This is an edited extract from Making the Classroom Work for Every Child, the second book in the Equity in Education series published by Routledge, which is available now. Click here for more details.
This is part two. Catch up with part one.
In part one, I explained that Thomas and Tommy, who went to the same school, had no discernible differences in their levels of intelligence. Whether they were equally gifted or equally average is of little consequence. What’s important to note is that they were equal. And yet their lives have been far from equitable. Thomas has outperformed Tommy at every turn and there’s little doubt he will continue to do so for the rest of their lives.
He has already achieved a better level of education from school. He will go on to get better outcomes at post-16 and he will progress to university and secure a well-paid job and enjoy a meaningful and fulfilling professional career. His health and general wellbeing will be better than Tommy’s, too.
In short, Thomas is destined to live a long, happy, rewarding life; Tommy is not.
Tommy will struggle to achieve any worthwhile qualifications. He will struggle to find a good, well-paid job. He will struggle to afford a decent place to live. He will struggle to afford to heat his home or to feed himself healthily and adequately.
Tommy was born into a poor, working-class family which struggled to make ends meet and failed – not intentionally, but unavoidably and despite their best efforts – to provide a suitable start in life for Tommy and his sister. Unfortunately, Tommy’s birth is set to be his destiny.
Had Thomas and Tommy been switched at birth, so too would their life chances be reversed. Despite what many privileged people may think, success is determined, not exclusively and not always, but in most cases, by the sheer luck of birth. It is much easier to be successful when you start the race halfway round the running track and have an expert coach and expensive equipment.
Most people born into disadvantage or who have additional and different needs can not and do not escape that disadvantage, not because they are not bright enough or do not work hard enough, but because we do not live in a meritocracy and life is neither fair nor equitable.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Whilst society needs to change for there to be any meaningful and longstanding improvements to this situation, there are many changes that schools can make to help improve the educational and life chances of disadvantaged and vulnerable children, and to create a fairer, more equitable place to learn and thrive.
So, here’s what we can do about it…
A call to action
Let us examine Tommy’s experience of school and consider what his teachers could have done differently to help him achieve better outcomes and improve his life chances. In short, what could his teachers have done to prevent Tommy’s birth from becoming his likely destiny?
Firstly, let’s consider the importance of early intervention. Those children who start school at a disadvantage not only fail to catch up with their peers but find the attainment gap between them grows wider as they progress through the education system. The gap in vocabulary development between children in the top and bottom 20% of incomes is, on average, 10 months at age 3 and 15 months by age 5. 44% of disadvantaged children meet the expected standards at age 11 (compared to 66% of non-disadvantaged children) but by the age of 16 only 25% of disadvantaged children achieve a grade 5 in English and maths GCSE (compared to 52% of non-disadvantaged children).
It follows, therefore, that the earlier we can intervene and address the differences between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged learners, the greater the chance we will have of closing the gap. Tommy felt he was doing relatively well at primary school but struggled more and more as he got older and the gaps in his prior knowledge – or cultural capital – became bigger and more detrimental to his ability to access the school curriculum. Early intervention could have helped prevent Tommy’s academic decline.
Secondly, there’s the matter of transition. Another likely reason Tommy struggled as he got older is because he did not cope with the transfer from primary to secondary school very well. There could be several factors at play here. Tommy is less resilient than Thomas and hasn’t been afforded the same opportunities to develop key character traits such as self-esteem. He also has difficulty remaining confident and comfortable in new, unfamiliar situations. Moving from a small primary school – the big fish in the small pond – where you’re likely to be in the same classroom with the same teacher all day, to a large secondary school – the small fish in a large ocean – where you must quickly navigate changes of rooms and teachers, each with different routines and expectations, as well as the more complex social and emotional environment, is therefore challenging. Data transfer is also a factor. If Tommy’s new teachers knew very little about him and his abilities beyond his SATs results, they may not have appreciated his true starting points and his learning preferences. If he was also struggling to adjust to the new environment, he may not have performed to the best of his abilities immediately upon changing schools and this may have been interpreted – wrongly – as a sign of low intelligence.
Had his new teachers been provided with more information about Tommy, such as what he was capable of producing outside of test conditions and beyond the core subjects, what motivates and demotivates him, how he likes to learn and demonstrate his learning, what gaps might exist in his knowledge and skills and life experiences, and perhaps even some information about his life outside of school, then they may have been better placed to assess his starting points and provide the support he needed.
Thirdly, we must consider the possibility that Tommy’s teachers had biases or set expectations of what he could achieve based on his disadvantaged status and the way he presented himself in class – both physically and intellectually. They may have had pre-conceived notions of what someone like Tommy could achieve and, albeit with the best of intentions, they may have lowered their expectations, assuming Tommy was less able.
Certainly, it has been common practice in many schools and for many years to ‘support’ learners like Tommy through differentiation whereby those with differences and disadvantages are given a reduced or ‘dumbed down’ curriculum offer and easier tasks to do in class. Likewise, feedback has tended to be less demanding and expectations lower. As I say, this is often with good intentions, perhaps assuming learners like Tommy can’t access a more ambitious curriculum and would simply flounder, and perhaps assuming easier work and less challenging feedback would inspire success and that this would motivate them to do better. But it doesn’t often work that way. If we place a glass ceiling on what disadvantaged learners can achieve and then expect less of them, they will perform less well and we will simply double-down on their existing differences and disadvantages, rather than use education as a means of driving social justice and levelling the playing field.
We need to accept that it’s not about ability. A disadvantaged learner is not necessarily less able than a non-disadvantaged learner, just as a learner with SEND is not necessarily less able than a non-SEND learner. We must not project biases and lower our expectations of these learners. Rather, we must have the same high expectations of all learners because the higher our expectations are, the better a learner will perform and the higher their expectations of themselves and their own abilities will be.
Fourthly, there’s the fact that Tommy didn’t feel like he belonged in school because he didn’t see people like him teaching or leading the school, and what was taught and how it was taught didn’t talk to him and his lived experiences.
Representation matters. If we do not see people like us or recognise the lives being presented to us as exemplars and heroes then we can assume we don’t matter, we don’t fit in, we don’t belong here. Tommy did not see people like him at the front of class, nor did the curriculum content choices being made by his teachers truly reflect his life and community. The analogies used by his teachers to compare new, abstract ideas to something supposedly familiar and concrete failed to ‘land’ because he did not have the necessary frame of reference or the same ‘cultural capital’ as his more affluent and advantaged peers. And the examples used in assessments were similarly alien to him. Likewise, a lot of the language used by his teachers in class and in assessments was unfamiliar to him because he had gaps in his vocabulary.
Fifthly, Tommy was put into ‘bottom sets’ in some subjects because his school decided to set learners according to their ability. Sometimes this is unavoidable because of the constraints of the external assessment system. For example, in maths there are tiered exam papers at GCSE and students need to be taught the appropriate content to be prepared for either the higher or foundation tier. But in most subjects, this is not the case, and evidence suggests setting by ability is ineffective, or at least unproven practice. It certainly seems not to work well for those placed in lower ability classes who often become demotivated and who do not have ready access to higher-performing peers who provide aspirational role models and examples of higher attainment.
What’s more, in Tommy’s case, as is also common, the lower sets were taught by less experienced teachers and, worse, by transient teachers who did not know the learners very well. This is no criticism of supply teachers who work hard and have difficult jobs. But Tommy needs teachers who know him well. Often, the most experienced and proven teachers – such as the head of department – teach the top sets when it is the lower sets (populated by those most in need of expert, aspirational teachers and by those who experience the greatest challenges at school) which should be prioritised when it comes to timetabling.
It’s also the case that in Tommy’s ‘bottom set’ classes the teachers appeared to ‘dumb down’ curriculum content and make use of the traditional forms of differentiation I mentioned earlier. What Tommy needed was access to the same ambitious curriculum as his peers and teachers with high expectations of his abilities and capabilities.
Not all learners are equal. Some have more significant gaps in their prior knowledge and skills, including in their vocabulary and language and literacy skills, but the answer is not to do less for these learners; rather, it is to do more. We should give all learners access to the same ambitious, broad and balanced, and planned and sequenced curriculum – to the same models of excellence in each subject discipline – and then we should make that curriculum accessible to all learners by doing more or different things for those who start with less – including in the form of task-scaffolding.
Sixthly, Tommy lacked confidence in class and was reluctant to contribute to classroom discussions or even to articulate his thinking and demonstrate his learning. As well as issues of self-esteem, Tommy struggled with his oracy skills – he did not know how to express his thoughts or engage in debates and discussions. His more advantaged peers, like Thomas, not only had access to debating societies and other enrichment activities that helped build confidence and articulacy, but they also grew up in language-rich environments and were taught to express themselves with confidence and certainty. They learnt the art of code-switching, too, so that they could adapt to different situations and fit in, using the most appropriate vocabulary and register.
In addition, learners like Thomas grew up surrounded by books and other reading materials and thus developed a penchant for reading for pleasure and, with it, a wider knowledge of the world and a bigger vocabulary. Their frame of reference is therefore larger and thus they understand more of what is taught in school and how it is taught, including the analogies teachers use. The more you know, the easier it is to know more, and so Thomas makes good progress through school whilst Tommy does not.
Next, the system of assessment and the qualification framework further disadvantages learners like Tommy. Tommy is less able to prepare for exams and other high-stakes assessments because he does not have a home-life conducive to independent study nor the resources to study at home, including physical resources such as access to an internet-enabled device and books and stationery, and human resources such as a parent or other adult who is present and able to help. Tommy also struggles to find the time and space to engage in independent study and lacks motivation because he is often tired and hungry and stressed.
Furthermore, Tommy has not been taught how to organise his time nor how to maintain his concentration and motivation. He has not been helped to develop coping strategies to help manage his anxiety about exams and how to respond when presented with unfamiliar words or ideas in an exam.
We’ve already explored the vocabulary gap and know that Tommy has difficulty understanding some of the language used in class. But this is also a barrier in exams where the language demand has increased in recent years, including in subjects such as maths and science. A lack of cultural capital will also pose a problem in exams – such as having no first-hand experience of skiing or indeed of any foreign travel.
Life is not fair and neither is school. The disadvantaged and vulnerable are further disadvantaged by an education system that privileges the privileged.
But, as I say, it doesn’t have to be this way.
In my new book, Making the Classroom Work for Every Child I explore some practical ways in which we can change the system, include the excluded, and foster inclusion and belonging in the classroom. Why not get a copy for your school? It might just make a difference!
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