At 16, The U.K.’s Poorest Children Are Two Years Behind Their Classmates

The frightening gap between the U.K.’s poorest children and their classmates is exposed today in a damning new report.

By the age of 16, the poorest children can be more than two years behind their classmates, with the gap remaining unchanged over the last decade.

The news comes after a warning that the U.K. Government’s catch-up plan to help students recover learning lost during the pandemic falls woefully short, and that the most disadvantaged children risk falling even further behind as a result.

Analysis by the Education Policy Institute (EPI) think tank found that children eligible for free school meals – a proxy measure for disadvantage – were 18 months behind their peers in England at 16, and 22-23 months behind in Wales.

And for the poorest students – those eligible for free school meals for more than 80% of their time in school and classed as experiencing persistent disadvantage – the gap was even larger, at 23 months in England and 29 months in Wales.

The findings cover performance in GCSEs – public examinations taken at 16 – in 2019, the last year that education was not disrupted by the pandemic.

And the results show there has been little progress over the last decade, with almost no change in the gap between the persistently disadvantaged and their peers.

“The gap in education outcomes between poor children and the rest is far too wide in both England and Wales,” said Dr Luke Sibieta, research fellow at the EPI and co-author of the report.

The results for Wales were particularly concerning, he said, with children who are long-term poor almost two-and-a-half years behind by the time they take their GCSEs at 16.

“Policymakers in both countries need to re-double their attempts to give poorer children a better chance in life,” he said. “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.”

The national figures mask considerable variation between different parts of the country. In England, Blackpool, Derby, Peterborough, Rotherham, Salford, Kent and Sheffield all having a gap of 23 months or more between children on free school meals and their classmates.

At the other end of the spectrum, there are seven local authority areas in England where the gap is under seven months, all of them in London.

This is despite similar proportions of children on free school meals at both ends of the scale. In Tower Hamlets in east London, for example, 58% of children are on free school meals and the gap with their peers is 5.4 months, compared with 25.1 months in Blackpool, where 37% of children are on free school meals.

In Wales, children on free school meals are more than two-and-a-half-years behind their classmates in Wrexham and Merthyr Tydfil, compared with the country’s lowest gap, of 16.6 months in Ceredigion.

“This report highlights the huge attainment gaps in both Wales and England, gaps that have almost certainly widened since the Covid crisis hit,” said David Laws, EPI’s executive chairman.

“This new research also highlights how much bigger the gaps are in Wales, which should trigger a debate in Wales as to why these outcomes are so disappointing and what more can be done to turn things around.

“Across the UK, policymakers need to re-double their efforts to give poor children a better chance in life.”

The findings come after Sir Kevan Collins, the U.K. Government’s former education recovery commissioner, accused the Government of burying its head in the sand over the loss of learning during pandemic lockdowns.

Sir Kevan, who quit the role after the Government rejected his £15bn ($18bn) recovery plan, said the country was failing to invest in education and warned that the national tutoring program could become little more than “a few kids in the corner doing a bit of tutoring”.