A THEATRE company has been acknowledged in a Government Paper for its work keeping children in care in the education system.

Theatre Cap-a-Pie, in Dipton, near Stanley, County Durham, has been working with children at risk since 1997.

Its efforts feature in a paper released by the Social Exclusion Unit (SEU) to coincide with new Government Green Paper Every Child Matters.

Artistic director Gordon Poad said: "Being included in such a significant document only goes to confirm what our mission statement has been for the past five years.

"That is to create a centre of excellence in the provision of theatre-based, alternative education for young people, who have not only been excluded from the classroom, but from the social structures that young people in mainstream education take for granted."

The SEU paper revealed that, last year, 59 per cent of children in care left with no qualifications.

Theatre Cap-a-Pie offers an alternative to formal education through its Creative Campus. This provides 14 to 19-year-olds at risk of social exclusion with an opportunity to work towards a GNVQ in Performing Arts and a GCSE in English, while learning skills which include performance, creative writing and film-making.

The group's new full-time course, at the Phoenix Arts Centre, in Harelaw, started this week.