Education outcomes for looked after children: 2014-2015

Introduction

Local authorities have a responsibility to provide support to certain vulnerable young people, known as 'looked after children'. A young person may become looked after for a number of reasons, including neglect, abuse, complex disabilities which require specialist care, or involvement in the youth justice system.

This publication links school and social work data to present information on the attainment, post-school destinations of looked after young people who leave school, and the school attendance and exclusion rates of all looked after children.

Who are counted in these figures?

This first two chapters of this publication gives information on the education outcomes of the 427 young people who were looked after from August 2014 to July 2015 and who left school during 2014/15. These looked after children represent less than one per cent of the 52,491 2014/15 school leavers.

The latter figures focus on rates of attendance and exclusions among all looked after children who were at publically-funded schools. The attendance figures are based on the 7,463 looked after school attendees that were successfully linked to the schools data, and similarly, the exclusions data are based on the 654 looked after school attendees who were linked to the schools data and also experienced an exclusion at some point during 2014/15.