A good education is the key to improving young people’s life chances; to enable them to progress into adulthood with the skills and confidence for success. This is particularly true for children from low-income families, who are far less likely to leave schools with good GCSE results than other children (we use eligibility for free school meals (FSM) as an indicator of deprivation). Evidence shows it is these pupils that are being let down the most by the current school system:
- After prior attainment, poverty is the single most important factor in predicting a child’s future life chances.
- Attainment gaps between pupils from deprived backgrounds and their more affluent peers persist through all stages of education, including entry into higher education (HE).
- The highest early achievers from deprived backgrounds are overtaken by lower achieving children from advantaged backgrounds by age seven. By the end of Key Stage 1 (age seven), the likelihood of a pupil eligible for FSM achieving the expected levels of progress are one third those of a non-FSM pupil.
- The gap widens further during secondary education and persists into Higher Education. The odds of an FSM pupil achieving five or more GCSEs at A*-C including English and mathematics are less than one third those of a non FSM pupil.
- A pupil from a non-deprived background is more than twice as likely to go on to study at university as their deprived peers.
