CHILDREN in care should be sent to the best schools to boost their chances of overcoming child abuse and neglect, researchers said today.
Young people who survive severe abuse are being "let down" by councils that fail to support them, a study from the Institute of Education in London found.
Students who were taken into care as children because their parents abused them, were drug addicts or alcoholics, go on to perform well at university, the report said.
But many are put off applying because they believe they cannot rely on support from their local authority, according to the pioneering five-year project.
The study, sponsored by child support charity the Frank Buttle Trust, found fewer than one in 100 children leaving care go on to university.
This compared with nearly half of young people living with their own families, according to the researchers, led by Professor Sonia Jackson.
But after tracking 129 students at 68 universities, the researchers found that care leavers were less likely to drop out of their studies than the average student in the UK.
Drop outs
The national drop out rate is currently 14%, but among the group of care leavers in the study, the rate fell to 10%.
A third of the students from care backgrounds - 33% - had graduated by the end of the study, 39% were still studying for their degrees.
Only one student in the group had failed their course.
But the report - welcomed by Education Secretary Ruth Kelly - criticised the wide variation in support local authorities were offering.
Prof Jackson said too many councils were failing in their duties as "parents" to children taken into care.
"It is a tragedy when able young people who have had to overcome many obstacles to get to university are let down by the local authority that is supposed to be their corporate parent," she said.
"It is not enough for local authorities just to give financial support.
"They need to behave like good parents and provide the encouragement and information that any parent would."
The report recommended that carers should receive funding to support their foster children through university.
And children in care should be enrolled in "high-achieving schools" with a strong history of sending students to university, not just any school with an empty place.
In the foreword to the report, Ms Kelly said directors of local children's services should take "personal responsibility" for "improving the support that they offer to looked-after children".
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What absolute rubbish. Deprived upbringing -> better education. Once again this sounds like the PC Brigarde trying to errorde the akready applaing British education system. The only criteria should be ability. I cam from a deprived upbringing, single parent divorced home and WORKED, yes I know thats a dirty word in this country now, but I'll repeat myself. I WORKED and STUDIED and succeeded. Why not give them degrees when they ar eborn, to save them all the bother of studying and do away with the trouble or learning something useful?
The research is absolutely correct but young people with these problems need an enormous amount of support to get them through school in the first place - that support is crucial to maintain them in school. One of the biggest problems for "looked-after" young people is non-school attendance.
Which children do these researchers think should be sent to bad schools or worse schools? Perhaps they should be asked to comment.
Isn't the point that everyone should be given the opportunity of a good education through raising standards in schools by letting teachers teach and school discipline being able to be maintained without do-gooders putting disruptive children back in schools free to attack other children and staff because only the rights of those who do wrong matter.
excuse me people!
But some children dont end up in care because they have bahavioural problems. And your children as one lady put it will suffer at thier tiny hands!
I just wanted to clear this up before you all start giving your very single minded opinions about many of the children in todays care system.
Some children are put in care for their own safety and miss out on already vital early skills through lack of loving or even any kind of stable homelife..
liz
To the lady who has assumed I thought all children in care are disruptive I said no such thing.
I said that no-one (from any background) should be educated in school where that education is disrupted by other children and the authorities take no action against it. I suggest that you read the original comment again with a little more care.