According to the Education Policy Institute’s annual report on education in UK, for the first time in about 12 years, the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers has stopped narrowing and begun to grow. The widening of the gap is due to rising levels of persistent poverty even before the Covid19 pandemic. Before the pandemic, disadvantaged children were overmuch behind their more advantaged peers, and this will continue to worsen under the circumstances of school closure.
If it is explored more carefully, that annual report offers pessimistic data, as it follows:
- Disadvantaged pupils in England are 18.1 months of learning behind their wealthier peers when they finish their secondary school (as it was five years ago).
- The gap at primary school is now 9.3 months, marked an increase for the first time since 2007 up from 9.2 months in 2018 to 9.3 month a year later.
- The proportion of pupils with a high persistence of poverty (those on free school meals for over 80% of their time at school) raised from 34.8% in 2007 to 36.7%.
- Since 2013, work to narrow the gap has “stagnated” at 4.6 months the report states.
- There are significant growing inequalities between ethnic groups with Black Caribbean pupils now 10.9 months behind their white counterparts by the time they sit their GCSEs compared with 6.5 months behind in 2011.
- Gypsy/Roma pupils are almost 3 years behind white British pupils at GCSE level, while Chinese pupils are nearly 2 years ahead.
- Looked-after children are nearly two and a half years behind their peers by the time they finish their GCSEs, adding that this figure has reduced by just one month over the last six years.
- Children in need are 20 months behind their peers, while children in need with a child protection plan are over two years behind their peers.
- Pupils with SEND (special education needs and disabilities) who have an education, health and care (EHC) plan are well over three years behind their peers by the end of secondary school, while those with SEND without an EHCP are 24.4 months behind their peers.
In spite of the ambition to provide equal education, the education gap between disadvantaged children and the rest is no longer closing. The UK entered the pandemic with such a lack of progress in this key area, and the government urgently needs to take new policy measures to start to close the gap again. Support is needed to help all pupils, particularly the most disadvantaged, as they return to school.
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