The stark reality is that at current rates of progress, the education gap between rich and poor will never close. Pete Henshaw asks what next for schools and government...


More likely to achieve less. More likely to be out of work at age 21. And if they are in work, they are more likely to be earning significantly less (even with similar qualifications).

Three pieces of research have laid bare the extent to which living in poverty hits the attainment and future prospects of disadvantaged students – and set out the case once again for more investment in both early intervention and front-line schools’ spending.

A report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) paints a bleak picture: “There has been virtually no change in the ‘disadvantage gap’ in GCSE attainment over the past 20 years.”

Indeed, household income – whether at the top or the bottom of the pile – continues to be a huge predictor of performance at GCSE.

Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), meanwhile, reveals that by the age of 30 disadvantaged students are earning thousands of pounds less than their better off peers – even when they have similar qualifications.

And a Teach First study has shown that five years after taking GCSEs disadvantaged young people are twice as likely to be out of work or education as their wealthier peers.


The IFS on inequalities

The Education inequalities report (Farquharson et al, 2022) is part of the IFS Deaton Review, which is studying inequalities across society.

It makes for difficult reading after years of policy focus on closing the disadvantage gap. It finds that while GCSE attainment has increased over time, 16-year-olds who qualify for free school meals are still 27 percentage points less likely to earn “good” qualifications than their better off peers.

Furthermore, children from disadvantaged backgrounds make slower progress through secondary school. For those taking GCSEs in 2019, just 40% of disadvantaged children who achieved expected levels at age 11 went on to earn “good” outcomes in English and maths, compared with 60% of their non-disadvantaged peers.

The report adds: “And while virtually all (95%) 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.”

And it is not just about FSMs – the report highlights that 70% of 16-year-olds from the richest third of families get “good” GCSEs compared to 40% of pupis who just miss out on FSMs. It adds: “While 71% of private school students had earned a degree by age 26, just 17% of those from the poorest fifth of families had reached that milestone. More than half of the latter group had not progressed beyond GCSE.”


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The ONS on earnings

A second piece of research and analysis lays bare the impact of the disadvantage gap and poverty in general on students’ future incomes.

Data from the ONS (2022) reveals that at 30-years-old, half of people who were eligible for FSM as students earned £17,000 or less.

Meanwhile, half of people who went to an independent school are earning at least £30,000 by this point, while half of non-FSM students who attended state school are earning at least £22,717. And across all three groups, men are earning more than women.

The picture is stark. So much so that even among those students with the same qualification level and similar attainment in secondary school, those who were disadvantaged are earning less than their peers.

The ONS adds: “An independent school student who was in the bottom 20% nationally for GCSE attainment earned an average of around £22,000 at age 30 years. An individual who was from an income-deprived background and on FSM would typically have to be in the top 40% nationally for key stage 4 attainment to have similar earnings.”


Teach First on destination

A third piece of research from charity Teach First reveals a destination gap – meaning that five years after taking their GCSEs disadvantaged young people are twice as likely to be out of work or education as their wealthier peers.

It finds that 33% of disadvantaged young people are not in sustained work or education five years after GCSEs, compared to 14% of their wealthier peers.

The figures come from a Teach First analysis of Department for Education (DfE) data. The gap is driven by higher drop-out rates for disadvantaged young people after GCSEs. Indeed, the disadvantaged are also almost twice as likely to drop out of their A level course (13% vs 7%). It means our poorest students are more likely to end up out of sustained work or education (33%) than they are to go to university (27%).


So what’s to be done?

The solutions, as ever, seem to lie in proper funding for schools and effective early intervention.

For its part, Teach First is calling for the introduction of Pupil Premium funding for 16 to 19-year-old pupils. It says such a policy would boost both attainment and retention post-16.

It has echoed previous calls for improved careers education, including businesses offering work experience for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds to provide essential careers skills and inspiration.

CEO Russell Hobby has called for “better funding for schools serving disadvantaged communities”. He said: “It’s not just a matter of fairness – our country’s long-term prosperity depends on the skills of the next generation of young people.”

The IFS report, meanwhile, sets out seven guiding principles for policy-makers, including prioritising early intervention and investing in education.

It states: “Intervening in the early years can be an effective and efficient way of supporting a more equal education system: preventing inequalities from opening up in the first place is often cheaper than trying to close gaps later on. But early interventions work best when they are followed up by investments at subsequent stages of education. “

It adds: “Government spending on education has fallen significantly over the last decade (see page 6 for a report on this), especially on further education, and funding for the Covid recovery package in England is likely to fall short of the scale of the challenge.

“There is increasingly clear evidence that spending really does matter for pupil achievement – though, of course, resources need to be used well to be most effective.”

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said that the IFS research reflects the truth that “we remain a deeply divided, class-ridden society with a depressingly close alignment between family income and educational attainment”.

He called on the government to do better: “We cannot just keep doing more of the same. Government policy is in a rut of meaningless targets, empty rhetoric, and pitiful levels of funding.

“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. The government must tackle the scourge of child poverty.

“The stark reality is that the disadvantage gap will never close at the current rate of progress.”

Indeed, the final word in the IFS report is perhaps a bleak one: “In a society where the resources parents have to invest are so different, the education system will never be able to fully compensate for the vastly different experiences children have outside the school gates.’’