Ethnic Inequality in Educational Outcomes for Children Receiving Social Care: Evidence from Linked Administrative Data in Wales

Children receiving social care services often experience lower educational attainment due to the adverse circumstances that lead to the need for social care, although intensive interventions may mitigate these disadvantages. To date, evidence on ethnic inequalities in education among children receiving social care services is limited. Using linked administrative data from Wales (UK), we fill this gap by comparing age-16 attainment between children looked after (CLA, i.e. in out-of-home care), children in need (CIN), and children with no social care. Our findings show that White, Mixed-heritage, and Asian CIN have substantially lower attainment compared to children with no social care, but not for Black and Other ethnicity. Among Asian, Black, and Other-ethnicity children, CLA performed substantially worse than CIN. These findings question how accurate social care services’ identification of need is for Black and Other-ethnicity children and suggest that out-of-home care may be less effective for most ethnic minority groups.