I grew up in care but now I’m at a top university. This shouldn’t be so rare

Later this month, hundreds of thousands of UK teenagers will go to university, but only a small proportion, less than one per cent, will have grown up in the care system. It is even more unlikely that someone from care will go to one of the “high tariff” universities: just 90 did in 2021. I’m one of that very small number.

A new report out this week shows the progression rate for care leavers under the age of 19 is about 14 per cent, compared with 47 per cent for all other people of the same age. The report, by the thinktank Civitas, estimates that it will take 107 years to close the gap between care leavers and non-care leavers at the current rate of progress.

Care leavers are often labelled as difficult or problem children, something adults too often use as an excuse to not help them. But being in care really means that you’ve already been failed by the adults in your life. Care leavers’ poor entry and progression rates reflect a broken education and a constant expectation of failure, leading care leavers to believe that university is not a place for people like them.

My journey is a good example of how we can do better. I joined a First Star Scholars programme when I was 15. First Star Scholars help young people from the care system to fill in educational gaps and get the most from their schoolwork. Everything First Star does, which begins at the start of students’ GCSE year and continues until they are 18, is done on a university campus, giving the “scholars” the self-belief that university or any other path is just as much for them as for anyone else.

I wouldn’t be at the University of Bristol unless someone had told me it was possible for people like me to apply to such a famous institution. But it is just as hard for a care leaver to remain at university as it is to get in. I’ve struggled at Bristol, but I’ve been supported by its leaving care team and well-being officers. Young people in care and care leavers have life circumstances they can’t necessarily just move away from, so they need to be given the support by government and universities to proposer despite their situation.

Beyond graduation, research shows that the earnings gap between graduates who grew up in care and those who didn’t is just £660 a year 18 months after graduation. In addition, care leavers are almost as likely to be in a good job, which is extraordinary when you think of the usual and often depressing outcomes associated with leaving care. That £660 figure is really important: it’s two and a half per cent less than what non-care leavers earn. Getting a degree means the earnings gap all but disappears between care leavers and their better-off peers.

Better support is possible. Just look at Scotland, where they have tripled the number of care leavers in higher education in little more than five years. Scottish care leavers are guaranteed a place at a Scottish university if they get the grades for the course they want to take. They are also given a bursary to pay for living costs, which means they don’t have to worry about the consequences of taking on debt. Some might say we should offer this to all students, and they might be right, but the case is even stronger for care leavers, who have no parents to fall back on and little in the way of a safety net. One of the more radical ideas for breaking England’s care ceiling is to copy Scotland and establish an English National Care Leavers Scholarship.

There is no point just hoping that young people who have had an unfair start in life or have experienced challenging circumstances during their teens will somehow just make it anyway. We need to start at school and develop the pipeline. That means looking again at schemes like the National Tutoring Programme and seeing what can be done to fund catch-up classes for young people in the care system. Universities could help out and, in the process, make clear that care leavers can aspire to university just as much as anyone else in their class at school.

If we create a more supportive system for care leavers – including counselling and access to both educational materials and extracurricular opportunities – we might close the participation gap between them and everyone else a bit faster than 107 years.

Monica Alejandra Henaõ-De-Castro is a care leaver studying psychology at the University of Bristol.