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The new approach fills a key gap in understanding how to evaluate diverse interventions, involving small numbers of participants with distinct characteristics.

Around half of young people now go to university, but only 15% for those who have been in care.  This is not just due to the grades they achieve in school, it’s about the absence of experiences and advice that most families take for granted. 

Nearly two thirds of care experienced young people say they have no knowledge of the support available to them. With funding from the Inner Circle Educational Trust (ICET), an education navigator (EN) is changing this for Camden’s young people in care by ‘walking alongside’ their university journey, extending from the age of 14 to award of a degree.

Every young person in care is different, so the EN provides individualised support, bridging between the specific academic, personal and financial challenges they face.  The characteristics of care experienced young people are also different across the country, so we can’t assume that what works in Camden will apply elsewhere. 

Notwithstanding this, the Trust and local authority are not only interested in supporting the young people directly involved in the programme.  They also want to understand how the EN model could work in other places.  Established research methods aren’t helpful for this because they tend to rely on larger cohorts for statistical significance, a group with similar characteristics for comparison, and the same treatment for all participants. 

This is where the expertise of University of Birmingham and University of Cambridge researchers, working with the National Network for the Education of Care Leavers (NNECL), becomes significant.  Through individual insights, the research team is helping to identify which aspects of the EN’s engagement make the most difference to the individual young people involved.  Alongside this, the team is using a novel ‘best odds’ approach to analysing educational data, so it can compare the individual grades and progression route for each participant with broader populations beyond Camden. 

This analytical approach brings real challenges associated with data sharing and security.  But the team’s work to address them will itself fill a profound gap in understanding about how to evaluate diverse interventions, which involve small numbers of participants with highly particular characteristics.  That is important for young people in care, but also for many others who are under-represented in our universities.    

The EN’s journey with Camden’s care experienced young people will continue through to 2030.  The research team at Birmingham, Cambridge and NNECL comprises Patricia Ambrose, Claire Crawford, Ian McGimpsey and Chris Millward, and will be joined by a doctoral student Jade Ecobichon-Gray in the autumn. 

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