Young Carers: Educational Opportunities

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Furniss. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) for securing the debate, for his very good speech and also for the work he has done in support of young carers over the years. It was good to hear about that. I also pay tribute to other hon. Members who have spoken today and brought a wealth of insight to our debate, particularly the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Daniel Francis). He and I serve on a certain Bill Committee and I feel I am getting to know his family very well. The more I hear of them, the more I like them. I pay enormous tribute to him and his family for what they do in often very difficult circumstances and I am grateful to him for what he said.

I particularly pay tribute to young carers across our country. As the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett) has just said, it is absolutely inspiring and humbling when we hear the testimonies of the unsung, often unacknowledged work—even by themselves, as she says—that they do. It is always great to have the opportunity to hear about them and from them. If any of the young people in the Gallery today are young carers, I pay tribute to them and thank them for what they do. I hope they feel that they are being properly acknowledged in Parliament today.

As we have heard, it is not just the additional responsibility and the weight of caring for a family member or relative that is all-consuming for young people. It is the sacrifices that come with that. For young carers, it often means missing out on social plans with their friends, not being able to commit to extracurricular activities outside the school day, and too often having to miss school in order to fulfil their duty as a carer. We have heard that point made.

The Carers Trust surveyed over 1,000 young carers and the results were saddening. A key finding was that almost a third of young carers reported that they always or usually struggle to balance their caring responsibilities with school, college or university work. We understand that there are 54,000 young carers in England and Wales, and their overall absence rate is 12%, compared with just 7% for pupils who are not young carers. That means that a young carer misses more than one school day per fortnight on average. This commonly leads to persistent absence: 39% of young carers were persistently absent in 2022-23, compared with 21% of those who are not young carers. That is twice as many. The impact is undeniable, not only on the educational attainment and opportunities of young carers, but on their sense of being included in the school community, which is so important.

I was saddened to read in the survey that 28% of young carers report that they either never had, or did not often have, someone at school, college or university who understood that they were an unpaid carer. An even higher rate—40%—said that they never got, or did not often get, help from their school, college or university, so even when it is acknowledged that they have caring responsibilities, many of them do not feel that they get any support from their institution.

As hon. Members have said, there is no doubt that more support needs to be instilled in schools, local authorities and communities. A point was made about the record of the last Government. I do not want to go too much into defensive mode, because I very much acknowledge the points made by the hon. Member for Mid Sussex—she is clearly speaking the truth on behalf of young carers, as other hon. Members have—but in government, we were determined that all young carers should receive the support they need to succeed in all stages of education. The pupil premium, which was introduced under the last Government in 2011, gave schools in England additional funding to improve outcomes for children facing disadvantages. It has supported the roll-out of support for many young carers.

I take the hon. Lady’s point—she may well be right—that it would be appropriate to have a targeted pupil premium for young carers, by making them automatically eligible for the pupil premium, and I would be interested in the Minister’s view. I understand that 60% of young carers are eligible for the pupil premium at the moment—that speaks to the disadvantage that many of them face—but it might be appropriate to be more targeted and specific about their eligibility.

[Alison Bennett]

It struck me as the hon. Member was speaking that an advantage of the proposal is that it would incentivise schools to identify carers. One of the problems we have spoken about this afternoon is the fact that many schools say they have no young carers. Does he agree that it would provide that incentive?

[Danny Kruger]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right: it would be a helpful incentive to identify young carers among the school population. I will come in a moment to further support that schools need to do that work.

As has been mentioned, there are bursaries, introduced by the last Government, to help with the costs of education, such as travel and books, childcare and residential costs when required. In the 2023-24 academic year, more than £160 million of bursary funding was allocated to institutions to help disadvantaged 16 to 19-year-olds with the cost of taking part in education. I recognise the hon. Lady’s point that those bursaries can come quite late in a child’s education, and that it would be good to be more proactive. It might well be that more work can be done to ensure that children and their families get the opportunity to apply for the bursaries, and to encourage schools to support them to apply earlier on, because I bet loads of families do not know that these bursary opportunities exist.

Another programme introduced by the last Government, in 2014, was the Young Carers in Schools programme, which addresses the need to ensure that schools do more to identify young carers and increase their engagement in school. The programme set out 10 key steps to help schools to identify and support young carers. Each step provides key practical tools that can be adapted to support the individual school. The hon. Lady made the point that provision can be quite patchy across the country, and I dare say she is right. Again, national schemes are great, but only in so far as they are properly applied, uniformly, to the best possible standard. I hope that the Department is working on ensuring that there is greater coverage of that useful programme.

The Young Carers in Schools award allows schools to gain recognition for their success in supporting young carers. I would be interested to hear from the Minister to what extent that programme has been successful. It also enables schools to share good practice. My understanding is that its impact is positive: 94% of schools said in response to a survey that their staff were more likely to know what to do if they identified a young carer and how to support them. That sounds improbably good, and it might be that that is a somewhat superficial response; nevertheless, it is encouraging to hear that schools are positive about that programme. There is also encouraging evidence about the impact on young carers themselves.

On higher education, there is depressing research, cited by the hon. Member for Mid Sussex, that shows that young carers are significantly less likely to graduate than young people without caring responsibilities. I understand that the Office for Students launched an equality of opportunity risk register, which identified 12 sector-wide risks that may affect a student’s opportunity to access and succeed in higher education. It made reference to young carers in six of those key sector risks, so there is obviously recognition of the extent to which caring responsibilities can impact on one’s opportunities in higher education.

More needs to be done to set out how education providers will improve equality of opportunity for students from disadvantaged backgrounds so that they succeed and progress in higher education and onwards. There is clearly more to do to ensure that all young carers get the support they need to succeed. I urge the Minister to engage with young carers—I am sure she is doing so—schools and local authorities to identify what additional support young carers need, to ensure true equality of opportunity for every pupil.