If you pick just about any formal measure of educational success, you will notice the stark disparity in results between those who are most socioeconomically disadvantaged and their more well-off peers.
The predominant way schoolchildren are identified as ‘disadvantaged’ in England is related to their eligibility for free school meals. To qualify, a child has to reside in a household with an income of less than £7,400 per year (after tax and not including benefits). Considering that the median household disposable income in the UK is £32,000, children who are eligible for free school meals come from some of the poorest households in the country.
The January 2023 school census revealed that over two million pupils and students were eligible for free school meals, although this is only half of the story as to be eligible for free school meals, households have to actually claim the benefit. It is estimated that 800,000 children (one in three school age children) in England living in poverty miss out on free school meals. The impact of this disadvantage on children in classrooms has been clear to us working in schools for a long time.
By the time they finish Key Stage 4 (typically when students are 16 years old), the disadvantage attainment gap is wide and shows no sign of narrowing. To take a very typical example, in the 2021/22 academic year, in the key GCSEs of English and maths, 76 per cent of non-disadvantaged students achieved a grade 4 or above (‘standard pass’) and 57 per cent achieved a grade 5 or above (‘strong pass’). Yet for disadvantaged students this was 48 per cent and 30 per cent respectively.
This all matters for a whole host of reasons, but particularly because of the links between qualifications and future economic security. People with lower levels of qualifications are more exposed to slow earnings growth over their lives, with less opportunity for pay progress throughout their careers.
Political leaders of all stripes have paid lip-service to addressing this inequity over the years. The current incumbent, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, has touted an ‘Advanced British Standard’ (focusing on post-16 education). The Prime Minister says this will help the most disadvantaged, despite the fact that a substantial amount of the disadvantage gap is already evident by age five. At the Conservative Party Conference in October 2023, he declared that his main priority in every spending review from that point forward would be on education. He said it is “the closest thing we have to a silver bullet” and was “the best way to spread opportunity and to create a more prosperous society”. Then in the following Autumn Statement, education was mentioned a grand total of … once, with a vague declaration that the government was “delivering world-class education”.
Children in our society – and especially those who are most socioeconomically deprived – deserve better than this.
We are always told by those who control the policy levers that the solution to these unequal outcomes is to deliver more education. This approach, which constantly focuses on symptoms rather than causes, fails to recognise that schools and the students who attend them do not exist in a vacuum. Challenges outside the school gates tend to manifest themselves within.
Let me be clear: I am hugely optimistic about the importance of schools in providing important learning opportunities to young people in this country. All of us who have the privilege of working with young people have an obligation to make sure that we constantly seek to improve and develop our practice to obtain the best possible outcomes for our students. Yet, as cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham notes in his compelling book Why Don’t Students Like School?, classrooms are not just cognitive places, ‘they are also emotional places, social places, motivational places, and more’.
One startling indication of this is that a disproportionate number of disadvantaged students are finding themselves excluded in the education system, with the situation seemingly at crisis point. Students receiving free school meals are formally excluded at around four times the rate that non-free school meals students are. And although these statistics reveal a concerning picture, they are just the tip of the iceberg. In my book, Educational Collateral Damage, I note that exclusion is rarely binary and generally tends to take place in layers. This means students can be excluded within the schools they attend and not just from them.
To try to better understand this phenomenon, I spoke with students who have found themselves permanently excluded from the schools they used to attend. I went into two pupil referral units (PRUs) in two of the most deprived areas of the UK with some of the highest rates of formal school exclusion. I encountered children who were not a generation of no-hopers destined to fail because of their challenging starts in life, but young people with aspirations for themselves and others. They had experienced a great deal of trauma and this, in turn, had impacted the way they received their education in their schools. They expressed frustration that what they were studying in school was not relevant to their lives. And indeed, the purpose of school should not be something that is taken for granted.
The start we afford to children largely determines the adults they become. It shapes the society we become. This year is set to be a General Election year. Unfortunately, education tends to come disappointingly low down the list of issues the electorate believe are the most important facing the country. And yet, social justice rests on how inclusive the education system is for all students. A fairer and more prosperous Britain will be determined by how far we prioritise opportunities for our young people, particularly those who are most disadvantaged.
Anton McLean has taught in state secondary schools for over 10 years, and is head of a school in London. He holds a Doctorate in Education from the University of Cambridge.
Educational Collateral Damage by Anton McLean is available here for £80.00 and here as an EPUB for £27.99 on the Bristol University Press website.
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