Enabling care-experienced and estranged students to access and thrive at university

Just 15% of young people from a care background go to university compared to 47% of their non-care-experienced peers. Getting to university isn’t easy for these students. Only 19% of children in care passed English and Maths GCSE in 2022/23, compared to 65% of all pupils. For those that do attend university, care leavers are 38% more likely to drop out of university than non-care-experienced peers, and those that stay are found to get lower degree classifications (two-thirds achieve a first or 2.1, compared to four-fifths of non-care-experienced students).   

In 2024, the Unite Foundation and Unite Students commissioned the Social Market Foundation (SMF) 'Care and Learning in Higher Education' report, exploring how policy levers and universities can be engaged to better support care-experienced students. It was clear from existing evidence and stakeholder interviews that care-experienced students continue to face significant barriers in accessing higher education. SMF characterised these barriers in four areas, which closely align with the UUK Access to Success: action plan for opportunity across funding, data, access and responsibility.  

One of the issues highlighted by the research is the complexity of achieving meaningful systemic change and the number of stakeholders involved, including central and local government, sector bodies and universities. In this context, UUK’s action plan is a positive step, outlining how it will advocate and work with partners to enable more young people, including those with care experience and students who are estranged from their families, to access higher education. 

Definitions 

In this piece, a person who is ‘care experienced’ refers to anyone who has ever been, or is currently, in care. This includes people from looked after backgrounds, and adopted children who were previously looked after. Care may have been provided in one or more of many different settings, such as residential care, foster care, kinship care, or being looked after at home with a supervision requirement.  

A person who is ‘estranged’ has little or no contact with their parents (either biological or adoptive) and this is unlikely to change. 

It is great to see UUK, with UCAS and the Sutton Trust, plan to work with universities to champion a more transparent, fair and consistent approach to inclusive admissions. There is already strong commitment to this work amongst universities. In their research, SMF found that almost two-thirds of universities offered some form of contextual admission, providing an established basis of practice to build upon. 

For example, at the University of Bristol, where the university has offered a two-grade reduction below standard entry requirements for A-levels for particular disadvantaged applicant groups (including care leavers) since 2016, there is strong evidence for its impact. Not only have the number of students entering from an aspiring state school increased, but contextual offer holders are supported to have high continuation rates and good degree outcomes comparable to their peers who did not have a contextual offer. It is therefore important to note the success of contextual admissions benefits when paired with targeted academic support for students who have experienced considerable educational disruption. 

Any approach to widening participation is most effective when adopting a whole institution approach to inclusion. Consistency and transparency of language around how care-experienced status will be considered in contextual admissions can help build understanding and confidence in prospective applicants trying to navigate the university application process. This is especially important to consider when we know from UCAS research that “60% of surveyed applicants said they did not receive guidance at school around applying to higher education, specific to their status as a care-experienced student”. 

One action UUK is calling for is a Tertiary Education Opportunity Fund (TEOF), as set out in their Blueprint for Change, to enable better pre-entry cohesion. Recent research by Rees Centre and TASO highlights the varied pathways into higher education for care-experienced young people, noting they are more likely to attend later in life and through vocational routes. It is therefore important for targeted outreach activity to offer tailored information, advice and guidance to disadvantaged young people, such as care-experienced young people, considering the full breadth of tertiary progression routes.  A key recommendation in the TASO report, echoing SMF’s earlier research, is to extend the existing Pupil Premium to age 25, allowing funding to follow the student across both further and higher education, levelling the playing field for support. 

At the Unite Foundation, we welcome UUK’s focus on financial support – we know that tackling the material disadvantage that many care-experienced and estranged students face makes a difference in allowing them to access and succeed in higher education.  

Our accommodation scholarship covers rent and bills for up to three years of study, including during the holidays, so that the care-experienced and estranged students we support are able to focus on their studies.  

We commissioned a JISC independent analysis, which shows that with financial support, the students we support progress from their first to second year at the same percentage as non-care leaver students and achieve a ‘good honours’ degree within 3% of non-care leaver students. Degree completion rates are only 6% below non-care leavers and significantly higher than for other care leaver groups.  

Research from Sheffield Hallam University and Dr Zoe Baker shows that while higher education can positively impact life outcomes for care-experienced students, challenges linked to their backgrounds remain. This is where targeted careers support during study, as well as post-graduation interventions, such as accommodation inclusive of June to September, as is standard with the Unite Foundation scholarship, can make a meaningful difference in supporting the transition from study to employment.   

For many care-experienced or estranged students, their ability to undertake career-related internships during studies or to secure career-launching employment can only be fostered if the student is supported to undertake these opportunities, such as summer accommodation, paid internships, and guarantor provision. This cliff edge becomes more pressing as the end of final year approaches, with inevitable stress often impacting students’ ability to focus on final studies. As the sector responds to UUK’s call and addresses career provision, consideration needs to be given to a life journey approach that starts on arrival and identifies – free from judgment – the enablers necessary to benefit from careers services.

In 2022, the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care set a target of doubling the proportion of English care leavers attending university, specifically high tariff universities, by 2026. We still have a long way to go.  Achieving access for all will require strong, collaborative action across the sector to champion and challenge. The progression rate to high tariff providers for children looked after continuously for at least 12 months has remained at 2% since 2016/17 with HE progression increasing by just 2% between 2016/17 and 2022/23.  

At the Unite Foundation, we are proud to partner with over 30 universities, bringing together a range of sector charities and bodies through the Care Leaver/Experienced and Estranged Students in Higher Education working group (CLEESinHE). It’s important and welcome to see UUK’s complementary plans to grow wider opportunity through higher education. But we need to turn these plans into meaningful action so that care-experienced and estranged students have equality of opportunity to access and stay in higher education.