ubuntu scotland • bringing equity to education
Why we're here > Societal necessity
Societal necessity
The present issues​
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73% of young people in kinship care leave school before the age of 16, compared to 27% of all school leavers.
Children from disadvantaged backgrounds are 13 months behind in vocabulary skills and 10 months behind in problem solving skills as opposed to those from higher income backgrounds.
Young people affected by crime or exposed to community violence are significantly more likely to suffer from poor psychological and academic outcomes.
There is a link between crime, looked after backgrounds and lack of educational focus - with a third of Scotland’s young offenders identified as having been in care at some point in their life.
Only 4% of young people from looked after backgrounds go onto higher education, compared to 39% for non-looked after peers.
Children from higher income families are four times more likely to be found in after school clubs, creative clubs or extra-curricular activities than their low-income counterparts, and this has found to have contributed to more positive future prospects.
The potential impact
(evidence from educational systems in Finland similar to Ubuntu)
In 1970, only 30% of Finnish young people completed secondary education and this stood at 93% in 2014.
Inclusivity in the Finnish classroom and the introduction of life skills in learning has allowed for three quarters of children requiring special needs attention to go through the mainstream education system as opposed to having to be sent to another facility.
In Finland, the share that a young person’s future is affected by their family background, has fallen from 40% to 18% - which is the lowest rate of any country across the world of parental income acting as a determinant of children’s financial fate.
The probability of youth crime in Finland has been significantly reduced, with a 60% decrease in young males committing crimes upon leaving school.