Melissa Mead
Oxford University Widening Participation Coordinator

It would have been nearly impossible to get me to give up three days of my school holidays to revise when I was in Year 11.

But 14 young carers from Oxfordshire came to do just that earlier this month. I’m a Widening Participation Coordinator at Oxford University, and I run the Compass: Young Carers programme.

We work with Year 10 and Year 11 students across Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes to try to raise aspirations and attainment, build confidence and empower young carers to make informed decisions about their choices after school.

Research is still relatively sparse, but it is thought that one in 12 school-aged children is a young carer, and that there are approximately 11,000 young carers in Oxfordshire alone.

The responsibility of caring for a parent, sibling or grandparent causes higher rates of school absence among young carers.

They also perform worse in school than their peers who don’t have caring responsibilities – the equivalent of nine GCSE grades lower on average.

This isn’t surprising: in England, one in 12 young carers spends more than 15 hours a week looking after a parent or sibling.

We recruit around 20 participants for our programme over a year, who each come to eight Saturday workshops.

Each workshop is based on a theme. We do presentation skills, study skills, A-Level choices, a session on demystifying university as well as CV writing and interview skills.

Every event is hosted by an Oxford college, and the kids love eating (and comparing the food) in the dining halls.

Young carers often don’t realise it, but the skills set involved in balancing school with, for example, managing the medication and other requirements of a severely disabled sibling is very applicable beyond the family environment.

The Revision Residential is a real turning point for the participants.

Living in the college and being treated like undergraduates makes them realise that they do “fit in” in a university setting, and it isn’t an unattainable goal.

What really makes a difference to the programme is the student volunteers.

They not only stay in college with us over the residential, but also offer up their Saturdays to help on workshops.

The information and advice we provide is important to help young people with caring responsibilities see what life beyond that role can involve. But it makes all the difference to have the honest and inspiring perspective of students close to their own age to help inform their thinking about where they see themselves going.

We have a strong alumni network of Compass participants, and we keep in touch so we can see their progress after the programme.

Although our programme isn’t specifically designed with the aim of recruiting the students to Oxford, we have recently had our first Compass participant get into the university, which is a hugely satisfying milestone.

Others have gone on to attend or apply for other Russell Group universities too.

Young adult carers aged between 16 and 18 years are twice as likely to be not in education, employment, or training (NEET), so it is a great feeling knowing our programme is working to combat this.

We can see the positive impact Compass is having on its participants, and now we are hoping to extend our reach nationally to help more young carers realise their potential.

Thanks to a recent donation to our programme, we are launching a toolkit of resources from our workshops which will be distributed to teachers, other universities and young carers and their families. It will feature a mix of lesson plans and self-directed activities.

Because I work with the same participants over a year, I get to see the effects of Compass first-hand.

The participants grow so much in terms of confidence and ability, and it definitely makes those early Saturday starts worthwhile.