The brilliant young people that Team Fostering support consistently achieve well in educational outcomes. They do this with the help of their fantastic foster carers and the Education and Support Service team who operate across the agency in the North East, Yorkshire and East Midlands.
North East Education and Support Service Manager, Lisa explores how so many of the children at Team Fostering achieve their potential.
“I taught in secondary schools for nearly 30 years and one of the things that really jumped out at me, was how important good quality support from home was in determining how well young people did in education. This is demonstrated over and over again by Team Fostering’s carers.
The success of our young people in education is outstanding. I have been with the agency for nearly nine years now and every year at least one of our young people has gone off to university. I know this is not the be-all and end-all but looking at the number of care-experienced young people going on to university nationally, this is an outstanding achievement. This year, one of our young men moved straight from graduating with his BSc onto a Master’s course; you can imagine how his carers looked in the graduation photographs (and how quickly these same photographs were shared proudly around our staff team).
The Education and Support Service across the North East, Yorkshire and East Midlands support children who have just started school right up to helping young people find the right employment, apprenticeship or Higher Education course. We are in the fabulous position of being able to directly see the outcomes of the work we do with young people and foster carers. An example of this is the young person who achieved the magic 5 in English Language GCSE this year, who we had previously supported through his Key Stage 2 Reading SAT.
Our 16-year-olds regularly exceed the national GCSE figures for looked after children and this year, over half of our young people achieved at least a 4 in English and Maths, and together they achieved passes in over 100 GCSEs. We were over the moon.
The picture is the same at Key Stage 2; our young people are supported by their carers to achieve the absolute best they can. Across the agency this year, 50% of our young people achieved the expected level in Reading and 50% achieved the expected outcome in Maths. All have moved positively to secondary school.
This sort of achievement is only possible if you are in school being prepared for your exams. The attendance of our children is always extremely high and even with some impact of Covid-19 in schools this year was no different. Over 91% of our young people achieved at least 90% attendance. The Education and Support Service supports our young people and foster carers in any way it can, but getting children into school and college every day, and the success which grows from this, is very much down to the efforts of our foster carers.”
To find out more about our Education and Support Service, click here.