Why do disadvantaged students under-attain? The things you know - and somethings you might not

I’ve had an interest in approaches to closing the disadvantage gap in schools since 2010 when I was lucky enough to work with Gerry Swain, the then-director of the National Literacy Strategy. He introduced me to the publication ‘Pockets of Poverty’ about the disadvantage gap in Shire counties especially (which interestingly also applies to deprived coastal communities). As I was working in just such a Shire school at the time, I found this publication and the research feeding it really interesting.

Forgive any Grandma-sucking-eggs scenarios for this post, but understanding the reasons for disadvantage are key to being able to serve these students as best we can. My work with ITT and ECTs tells me that they are acutely aware of the need to engage with the facts and research behind the disadvantage gap, but the reasons for the gap are not always made clear. It’s not obvious, and it might make us a little uncomfortable to delve more deeply as we are wary of making assumptions or dealing in stereotypes. We need to get over this. Poverty is a massive disadvantage in any person’s life but especially a child’s. And these days we have enough robust evidence that shows us how deprivation affects life opportunities so we need to deal with these head-on.

Who are our disadvantaged children?

There are plenty of reasons why we might class a student as disadvantaged - and not ALL are to do with poverty - but we need to use the Government definition to access the stats, so disadvantage in school children is defined as:

Students on free school meals (household income of less than £16,190 or receiving Universal Credit)
Looked After Children
Pupil Premium students

Students qualify as Pupil Premium if they have been in receipt of free school meals in the past 6 years. Forces children are also in receipt of the Service Pupil Premium, worth £340 pa, acknowledging the disruption in learning that may result from moving schools and having parents absent for long periods.

In January 2024, 2.1 million pupils were eligible for free school meals, 24.6% of all pupils. (This is an increase of 75,000 pupils since January 2022, when 2 million (23.8%) pupils were eligible for free school meals.) It’s easy to see that many more students than those identified ‘officially’ would fall into the category of disadvantaged, but who would not be eligible to claim (families earning just over £16,190 are still on the breadline but don’t get the free school meals).

The children that ARE classed as disadvantaged generate money each year for their school on strategies that are designed to close the gaps. This money did not increase year-on-year since 2020 but has this year (on average £30 per child so it’s not going to make much of a difference, but an increase is an increase). The figures from January 2024 are:

£1,480 pa for each primary school pupil

£1,050 pa for secondary students
£2,570 pa for each Looked After Child

What is the Gap?

At primary school, in reading, writing and maths (combined), 45% of disadvantaged pupils met the expected standard in 2024, compared with 67% of other pupils.

At GCSE, disadvantaged students are approximately 18 months behind their more affluent peers but up to 2019 gap had been closing.

Since lockdown, the closing of the gap has stalled and, in many areas, widened. In schools, at all key stages, we are seeing the following traits, post-lockdown:

Increased school absences
Increase in ‘logging concern’ cases (safeguarding referrals)
More referrals to school pastoral systems and CAMHS (many authorities have a waiting list of two years+)
Increase in cases of anxiety, school refusals, eating disorders
Increase in cases of lack of confidence in reading and speaking

These effects have disproportionately affected disadvantaged pupils.

This page - from the Education Policy Institute website - is excellent. Move your mouse over the map or the chart and you can see the gaps in your own area. Having engaged with this resource for a number of years now, I can tell you that Westminster and Kensington most regularly have the smallest gaps, and that Blackpool and Knowsley in the north west have the highest. If you look at the areas highlighted in various shades of green on the map, you’ll also note that *all* inner-London areas have small gaps (using GCSE data). In the EPI’s annual report for 2024, they note: “Looking across all phases of education, London continues to outperform the rest of the country for its disadvantaged students in 2023. The disadvantage gap in London has increased since 2019 among children in early years and primary school and flat-lined or decreased among older students (secondary school and 16-19 education). The West Midlands ranks as the region with the second smallest disadvantage gap in 2023 in three out of four key stages. The West Midlands was also one of the regions least affected in the wake of the pandemic across all four phases.”

It has been thought that London’s gaps are small due to a history of collaboration across education authorities to share training and strategies. This collaboration now has perhaps been passed to the Multi Academy Trusts that operate throughout all London boroughs now. An interesting report from late last year found that urban areas where social and economic deprivation affects greater numbers of students are more likely to be successful in closing gaps, even post-Covid.

However, this success story is a direct contrast with much of the rest of the country. Some of the worst gaps can be see in ‘Shire’ counties and coastal areas around the UK. In amongst area of leafy suburbs, holiday homes and relatively large numbers of private schools lie the ‘pockets of poverty’ that the National Literacy strategy had started to look at in 2010 before the incoming coalition government stopped its funding. The gaps may be wider in these areas for a number of reasons and one of them might be because there are fewer PP students compared to urban areas. It’s easier to overlook handfuls of students rather than a third of the year group or class. Students may therefore feel more of a stigma in smaller numbers. However, I would also argue that Covid-19 combined with austerity measures have significantly increased the number of disadvantaged children - and families. Perhaps numbers of PP students have grown in these areas but the full impact of this societal change has happened in relative slow motion and we no longer have anything like the resources and systems to deal with this catastrophic rise.

The use of PP is only part of the picture of under-attainment. Disadvantaged students’ common characteristics often include those of other vulnerable groups. And these can often include:

Lack of resilience
Inability to look at ‘the wider picture’: the relevance of learning, qualifications, work experience, etc.
Low expectations
Lack of financial opportunities
Few cultural and ‘life’ experiences
Low self-esteem and lack of confidence
Little or no aspiration
Lack of emotional/educational support at home
Poor attendance and little / no catch-up
Lack of accessible technology at home
Our own unconscious bias
Setting by ability (see my post here)
Low levels of literacy - the ‘Matthew Effect’: Where there are books in the house and reading is valued and modelled, more of the same will result. In households where books are not routinely seen/valued, reading is reduced to the ‘incidental’ reading all around us, that requires basic understanding but not fluency or inference.

What works in the classroom?

A focus on literacy is vital: We are ALL teachers of literacy: make sure key spellings (Tier 2 and 3 vocabulary) are displayed, used, learned, quizzed on. Liaise with your school’s literacy coordinator for support. Primary colleagues don’t need telling this - they are experts in literacy. We get so bogged down in subject content at secondary level we sometimes forget that it’s just as important.
Make sure oracy plays a key part in lessons. Oracy is BIG at the moment, as the research tells us that quality talk is the bedrock for improved literacy. I have no doubt most schools will be working on, or will have in place, a whole-school approach to oracy that can be utilised in every subject area.
At secondary level, encourage reading with your form groups. Read aloud to them; read shorter texts together and talk about them. Model reading in quiet time; talk about books and recommend reads to your students.
All GCSE texts/exam papers require a reading age of 16+. Again, at secondary level, tell them this.
Set the bar high – expect high standards in writing quality and in handwriting. Don’t accept poor presentation. In a previous school, we copied a page of students’ first English ‘best’ writing and stuck it into their planners so that colleagues in other subjects could see what the students were capable of. For some reason, many students didn’t think ‘best’ work for English translated to other subjects and teachers were amazed at what they could expect from students. Maybe these days this could be done online?
Mark for literacy but don’t correct work for them – provide them with dictionaries and literacy mats. Encourage independence.

Engage with the EEF

Reports, online info, posters, videos based on robust evidence are easily accessible and cover general findings, give advice and even focus on subject areas. Some links to get you started:

The EEF’s home page.

The Teaching and Learning Toolkit

Metacognition and Self-Regulated Learning

Teacher Feedback to Improve Pupil Learning

The EEF Guide to the Pupil Premium