Attainment gap 'unchanged after 20 years'

A report on education inequalities by the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS), funded by the Nuffield Foundation, finds that while GCSE attainment has been increasing over time, 16-year-olds who are eligible for free school meals are still around 27 percentage points less likely to achieve good GCSEs than less-disadvantaged peers. 

It notes that even disadvantaged children who achieve expected levels of attainment when they leave primary school aged 11 are more likely to fall behind their non-disadvantaged classmates by the time they reach GCSEs.

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“In the 2019 GCSE cohort, just 40 per cent of disadvantaged children who achieved the expected level at age 11 went on to earn good GCSEs in English and maths, compared with 60 per cent of their non-disadvantaged peers,” it states.

The report adds that while 95 per cent of non-disadvantaged pupils who achieved above the expected level at age 11 went on to earn good GCSEs, one in six of primary school high achievers from disadvantaged backgrounds missed out on the GCSE benchmark.

The Covid-19 pandemic has “significantly worsened overall outcomes as well as widening inequalities”, the report says.

The share of pupils leaving primary school meeting literacy and numera​cy benchmarks fell from 65 per cent in 2018/19 to 59 per cent in 2021/22, the report states, noting that the government’s levelling up agenda aims to see 90 per cent of pupils leave primary school with expected levels of reading, writing and maths by 2030.

Disadvantaged children are likely to have fallen further behind their peers during the Covid-19 lockdowns due to having “less access to resources to learn at home”.

“They were less likely to receive resources such as online classes during the first lockdown, and more likely to be absent more frequently and for longer than their better-off peers,” the report states.

Imran Tahir, a research economist at IFS and an author of the report, said: “We can’t expect the education system to overcome all the differences between children from different family backgrounds. But the English system could do a lot better.

“If the government is to meet its mission to have 90 per cent of pupils attaining the expected level at the end of primary school it needs to prioritise the education system and especially the disadvantaged pupils within it.”

Responding to the report, Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, added: “We need to see investment in early years education, better support for schools which face the greatest challenges, funding for schools and post-16 education which matches the level of need, and a rethink of qualifications and curriculum so that they work well for all learners.”