562 years to close the attainment gap

As chair of the ADCS educational achievement policy committee I was asked last week to sign off our press statement on the recently published Education Policy Institute / Fair Education Alliance Annual Report on Education in England. The reference to the forecast number of 562 years from 2019 of when the GCSE disadvantage gap in English and maths might close certainly caught my attention.

This comparatively short report covering all English local authorities is a salutary read for someone such as myself. The reason I became a director of children's services (DCS) is rooted in addressing educational disadvantage. With grandparents in the mining communities of South Wales, parents who were not educated beyond the ages of 15 and who left the valleys as adults for the West Riding of Yorkshire for employment reasons, it was the high quality education I received at primary school (now in Calderdale) and secondary school (Kirklees) that gave me the opportunities to close the historic familial gap and then to start a teaching career in London which has led to my 10 years to date as a DCS.