In the first report to provide a comparison of educational inequalities across the two nations over the past 10 years, the Education Policy Institute (EPI) finds that the disadvantage gap has “come down over time” - by about two months in England and by even less in Wales - but progress in narrowing this attainment gap has been “extremely slow”.
In England, the disadvantage gap across all GCSE subjects and core GCSE subjects has come down from 20 months of educational progress in 2011 to 18 months in 2019.
In Wales, progress has been even slower, with the gap only coming down from 24 months in 2011 to 23 months in 2019.
In England, the largest attainment gap of around 25 months, was found in Blackpool.
Persistently disadvantaged pupils experienced larger disadvantage gaps, with those in England suffering a persistent disadvantage gap of 23 months and those in Wales experiencing 29 months.
In both nations, there has been “practically no progress” in narrowing the persistent disadvantage gap over the last decade, which is of “major concern” for policymakers concerned with narrowing educational inequalities based on socio-economic background, the report states.
Across both nations, pupils from Asian backgrounds perform significantly better than pupils from white British backgrounds, as do pupils from mixed and other white backgrounds. However, pupils from black backgrounds tend to perform slightly worse, the analysis found.
Pupils with statements of special educational needs were significantly behind their peers at GCSE, with a gap of about 41 months of educational progress in core subjects in both nations.
While Welsh schools in deprived areas suffer greater disadvantage gaps than their English counterparts, the report finds no evidence of this difference being a result of policy divergences between the two nations over the last decade.
To improve social mobility across each nation, EPI is calling for a renewed focus to be targeted at narrowing disadvantage gaps within schools.
Dr Luke Sibieta, research fellow at EPI, said: “Policymakers in both countries need to re-double their attempts to give poorer children a better chance in life, and Welsh policy makers need to consider if there are lessons which they can learn from the best performing areas of England, where gaps are far lower.
“In both countries, a range of measures is necessary including targeting more funding at schools with high levels of disadvantage, improving teacher quality in deprived areas and more one to one and small group tuition.”
