CARE AND LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION FOREWORD Joe Lister, Unite Students CEO & Shân Wareing, Unite Foundation chair Unite Students and Unite Foundation are proud to build on our long-standing partnership to work together with Social Market Foundation on this report. Unite Students is the UK's largest owner, manager, and developer of purpose-built student accommodation, serving the country's world-leading higher education sector, and is a champion for estranged and care experienced students. In 2012, Unite Students set up the Unite Foundation, supporting estranged and care experienced students with a rent-free home at university, and 12 years on remains the charity’s principal corporate donor and accommodation partner. Since then, it has donated over £16m to support the full breadth of the charity’s work including over 800 students receiving a Unite Foundation accommodation scholarship. Unite Students’ support of this research sits within its wider commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging and wellbeing, which includes its work around its Living Black at University, Meeting the Needs of Neurodivergent Students and Unite Students Applicant Index reports. The recent Independent Review of Children's Social Care identified five key missions to ensure care experienced people can feel secure: loving relationships; quality education; a decent home; fulfilling work and good health. The review also highlighted how a range of organisations need to be part of supporting children that are, or have been, looked after by the state. We know that, at aged 19, only 14% of care experienced young people are in university, compared with 47% of the wider population, and that once there, the dropout rate for care experienced students is unacceptably high - 38% compared with 6% of their peers. Estranged young people face similar challenges, but with even less visibility and support available. For all young people without parental support, education often becomes secondary to survival. Society’s obligations to care experienced and estranged people should include ensuring more of them can attend and progress in higher education. Unite Students and Unite Foundation – the only UK charity that supports both estranged and care experienced students, through its nationwide scholarship – strongly believe that action is needed quickly to address access to, progression and success in Higher Education for these groups of students. At the current rate of change, it would take 107 years for care leaver participation to reach the 47% achieved by non-care leavers. The Unite Foundation scholarship is currently the only intervention for care experienced and estranged students with Office for Students Tier 2 recognised evidence of impact. Independent research shows the impact of the charity’s support for Unite Foundation scholarships students means they are as likely as their peers to progress through university and finish with a good degree. In doing so, Unite Foundation, Unite Students and over 30 university partners are already playing a 5