Can boarding schools help looked after and vulnerable children improve academic attainment?

The education of children in statutory care, or at the edge of care, is a serious concern for governments and policymakers. How to promote educational opportunities for these children can involve challenging and often contentious proposals. In this paper, we study one proposal put into practice in England: the provision to children who are in statutory care, or at the edge of care, with the opportunity to attend an independent boarding school. There may be several benefits from this, including living in a safe environment, a rich and diverse curriculum, a wide range of extracurricular opportunities, extended valuing of and time given to developing academic abilities. Using data provided from the Royal National Children's SpringBoard Foundation and the Department for Education National Pupil Database, we have tested the effects of boarding for children in care, or at the edge of care, on GCSE attainment. The findings suggest a small but significant improvement for children attending boarding schools compared to matched controls not attending boarding schools. The findings support the initiative, though the small sample highlights the need for larger scale research studies to validly inform policy and practice.