SOCIAL MARKET FOUNDATION Recommendation four – tutoring for care experienced pupils. The Department for Education should introduce ring-fenced funding aimed at care experienced pupils covering years 1 to 11, based on the successful former National Tutoring Programme. Eligible groups: Care experienced, defined as those who have had experience with the care system at any point in their childhood, identified through local authority data The fact that grades account for most of the participation gap between care experienced and non care experienced people suggests that the role of aspiration and ambition is somewhat overstated. But these things matter too, and the encouraging evidence on mentoring schemes and educational initiatives like Go Higher West Yorkshire suggests they can make a difference. The strongest lever that the government has here is careers advice and guidance. As we at the Social Market Foundation have found in previous research, access to quality careers support has improved in recent years, but remains rather patchy.85 What is worse is that it is socially patterned, with less advantaged students less likely to have higher education opportunities promoted to them. Indeed, in our focus group with care experienced and estranged students, there was substantial divergence in terms of the how informed and supported students felt through the application process: “For me, it was really quite a challenge, because I really didn't know anything, and I hadn't been able to go to any open days at all, so I ended up just picking up basically off what I could see from the online websites.” Student A 2022 survey by UCAS found that only 35% of care experienced students said they had received help from a careers adviser in applying to higher education.86 We have called for a minimum entitlement of three one-to-one sessions for each 87 school leaver. One way of improving support would be to give care experienced and estranged young people priority access to this entitlement. We are aware that young people in care have access to personal advisers and develop pathway plans that set out their educational objectives. However, there is growing recognition of the value of specialised professional careers guidance, which is a different thing. Given its importance in general, we believe it should be a priority for care experienced young people and tailored to the specificities of their experience and pathways. 56