Education: Standards

(asked on 28th April 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent steps he has taken to tackle the educational attainment gap.


Answered by
Nick Gibb Portrait
Nick Gibb
This question was answered on 11th May 2020

The attainment gap has narrowed at every stage from the early years to age 16. School standards have risen and disadvantaged children, relative to their peers, are performing better than in 2011. Since 2011, the gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers has narrowed by 13% at age 11 and 9% at age 16, as measured by the disadvantaged gap index.

Schools receive additional funding in the form of the pupil premium – worth around £2.4 billion annually – to help them support their disadvantaged pupils. The Department also founded the Education Endowment Foundation with £137 million to research and share with schools the most effective ways to spend the pupil premium on developing high-quality teaching.

In higher education, the Department has asked universities to take on a more direct role in raising attainment in schools. In our latest guidance, we asked the Office for Students to secure greater, faster progress through Access and Participation Plans. Through these plans, universities set out what activities they intend to take to ensure students from disadvantaged backgrounds or under-represented groups can access, participate, succeed and progress in higher education.

To support children in their earliest years, the Department has consulted on a package of reforms to the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile which are intended to free up teachers to spend more time teaching, interacting with and supporting children to ensure they are developing the rich vocabulary, skills and behaviours they need to thrive at school and in later life. Since 2018, we have committed more than £60 million to programmes to improve early language and literacy. This includes Hungry Little Minds, a three-year campaign to help parents support their child’s early language development, to prepare them for school and beyond. The Hungry Little Minds website has been updated to include a wealth of resources and has received 187,446 new users between 16 March and 27 April 2020, seeking out tips, activities, apps and resources to support children at home.

As well as the recent commitment of over £100 million to boost remote education, the Department is considering, with a range of partner organisations, opportunities for targeted support for disadvantaged pupils. This includes ongoing work with the Education Endowment Foundation to understand the likely impact of school closures on disadvantaged pupils’ attainment, including a rapid review of evidence about effective remote education.

For more information about the wide-ranging action to tackle the attainment gap during the COVID-19 outbreak, I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave on 4 May 2020 to Question 41137.

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