Estranged students in Further (FE) and Higher Education (HE) - experiences: literature review

8. Conclusions

This review has found, like other research, that student estrangement is an under-researched area. The literature relating specifically to estranged students in the UK is fairly brief, and much of it has been carried out by a small number of researchers undertaking work for Stand Alone. The majority of studies are quantitative in nature. Although several qualitative studies of students have been undertaken in Scotland and England, these have tended to focus on a small number of students in one or two specific institutions. No qualitative studies were found which include students from a wide range of colleges or universities. This is in contrast to the research which this literature review informed where estranged students came from multiple institutions and studied both FE and HE courses.

The experiences of estrangement in Scotland are particularly under-represented, with the literature consisting mainly of Taylor and Costa's qualitative study of estranged students. There are no large-scale quantitative studies of estranged students in Scotland, although some Scottish students are included in a small number of surveys undertaken for Stand Alone.

A key gap is the experiences of estranged students in FE. While some policy work on funding has been undertaken with this group by the Scottish Government, this is unusual in a body of work where the experiences of estranged FE students remain invisible. The research which accompanies this literature review goes some way to inform our understanding of the experiences of FE students who are estranged from their parents, but further work in this area would be welcome.

The institutional perspective is largely absent from the literature, which focuses mainly on the experiences of estranged students themselves, rather than the views of staff who support them or wider stakeholders. Likewise, there is no study which explores the level of support available in Scottish institutions to estranged students. This research has provided some initial insights from which further research could build on.

The final gap in the literature is linked to this, and relates to the policy perspective. There is much in the literature exploring issues around the experiences of estranged students in terms of identity, financial challenges, homelessness etc., but less relating to how government responds to the needs of estranged students, and how support from student funding impacts on the lives of students.