Recommendation 52

Where a care leaver is over 25, and an apprenticeship would be their first qualification since leaving compulsory education, the Department must raise the age limit for receipt of the £1,000 apprenticeship bursary from age 25 to age 30. This would recognise that some looked-after children take longer to fulfil their educational potential due to the multiple disadvantages they have faced. As a care-experienced young person asked us, why, “After 25, should you just be dropped”? (Paragraph 122) Educational poverty: how children in residential care have been let down and what to do about it 51