As we reflect on this years A-level results I want to share a piece celebrating the success of one of my Ambassadors. Tamar reflects on the challenges that children in care face – her experiences of the care system, moving around, changing schools, changes in exam boards, challenges of education, and how she has succeeded to achieve her ambitions.
Only 14% of young people who are care-experienced go on to attend university.
I am proud to say that I am among them, but who I am today has been shaped by my life experiences, which began in foster care. From the age of 1, I was placed in foster care due to familial circumstances. To begin with, I was moved around from household to household until I was settled with a lovely family in the North of England. There, I was provided with love but often felt the odd one out. I was the only person I knew who didn’t live with their biological parents, I was the only one to be called out of class for regular checkups with social workers, I was the only one who had such a complicated situation, I was the only girl who was black and hence it was difficult to feel like I belonged anywhere.
One day, the life that I had begun to feel stable in was drastically changed when a visit from social workers dictated that I would move back with my biological family. In a matter of days, everything had changed. The area I lived in was different, my school was now different, and even the people who were in my life now were completely different. Unfortunately, no adults around me understood how frustrating it was to never have stability. It always felt like a tick-box was trying to be achieved with no regard for how it would affect me.
One way in which I was profoundly affected was by my education. Changing schools meant I had to learn a different curriculum, as even schools a few miles apart often have different subjects available and choose different topics for exams. Having to constantly adapt made it easy to give up, because what would be the point if I had to move again and start all over? But in addition to my shaky start in life, I was also raised for most of my childhood in a low-income household, where most people around me were unemployed.
The statistics weren’t in my favour, but that was all the more reason why I had to work, because there was no other way for me to succeed. So I did, I worked as hard as I could, I went to every revision session, spent every spare moment revising, and joined every extracurricular I could, such as being a part of the eco-club, being an I-Will Ambassador, a Diana Award Ambassador and eventually a Children’s Commissioner Ambassador. As an Ambassador for the children’s commissioner, I spoke to MPs, spoke at a number of conferences, and most importantly, was a voice for care-experienced people like myself, who were known of but somehow forgotten. Being in these important roles, thanks to the Children’s Commissioner, I felt like a voice calling for change and representing the people who were in care like myself, one of the main goals of my activism.
With the encouragement of all those who worked with the Children’s Commissioner, I applied to Oxford in 2024 and can gladly say that I have received an offer to study at University College (the oldest one, hence the name). As previously mentioned, who I am today has been shaped by my life experiences, but they don’t define me. Rather, it’s my beginning, which I can look back on to allow me to remember why I do what I do. It’s my hard work today which has determined who I am and who I go on to be so that I can be the change I would like to see in the world.
