Back from holiday and blogging break with a renewed sense of urgency about a range of issues, including the education of children in care. There is a shocking statistic I quote, apologies if you’ve heard me say it before… of every 1000 children in care only 7 will go on to University. Children in care have the wealthiest parent of all – the state – yet it fails them in this most fundamental aspect of child development: education. It won’t surprise you to know that children in care today are more likely to go to prison than to go on to get a degree. It doesn’t have to be like this. The Danes for example manage to send 7 in 10 of their children in care to University. At LGiU we are interested in whether we can import some of the success of social pedagogy, but in reality we need more urgent game changing solutions to improve the education of children in care right now. So we’ve been thinking – that’s what thinktanks do – and yesterday some of my colleagues came to see me with the start of an idea that could be a real game changer. The next step is to get some people in soon to hear the idea, tell us if they think we should pursue it, and possibly help us evolve it. That’s where you come in: if you are interested in helping us improve the education of children in care, and you have some knowledge or some ideas in this area, please let me know either here in the comments, by tweet or direct message on twitter, or by emailing me at andy.sawford@lgiu.org
