Educational Poverty: Children in Residential Care

Kate Green Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I welcome the report and echo all that I have heard in the Chamber. I particularly back up the comment about the constant moving around of children and young people, as we know how incredibly disruptive that is to their education and to them forming solid relationships. While children are still being moved around, sometimes quite far across the country, does the right hon. Gentleman think there is more to do to secure good data sharing, and a trail of data that follows the child wherever they may find themselves in care over their childhood? He mentioned admissions policies and the ways in which schools can seek to prevent children from being admitted to schools if they come from care backgrounds. That is also the case for exclusions policies, and I wonder whether the Committee had any particular recommendations on that.

[Robert Halfon]

I thank the hon. Lady, who is an expert on these issues. I absolutely agree with both the points she made on her first topic, that of placements and being moved around: as I said to my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), that has to stop. Children in care should be given a digital passport so that all their qualifications are known, because often they have to start all over again in a different school. If they are moved, there should be a thread, but those moves should not be happening in the way they currently are.

I beg the hon. Lady’s pardon: could she repeat her second point?

[Kate Green]

My second point was about the disproportionate likelihood that a child in care may experience exclusion.

[Robert Halfon]

Our Committee did a separate report on exclusions a few years ago, just before the 2019 election; as we know, 40 children are excluded every day, which I think is wrong. It is a huge report that contains a whole load of recommendations. The problem is that when those children are excluded, they either do not end up in school at all, or end up in poor alternative provision. Often, that alternative provision is not in the areas where those children are excluded, so I refer the hon. Lady to our report on that issue, which contains quite a few recommendations dealing with some of the points she has made.