Every year the Scottish Government reports on the Educational Outcomes of Young People in Care.

Every year it is awful reading. So here follows a thread. And what we can do about it.

The first ting to say is that nothing about how awful these outcomes are is inevitable. And we all must remember that the life chances of these young people are *our* responsibility; The Scottish Government's, the local authorities and ultimately - me and you.

These stats are for school leavers in the 2018/19 school year.

65% of leavers in care left school with out even *one* National 5 qualification.

EIGHTY-NINE percent left without even one Higher.

Forget everything else, that is a national embarrassment for which we should be a

Here is the full table with 'all pupil' comparisons.

2% of Looked After Children get an Advanced Higher.
17% leave school with no qualifications at all.

Talk about standing a chance.

On leaving school, 71% of Care Experienced Young People were in a 'positive destination' nine-months after leaving school. 93% for the general population of leavers.

Just 5% of Care Experienced Leavers went into Higher Education.

That is 7.8x less than their peers.

On attainment generally, the story is bleak.

On the gap in Reading, Writing, Listening and Talking, Numeracy between kids in care and their peers.

P1 - 15-24%

P4 - 22-36%

P7 - 27-35%

S3 - 22-26%

Here is that visualised

More likely to miss school, with a chasm in attendance appearing in secondary school. More likely also to be excluded.

This stat sounds like common sense to you, but it needn't.

I want to re-iterate again that we send 65% of young people who are in *our* care out into the world without so much as one Nat5.

Would you accept that for your kids? Of course not. Why accept it for young people under our responsibility.

Now, there are areas of improvement across time of course and the focus on Looked After Children in Government is incredibly welcome. There is some evidence that some policy is working...

... for example, 5% of leavers from care went into Higher Education and it was still 5% after nine-months.

Possible evidence of things like the Care Experienced Bursary working.

The issue is however, that while these policies are life changing for the receiving individuals, they are not system changing.

If only 11% of pupils' in care get even one higher - the support you give to those who get to uni is going to be small fry on a systemic level

There are obviously wider issues in young people's lives which play out in the classroom. The four walls of school cannot fix societal inequality on their own.

But it is clear that intensive and radical interventions are needed.

These stats are from BEFORE COVID. These gaps will now be worse. That is almost certain.

@whocaresscot and @VTOScotland are calling for a national tutoring programme for pupils' with care experience.

It is this type of personalised, secure and long term interventions we need (alongside much broader changes to the care system of course) https://www.whocaresscotland.org/who-we-are/media-centre/press-releases/5227-2/