Star comment: Tackling poverty is key to closing school attainment gap

If you want to spark an animated debate between educationalists, sociologists, politicians, and economists, and almost anybody else for that matter, pose this question: Why is it that children from better-off families get better grades at school?

Environment, culture, aspiration, and opportunity may be advanced as reasons, but there is likely to be a measure of agreement that all children should be treated equally and that any disadvantage suffered by any socio-economic group is unfair, discriminatory, and self-reinforcing.

A report by the Education Policy Institute has found that the grade gap between those eligible for free school meals and their peers is showing no sign of closing.

It means that the disadvantage of poverty for children is likely to prove to be a disadvantage for life, as they will leave school with fewer attainments, which in turn will affect what career paths may be open to them.

The figures do not encompass the long pandemic period, but you do not need much imagination to see that that is likely to have deepened levels of educational inequality, with children missing out on in-school education.

Those in households in which their parents have not had the option of staying home, or working from home – in both of which cases they would be on hand to at least play some part in keeping the educational wheels turning for their children – or in homes without laptops or broadband, are likely to have suffered further academic disadvantage accordingly.

Whether banishing poverty would, of itself, be the complete answer to improving educational achievement, is something the experts can debate in this complex field, but even if it is not that “simple”, easing poverty levels is a laudable aim.

In the meantime, the failure to close this attainment gap is a worry and it is clear that there is a lot of work to be done.