LAC - Cardiff City and County Council

Key Stage 4 Attainment Project

Background and context:

Over the last three academic years the Key Stage 4 Attainment Project has been funded from the Welsh Assembly Government RAISE Programme for looked after children. This funding has been used to form a small team working to support the needs of looked after children within the educational settings.

The looked after children cohort of the academic year 2008/9 was made up of 58 pupils in year 10 and 59 pupils in Year 11*. Some of these young people were placed out of their area but efforts were made to ensure they were supported in the same way as those in area, where cooperation could be gained from their receiving authority.  Of these young people the majority were placed within foster care placements. Some pupils were accommodated in the residential units within Cardiff and a few experienced both types of care, some returning home only to be accommodated at a later date.

It has long been recognised that the very specific needs of looked after pupils needed to be better understood and addressed. Cardiff Council had demonstrated it’s commitment to improving outcomes for looked after pupils for some years, particularly following the issuing of the National Assembly for Wales Circular 2/2001 and Guidance on the Education of Children Looked After by Local Authorities. The RAISE funding initiative therefore allowed the opportunity to further develop this work, particularly around looked after pupils in Key Stage 4 but also in relation to young people at transitional stages.

*Figures taken from School Liaison Team database 4.9.09

Innovation:

The Key Stage 4 Team was based within the existing School Liaison Team and consisted of a part-time Specialist Teacher and a full time Learning Mentor. Some of the approaches applied by the team are discussed below.

The work of the Specialist Teacher enabled assessments of individual pupils to be undertaken in schools with the use of individual grants to enable specific interventions to take place. These have included things such as individual additional tuition in specific subject areas. One young person requested maths and English support. The school requested this as the young person ‘…is struggling in these core subjects and would benefit in raising her grades with this support’. The young person herself agreed that this would be useful as she had ‘…missed the basics’.  The requests for grant funding were quite diverse. For example one young person undertaking photography as an option requested he be allowed to purchase a camera, stating ‘the grant would help me in a lot of ways because the money can help me buy my own school equipment and not borrow the schools.’

This use of the grant for equipment highlighted some issues where young people reported not having the same material items as their peers. Stationary items and resources such as revision guides were often requested.

In order to address this, particularly for those young people accommodated in residential units in Cardiff, a proportion of the RAISE Grant was used to fund ‘LAC Packs’. These packs consisted of various items of stationary including items such as highlighter pens and scientific calculators.

Packs were delivered to residential units to help ensure that each young person was fully prepared with new items ahead of their first day back at school. These were extremely well received by all the young people who were given them. This was particularly useful for the young people who were at transitional stages and for those preparing coursework for examinations.

In a similar way, the RAISE Reading Grant was used to enable the purchase of a ‘shelf of books’ for each residential unit. This enabled the KS4 Team to ensure that each residential unit was prepared with appropriate reference books as well as a supply of specific revision guides. The Reading Grant also enabled the project to provide a book token for each looked after child along with providing information on local libraries. This work complemented the ongoing work being undertaken in Cardiff alongside the launch of the new Literacy Strategy and has been effectively developed by the Educational Psychology Service.

Some of the young people involved with the project experienced some difficulties in attending mainstream schools on a full-time basis.  These youngsters were at risk of becoming disaffected and dropping out of school. In order to address this the Learning Mentor was able to work with different providers to access various educational or training opportunities. One of the providers worked extremely closely with the KS4 Project in providing additional support for the pupils in addition to the learning opportunities.

The Inclusion Through Angling project in Cardiff is experienced in working to re-engage young people who may be at real risk of disaffection from schools. Some partnership working took place with this organisation in order to create ‘a learning environment appropriate to the needs of looked after young people who are finding it difficult to access education through mainstream school.’ The aims of this project being to re-engage young people with school and learning, providing an alternative to crime and anti-social behaviour whilst increasing young people’s awareness of the environment. OCN Introduction to Angling and the Environment, Level 1 Award in Sports Leadership and WJEC Key Skills are all available to the young people who attend.  One young person who attended this course commented ‘I have to do stuff in the classroom but then we get to go on the lake and learn stuff out there.’  The training provider commented ‘we are proud to work in partnership with the RAISE funded School Liaison Team Project.’

During their first year the two young people who attended this project were both able to maintain their school placements being successfully re-integrated back into learning. In addition to the opportunities noted various other soft skills were introduced to these young people; for example team working, sharing and turn-taking. It is hoped to work more closely with this project in the future and build on these important links.    

Training of Designated Teachers took place during the academic year. This training was offered to every Designated Teacher in Cardiff and, for the first time, to a tutor who has worked with looked after children on specific issue based work. This proved to be extremely useful in relation to the planning of future training. The feedback from this tutor will now be used to develop a network of Designated Tutors in alternative educational placements.  This will serve to highlight the very specific educational needs of looked after children, improve communication between agencies, improve educational planning processes and improve educational outcomes.

Training was also provided to all special educational needs coordinators, both in primary and secondary school sectors. This training highlighted issues in relation to monitoring and tracking looked after children as well as promoting the need for any specific difficulties to be dealt with in a timely fashion. The difficulties faced by looked after children, for example frequent placement moves, difficult parental contact issues and the possible abusive nature of their personal histories were explored and discussed in full.  As a result of this training there was an immediate increase in referrals to the team for specific interventions in relation to behavioural or, in some cases, attainment difficulties.

The training of social welfare staff is offered to social workers, foster carers, residential unit staff and Independent Reviewing Officers. The focus on the training offered during the last year was on raising literacy levels for looked after children and to promote reading at home. Staff were led through various strategies for engaging children and young people in literacy activities, designed to both improve the confidence of carers in working with young people and to promote reading activities at home.  This work was extremely successful with very good feedback from those attending. In addition each person was given information promoting the services of libraries in Cardiff and what they are able to offer. The issuing of the book vouchers as part of the RAISE Reading Grant fitted in well with this work and the paired reading scheme introduced into the residential units by the educational psychologists working with the team will hopefully build on this. The baseline reading scores of each looked after child resident in a Cardiff unit has now been measured and key individual targets will be set in order to raise literacy levels.

The linking of all the strategies involved with raising literacy levels has involved collaboration with and between various different departments within Cardiff Council. The close working of the agencies in working to support looked after pupils has clearly demonstrated the commitment of the Council in its role of Corporate Parent.

The training programme for all professionals has been developed into modular schemes of work and will now be provided as part of the School Liaison Team core service delivery.

Finally, the work to explore appropriate support provision for looked after pupils at times of transition has gone very well during the last academic year. This examines issues for young people at year 6 to year 7 transition as well as those reaching the end of their statutory education and preparing for independence. In order to ensure the successful transition to year 7 a Transitional Personal Education Plan was developed. Included within this was a new ‘contacts and permissions’ form to ensure that information was shared appropriately. Using the skills of the Youth Mentoring Project support was put in place for young people for whom it was anticipated the transition may be problematic. This allowed for any identified concern to be discussed with the young person and support provision put in place to allow for a smoother transition.

With regard to young people reaching the end of the statutory education much work has taken place to ensure support for education continues following the move towards independence. This has included strong links with the Cardiff Leaving Care provision and the 14 – 19 NEET Project. Work is continuing to develop and includes the KS4 Team being involved in the ‘surgeries’ held in relation to advice for young people about to leave care, and beyond.

The KS4 Project continues to provide support for those young people requiring it, post 16 years. One young person recently reflected on her ongoing success, two years after her RAISE grant was provided. This young person is quite clear on the fact that without the RAISE Grant she received she would not have succeeded in continuing with her education.

The outcomes for young people in Cardiff have improved over the last three years:

Result period	Target	Result
2004-5	27.60%	31.03%
2005-6	27.50%	20.59%
2006-7	27.00%	17.86%
2007-8	27.00%	12.28%

EDU/002 Performance Indicator: The percentage of pupils in any local authority maintained school, aged 15 as at the preceding 31 August and leave compulsory school education, training or work based learning without an approved external qualification.

What we have learnt:

Since the beginning of the RAISE Programme it has been possible to target resources specifically at looked after young people in Key Stage 4. This has allowed for very specific interventions to be put in place with a dedicated staff team able to prioritise this particular cohort.

The position of the KS4 Project within the existing School Liaison Team has worked extremely well and has allowed for understanding and developing shared practice. This will benefit looked after pupils as a whole in Cardiff, not just within Key Stage 4.

Reviewing the project annually has allowed the team to reflect on successes and understand the interventions that have not worked as well as it was originally anticipated.

In order to progress the project further it is now necessary to re-write the original spending plan and agree new priorities to support the looked after pupils in this particular authority.

Analysis of key areas of RAISE activity

Indicated in this table are areas covered by the RAISE project:

Motivation and engagement
Alternative curricula and vocational learning	Yes
Curriculum enrichment and extended learning
Improving own learning (learning styles and thinking skills)	Yes
Supporting disadvantaged pupils at transition	Yes
Tackling the impact of disadvantage on pupil progress
Monitoring pupil progress: early intervention and support	Yes
Language development: speaking and listening
Accelerated learning in literacy and numeracy	Yes
Reducing exclusion: ‘learning beyond the classroom’	Yes
Partnership with parents and community
Compensating for home learning environment	Yes
Improving attendance and punctuality	Yes
Engaging families in children’s learning	Yes
Strengthening multi-agency and community approaches	Yes
Social and emotional development
Emotional/behavioural development	Yes
Establishing nurture groups and nurturing ethos
Counselling, coaching and mentoring techniques	Yes
Raising aspirations of pupils	Yes