I am in the middle of writing a book about achieving equity in education. I must admit, I’m feeling more optimistic about this goal of late.
The new government has already acknowledged the need to transform the education system so that young people get the opportunities they deserve.
It is too early to know if their actions will match their words but, in an open letter to the education sector, the new secretary of state for education, Bridget Phillipson, said that “background should be no barrier to getting on” and thus she committed to building a fairer society “that delivers the best life chances for every child”.
Ms Phillipson expressed the view that “too many people simply don’t have the opportunities to succeed”.
Having grown up on a council street and been in receipt of free school meals, Ms Phillipson added: “That’s what motivates me and that’s why we will work tirelessly to deliver on our opportunity mission, tackling barriers like inadequate housing and child poverty that undermine family security and make it so hard for children to learn.”
I am chair of a campaign called Building Equity in Education which seeks to do just that. Our mission is “to use education as a lever for social justice by doing more for those who start with less to ensure a child's birth is not also their destiny”.
The big question we’ve been wrestling with is “how?”.
Over the course of this five-part series for SecEd, I intend to set out my road-map for equity in education – a way to help schools become engines for social change rather than perpetuating or even exacerbating society’s differences and disadvantages.
SecEd Series: Equity in schools
- Article 1: An ABC for building equity and addressing disadvantage in your school: This article
- Article 2: The ABC of equity in schools: A is for attendance: Published September 10
- Article 3: The ABC of equity in schools: A three-pronged approach to attendance: Published September 17
- Article 4: The ABC of equity in schools: B is for behaviour: Published September 23
- Article 5: The ABC of equity in schools: C is for community: Published October 2
A tale of two teens
In the book I am writing, I share the tale of two teenage boys called Thomas and Tommy. Thomas comes from an affluent middle-class family; Tommy lives in poverty. They attend the same school.
I ask my readers – and now I’ll ask you – to imagine that ability, or aptitude, or capability, or whatever you want to call it, is not a factor. Thomas and Tommy are equally gifted, or equally average, you decide.
Who would you put your money on making better progress, leaving school with better outcomes, not only in terms of qualifications but also in their personal development and their preparedness for the next stage of their lives?
Who do you think is most likely to go onto post-16 study and university? Who will find the better, higher paid job? Who will enjoy better health and wellbeing for the rest of their lives? Who will live longer?
There is little doubt that Thomas will outperform Tommy at school and indeed at every juncture of their lives, not because he’s brighter or harder working, but because he started the race halfway round the track and has more expensive running shoes.
You see, it is not about ability – a phrase I utter so often I think I’ll get it printed on a t-shirt. Learners from socio-economic deprivation are no less able than those from affluence and higher social status.
Likewise, learners with SEND are no less able, nor are Black and ethnic minority learners. Instead, it is about an accident of birth. And sadly, a child’s birth all too often becomes their destiny.
In seeking to achieve equity in education, we must not conflate advantage with ability. Think not that your disadvantaged learners are less able, but that they have not been afforded the same opportunities as their more advantaged peers and thus have gaps in their knowledge and skills.
Think not that your SEND learners have difficulties or disabilities, but that the school environment is not well-suited to their additional needs, that their impairment becomes disabling because our expectations of how they engage in class and demonstrate their learning are not well-matched to their needs.
Labels v learners
One of the barriers to achieving inclusion is that, in school, we too often take a label-led approach. In other words, our actions are driven by the label attached to a learner. We see a label and assume that this is all we need to know. For example, we:
- Mark all labelled learners’ books first.
- Seat labelled learners at the front of class.
- Fund trips and resources for labelled learners.
But a label-led approach is misguided on a number of counts:
- It mistakes the label for an educational disadvantage.
- It assumes all learners with the same label are the same.
- It isolates or even stigmatises learners with labels.
Not every learner who has a label will need special treatment. Their “accident of birth” may have no impact on their ability to access the same ambitious school curriculum as their peers and achieve in line with those peers.
The reverse is also true: just because a learner does not carry a label does not mean they will not be educationally disadvantaged in some way.
Also, not all learners with the same label will experience the same circumstances or suffer the same educational disadvantages – they are not a homogenous group, and the label can mask significant differences among the cohort.
What’s more, the label tells you little about the educational disadvantage they might experience and therefore little about what you can do to address the disadvantage.
Rather than follow a label-led approach, I recommend a learner-led approach. This is marked by:
- Giving targeted feedback to the learners most at risk of underachievement.
- Targeting questions strategically to check learners’ understanding.
- Responsive teaching approaches.
Taking a learner-led approach is about converting the causes of disadvantage into tangible classroom consequences. The causes might be:
- Living in a low-income home.
- High levels of mobility.
- English as an additional language.
- SEN.
- Mental or physical disability.
- Coming from some ethnicities/cultures.
- A long-term health condition.
- Being a care-giver.
- Being looked after.
- Contributing to family income.
- Having a family member in prison.
- Low levels of education in the family.
- Being geographically isolated.
- Being socially isolated.
- Being supported by external agencies including a social worker.
The consequences might be:
- Gaps in vocabulary.
- Limited literacy skills.
- Limited numeracy skills.
- Cognitive impairment.
- Impaired language processing.
- Gaps in background knowledge.
- Attention deficiencies.
- Low self-esteem.
- Limited self-regulation skills.
- Difficulties controlling emotions.
- Low levels of motivation.
- Limited social skills.
- Low aspirations/awareness of future pathways.
- Limited access to learning resources.
- Low levels of support outside school.
The ABC of inclusion
The causes and consequences of disadvantage are complex. The solutions, therefore, are also complex. However, if we are to build more equitable schools and ensure a child’s birth does not become their destiny, then we must cut through this complexity and agree a simple, logical approach.
Cutting through complexity will allow us to communicate our approach to colleagues and our wider community and will help us gain traction and build a coalition.
It will also allow us to keep track of our progress, to better diagnose what is working and what is not. It will help us to become more evidence-informed, proactive, and responsive. I therefore propose a process of ABC:
- A is for Attendance.
- B is for Behaviours.
- C is for Community.
A is for attendance
It all starts with attendance because if learners are not attending school, or at least not regularly and on time, then we cannot help them to engage with their education, learn and make progress, and we cannot identify additional needs and put in place appropriate support.
Ensuring good attendance and punctuality must therefore come first. Attendance is also integral to building more equitable schools because disadvantaged learners are more than twice as likely as their non-disadvantaged peers to be absent and persistently absent from school (11.1% vs 5.8% of sessions missed according to the most recent Department for Education figures covering the last academic year).
B is for behaviours
Once learners are attending, we need them to develop appropriate behaviours for learning.
Note the plural in “behaviours” because this stage is two-fold: first, learners need to be helped to conduct themselves appropriately and to comply with our rules and expectations; second, learners need to be helped to develop positive attitudes to learning and a raft of behaviours for learning so that they can access an increasingly challenging curriculum, actively engage with their studies, and make good progress.
Attitudes to learning include being resilient and determined, having self-esteem and a belief in your ability to get better with hard work and effort, as well as having a plan for the future which provides a source of motivation and a sense of purpose.
Behaviours for learning take many forms but include study skills such as note-taking and independent research, debate and discussion, self- and peer-assessment, and metacognition and self-regulation.
C is for community
Once learners are attending and behaving appropriately and positively, we must focus on building a community around our learners by putting family first.
It takes a village to raise a child, but it also takes a community to educate one. Schools do not exist in isolation; they are part of the community they serve. The best schools reflect their local communities; they bring the community into their school and take learners out into that community.
The best schools also look beyond their local communities and regard themselves as part of the national and international conversation.
These schools teach learners how to be active members of their communities and how to be good citizens of the world. Community is also about engaging with parents and families as partners in the process of educating their child, which means more than simply informing them on matters pertaining to their child’s progress and wellbeing.
Communication should be a dialogue not a monologue and be marked by dignity and respect. Our conversations should not apportion blame but ask how we can support parents to support their child.
Next time
Once we have achieved our ABC, the mark of success will be whether we have built a more equitable school. Do our learners leave school as well-rounded, cultured, inquisitive, caring, kind, resilient, knowledgeable human beings ready to make their own way in the world? And do we, therefore, make the world a better place?
In part two, which has now been published, I will focus on attendance.
- Matt Bromley is an education journalist, author, and advisor with 25 years’ experience in teaching and leadership including as a secondary school headteacher. He remains a practising teacher. Matt is the author of numerous books on education and co-host of the award-winning SecEd Podcast. Find him on X @mj_bromley. Read his previous articles for SecEd via www.sec-ed.co.uk/authors/matt-bromley