(How) did New Labour narrow the achievement and participation gap? Geoff Whitty and Jake Anders LLAKES Research Paper 46 Centre for Learning and Life Chances in Knowledge Economies and Societies LLAKES is an ESRC-funded Research Centre - grant reference ES/J019135/1. To request printed copies of this paper or other LLAKES Research Papers, please contact the LLAKES Centre - [email protected]. To view this and other LLAKES Research Papers online, please visit www.llakes.org. LLAKES Research Papers – Copyright 2014 This paper may be cited or briefly quoted in line with the usual academic conventions, and for personal use. However, this paper must not be published elsewhere (such as mailing lists, bulletin boards etc.) without the author’s explicit permission. If you copy this paper, you must: • include this copyright note. • not use the paper for commercial purposes or gain in any way. • observe the conventions of academic citation in a version of the following: Whitty G. and Anders, J. (2014) (How) did New Labour narrow the achievement and participation gap?, published by the Centre for Learning and Life Chances in Knowledge Economies and Societies at: http:// www.llakes.org (How) did New Labour narrow the achievement and participation gap? Geoff Whitty and Jake Anders Centre for Learning and Life Chances in Knowledge Economies and Societies (LLAKES) Institute of Education, University of London Revision of a paper originally presented at a seminar of the Centre for Learning and Life Chances in Knowledge Economies and Societies (LLAKES), Institute of Education, University of London, 5th December 2012 Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... 2 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 3 The Preschool Attainment Gap in England ........................................................................ 6 The Attainment Gap in English Schools ............................................................................. 8 What may have contributed to the narrowing of the gap? ................................................ 20 Access to Higher Education .............................................................................................. 34 Postscript: Policies and Prospects Post-2010 .................................................................... 36 Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... 43 Contact details ................................................................................................................... 43 References ......................................................................................................................... 43 List of Figures and Tables Figure 1: Attendance at different types of university by socio-economic group ................ 5 Figure 3: Percentage of Cohort Achieving 5+ A*–C GCSEs by Parents’ Social Class: 1988-2003 (%) .................................................................................................................. 11 Table 1: Change in percentage of pupils who ................................................................... 12 Figure 4: Comparison of PISA test point difference between advantaged and disadvantaged children at different points of the attainment distribution ......................... 13 Figure 5: Graph showing relation between household deprivation and relative performance in GCSE point score in core subjects .......................................................... 15 Figure 6: Graph showing strength of relationship between household deprivation and performance in GCSEs (including or excluding non-‘core’ subjects) ...................... 16 Figure 7: Five good examination passes including English and Maths: % point increase 2006-07 – 2010-11 by ethnic group ...................................................... 17 Figure 8: Gaps in educational performance have narrowed only slightly despite significant investment ....................................................................................................... 19 Figure 9: Change in the percentage of children achieving five GCSEs at A*-C including English and Maths between 2006-07 and 2011-12, by region .......................................... 29 Figure 10: FSM gaps across the Key Stages, 2012 ........................................................... 41 1 Abstract There have been various ‘achievement gaps’ in England over the years – significant differences in school attainment by students from different socio-economic classes, different genders and different ethnic groups. Although Basil Bernstein, a leading English sociologist of education, argued many years ago that ‘education cannot compensate for society’, policy makers continue to believe that education and other social policies can help to equalise school performance and life chances between different social groups. This paper describes what progress was made in narrowing the socio-economic achievement gap in England under its New Labour government between 1997 and 2010 and assesses the research evidence about which of a whole array of national, local, institutional and ‘personalised’ interventions seem to have made a difference. It also discusses future prospects for closing the gap under the Coalition government of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats that was elected in England in 2010. 2 Introduction The Coalition Government that was elected in May 2010 set out to ‘close’ the achievement gap. That ambition went even beyond the previous New Labour Government’s ambition to ‘narrow’ that gap. Given that England does not score particularly well on ‘equity’ measures within international achievement surveys like PISA, even the lesser of these aspirations was ambitious, to say the least. Having identified what British politicians actually mean by the ‘achievement gap’, this paper explores the progress made by New Labour towards closing it, identifies some areas where its policies appear to have made a difference and, more briefly, assesses future prospects under the current Coalition of Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties. Finally, it considers some of the reasons why progress has been so limited to date. Many years ago, Bernstein (1970) pointed out that ‘education cannot compensate for society’, while an early critic of New Labour’s attainment targets argued that a serious programme to alleviate child poverty might do far more for boosting attainment and literacy than would any modest intervention in schooling (Robinson, 1997). Nevertheless, given that the achievement gap is narrower and social mobility greater in some countries that are socioeconomically and culturally similar to England (Sutton Trust, 2011), it is reasonable for politicians to believe that education and other social policies can make a difference in regard to the achievement gap - or rather the various achievement gaps that have existed over the years. Indeed, somewhat surprisingly, OECD analysis of PISA data suggests that ‘cross-national differences in inequalities of performance are associated more closely with the characteristics of the education system than with underlying social inequalities or measures of economic development’ (OECD, 2010) and from this we might infer that education policy can make a difference to these inequalities (Green, 2011). For many years in the last century there were major concerns about the underachievement of girls. That gender gap has been largely reversed, leading to something of a moral panic about the impact on boys (Ringrose, 2013). Yet it has still not been reversed in the hard 3 sciences or at the very highest levels in some other subjects, and it is therefore coming back onto the policy agenda (Garner, 2013). Minority ethnic achievement was often also a concern, although there were stark differences in the performance of different minority groups (Gillborn and Mirza, 2000). However, the key focus in English work on the gap at present is ‘social class’ differences in educational achievement, even though that term itself is often expressed as ‘poverty’, ‘disadvantage’, ‘deprivation’ or ‘social exclusion’ and is usually measured in terms of socioeconomic status (SES) or eligibility for free school meals (FSM) (Whitty, 2001). The emphasis in this paper on gaps between social groups as identified through cognitive measures and the achievement of academic qualifications is not intended to suggest that the only purpose of schooling is to achieve such qualifications or that those who fail to do so are deficient, either absolutely or relatively, in other important respects. Indeed, during the period under consideration here, there was, for example, considerable emphasis on the role of education in fostering ‘well-being’. Nevertheless, there is a great deal of evidence that life chances in English society are closely linked to school attainment in a myriad of ways and that personal fulfilment and social justice could both be enhanced by narrowing or closing longstanding academic achievement and participation gaps (Schuller et al., 2004). We therefore agree with Kerr and West (2010) that ‘despite the dangers of narrowing our view of what education is about’, a focus on attainment is justifiable because ‘attainment undeniably has important consequences for life chances’ (p. 16). One specific reason why it is important