Over the last few decades there have been a multitude of education policies aimed at narrowing the education gap and increasing social mobility, most of which have achieved very little if anything at all. It is easy to blame the education system for this but the reality is that the education gap is the result of wider social and economic disparities that cannot be resolved in schools. Research suggests that child poverty is a big factor, which raises alarm bells as to the adverse effects that the current cost of living crisis will have on the education gap. Here we have a look at what this could mean for schools.
Does poverty really have a bearing on the education gap?
Various notions are put forward as to why children from disadvantaged backgrounds do less well in school from health, diet, housing and community to parental characteristics and behaviours. Depending on your viewpoint, poverty could be seen as just a factor of some or all of these things and therefore no direct bearing on how well children and young people perform in school.
A 2013 report form the Joseph Rowntree Foundation used studies from across the globe and concluded that poverty itself has a bearing on children’ outcomes. Poorer children have worse social-behavioural and cognitive outcomes in part because they are poorer, not just because poverty is correlated with other household and parental characteristics.
The report is incredibly meticulous, originally identifying 46,668 relevant studies and whittling it down to just 34 that met the inclusion criteria! So the conclusions can certainly be trusted and are very worrying with the current cost of living crisis.
What does the Cost of Living Crisis mean for the education gap?
For those families who were already struggling with poverty, the cost of living crisis will be exacerbating living conditions further and will make closing the education gap a more distant reality.
A recent report from the Social Mobility Commission in the aftermath of the pandemic estimated that around 1 in 3 children were living in poverty and that disadvantaged students in England were as much as seven months behind after the gaps that had grown in the pandemic year. Now these families are hit with a new and ever growing threat in the cost of living crisis.
The Social Mobility report stresses that most important is the need to end child poverty, which is blocking progress across the whole of the UK. This seems a little ambitious, especially considering recent developments but there is an imminent risk that the education gap will continue to grow wider.
The Family Stress Model and the Cost of Living
The 2013 Joseph Rowntree report identified the dangers of economic distress through “the family stress model” where the stress of low disposable income makes parents less patient, frustrated and lacking in the emotional resources needed for supportive and nurturing parenting behaviours. This is turn had an adverse effect on children’s performance at school both in terms of cognitive development and behaviour.
The findings suggested that increases in household income would contribute to substantial reductions in the differences in outcomes between low-income children and their more privileged peers at school. Now with the cost of living crisis we are seeing decreases in household income, we can only expect that this will contribute to increasing the education gap.
Also with further families being dragged into poverty we are likely to see more children and young people struggling with cognitive development and increased social and behavioural problems at school, so not only will the education gap become wider but it will also become deeper.
Summary
Schools can certainly play a part in narrowing the education gap but there needs to be recognition that they cannot do this alone.
An insight from the British Educational Research foundation found that the impacts of schooling are likely to result in “modest” improvements for disadvantaged children and that school interventions should be linked to wider efforts to tackle inequalities.
Unfortunately child poverty is the imminent danger and this affects a wide range of different outcomes at the same time, all of which have an impact on education failure.
We hope that there will be additional school funding for school interventions where they are needed most and there is also a plan to help families struggling with the cost of living crisis outside of the classroom.
Or we fear the education gap will grow wider and deeper.