Parents, not schools, are key to the knowledge gap

The Education Policy Institute (EPI) has just published a report looking at the attainment gap between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged 16-year-olds in England — and the news is not good. While the gap has narrowed by three months since 2007, it is still 19.3 months. That is to say, it is as if disadvantaged pupils have received 19.3 months less schooling than their peers by the time they take their GCSEs. For the persistently disadvantaged, i.e. those who have been eligible for free school meals for at least 80 per cent of their school lives, the gap is 24.3 months.

Most people’s instinctive reaction to this news will be frustration and anger. After all, how can we hope to increase social mobility in this country if children from disadvantaged backgrounds are still under-performing to this extent? As Jo Hutchinson, one of the authors of this report, says: ‘At the current rate of progress it would take a full 50 years to reach an equitable school system.