Since becoming Children’s Commissioner nearly four years ago, I’ve made it my mission to listen to young people in some of the most challenging circumstances, facing the most uncertain futures.
Children living in secure settings are at the sharpest end of this definition. Their numbers are small, with around 400 at any one time located in just 14 settings of differing structures and quality in England and Wales, but their stories are almost universally ones of being failed by services at every stage of their lives so far.
I firmly believe that every child has a fundamental right to a good quality education. That right is not only a central pillar of my work, but it is also a major part of the UN Convention on the Rights of a Child (UNCRC). It is also what children want for themselves, as thousands of them have told me through surveys, research and in person.
Children living in secure settings are no different. They deserve that access to an excellent education, and they want it for themselves. They recognise its power in creating a more hopeful future for themselves and others and they understand, as most children do, that working hard now can set them up for success in later life.
But currently, despite the relatively small numbers of children living in these circumstances, receiving a quality and consistent education feels like a distant ambition. Of the 390 children living in secure settings who responded to The Big Ambition in 2023, just 38% said they agreed that they enjoy school or college, compared to 51% of their peers.
When we say that these children are being failed, this is not hyperbole. Only 20% of these children who had sat an English GCSE passed, compared to 71% of their peers in schools; and similarly, 20% who sat a mathematics GCSE passed, substantially behind the 72% of pupils in schools who passed.
This report does two things. First, it takes a closer look at the educational experiences of these children, before and during their time in secure settings. It hears from these children themselves, telling their stories over the years preceding their arrival in the justice system. For many, the challenges they encounter began long before they enter custody.
These children are disproportionately more likely to have had lengthy gaps in their education, with more than half (54%) out of education for at least one academic year prior to entering a secure setting, some for more than three. A quarter experienced a permanent exclusion in the years leading up to their experience of custody. In the interviews, the office heard that some of these children did not receive the positive intervention needed to divert them back into their education, or the support needed to start attending lessons regularly.
Two in five of these children also had special educational needs, making it difficult for them to thrive at school. Most have experienced child poverty, with nearly 90% from the poorest neighbourhoods. Many told my team and I that these challenges were never fully explored, despite the compound effect these can have on a child’s outcomes, and often they were simply sidelined as ‘naughty’:
”The school never thought hang on, why is he acting like this, should we do welfare checks …they never wanted answers.” – Boy, 17, living in a secure setting.
Second, this report sets out a vision for what the youth justice system could – and should – be for these children. It illustrates the incentives for getting this right – and how. Ultimately, it is my belief that no child should be in prison except in the most extreme circumstances. Many of the young people I have spoken to, for this report and also in previous work, tell me that their time in the secure estate often exacerbates the disadvantages they face rather than addressing them. I am deeply concerned that instead of providing an opportunity for rehabilitation and positive change, secure settings risk turning out hardened criminals with a palpable distrust in the state whose job it is to protect them and with little to offer by way of skills or employability.
I am a ceaseless advocate for the power and value of education. Education is one of the most powerful tools we have for change. It can provide a sense of stability, opportunity, and hope. For children in secure settings, education can be the key to rehabilitation and promotes a future away from reoffending. For the most vulnerable children, school offers an additional protective factor in their lives because – when it works well – they see them every day and can build trusting relationships. Giving schools the status of fourth statutory safeguarding partner would go some way to sharing their unique perspectives with other professionals.
But it is not the role of education alone to prevent young people with few opportunities from going into crime. Every single professional working with children, in healthcare, education, social care, youth justice and in the community, has a responsibility to act on what these children have told me in this report: that the system failed them long before they offended, and continues to do so.
I first started this piece of research after a teenager in a secure setting told me that he had last been happy or engaged with education when he was in primary school, which is a message I have heard repeated again and again since. As a former teacher and school leader, I could not help but reflect on how this child – and too many others like him – could be failed by our education system for so long during his short life.
As with my previous work on the motivations of children involved in last summer’s riots, this report asks some hard questions about the value we place on childhood. One of those is how over one third (36%) of the children in a secure setting during this research had most recently been registered to attend a registered educational setting in West Midlands, with 18% most recently attending a registered setting in Birmingham. The next most common local authorities were Liverpool, Manchester, Milton Keynes, Derby, Sandwell, Coventry and Wolverhampton. I will be writing to the relevant local areas to understand why such concentrations exist and to demand preventative action is taken that learns from the experiences of these children.
When we talk about stopping children from falling through the cracks, these are exactly the cracks that we mean. We need only to look at recent terrible news headlines from Southport, Sheffield and south London to understand the importance of intervening early and swiftly in children’s lives – for them, but also for other children’s safety and the wider public.
There are cases where it is necessary to temporarily remove a child from a classroom, a school, or even the community, but that shouldn’t mean that the system gives up on them. It should be a trigger for more intervention and support, not less. But, well before this point, it underlines the singular importance for children of good attendance and positive engagement with school.
This report does not excuse criminality, nor attempt to ignore the hard task of rehabilitation, but instead proposes a series of solutions designed to unite services and deliver them in a way that reflects how children experience them.
I hope that the findings in this report serve as a call to action for all of us. In a world too often designed by and for adults, listening to children’s voices is vital if we are to create a world that, instead of offering a series of obstacles to overcome, allows them to flourish.