per week. Currently, this appears to be severely lacking in some institutions.
One particular concern raised in the report is the use of pain-inducing techniques, which seem more aligned with 19th-century methods than modern approaches. I wonder what evidence supports this concern. Another issue worth considering is the number of visitors that Looked After Children receive while imprisoned. Shockingly, only 19% receive visitors, compared to 40% of other children. While all children on remand are in care, we may need to explore how we can better facilitate visits for those who were in care prior to imprisonment, ensuring they continue to feel cared for while in HM Estate.
Best Wishes,
Adela
