NCB: improving outcomes for children

NCB Northern Ireland Director Celine McStravick outlines how its work is helping to meet the needs of children and young people.

NCB is a research and development charity, which works to improve the outcomes of children in Northern Ireland, through support to children and young people and to those who work with or for them.

In terms of educational outcomes in Northern Ireland, we have 73 per cent of our students attaining 5A*-C in English and Maths, compared to 58 per cent in England, but this doesn’t tell us the full story. We need to be looking behind the statistics and asking questions about the 27 per cent of pupils who are not attaining the grades at GCSE level.

How can they have been in our education system for 12 years of their lives and yet they can leave without basic qualifications? Some of these young people will become part of our NEETs (not in education, employment or training), a particularly uninspiring term but this is used now to describe this population. We currently have 14,000 NEETs between the ages of 16-19 and this rises to 46,000 NEETs if we include 19-24 year olds.

At NCB we are helping government and the voluntary sector to understand the journey of young people into this NEET population. This research project is the first of its kind in Northern Ireland. We are working in 22 schools and we have trained 10 young people (who are themselves not in education, employment or training) as researchers. We will be asking the young people in the schools about issues that affect them, their experiences of school and their aspirations for the future.

This research will provide an insight into this growing issue for our education system and our young people and we will be able to develop recommendations for preventative actions. Prevention and early intervention programs have been shown to yield benefits in academic achievement, behaviour, educational progression, delinquency and crime prevention and labour market success among other domains.

We know that the first three years of a child’s life is a critical stage of development and hence programmes delivered through Surestart, Early Years and nurseries can provide a bedrock for our children to reach their potential.

The public health agenda recognises the need to support this early stage for children and families and we are supporting them by exploring effective parenting programmes and providing evidence about what works. Interestingly, this early intervention theme is being incorporated into many government departments and we are also able to support them to understand what research tells us.

Our work in the Colin Area is a good example of a community who want more for their young people and they have taken radical steps, investing early and empowering the local community to aspire for a better educational and social outcome.

Overall, it is clear that if we are to ably support our young people to reach their full potential, we must support them from the earliest opportunity. This can be at an early age but it can also be when a problem is first identified. As Mark Friedman said on his recent visit to Northern Ireland, hosted by NCB: “Trying hard is not good enough.”