Fair Education Alliance report draws on Sutton Trust research

The Fair Education Alliance, an alliance of organisations campaigning for change in education led by Teach First, has published its second “Report Card“. The report references several Sutton Trust reports, including Background to Success, Missing Talent, Evaluating Access and Developing Teachers. The report looks at the progress made against targets it said should be achieved by 2022 to help close the gap in opportunities and achievement between rich and poor children in England.

The goals are:

• to narrow the gap in literacy and numeracy achievement in primary schools and at GCSE
• ensure young people develop key strengths such as character and good mental health
• narrow the gulf in the numbers of youngsters continuing their education and training after GCSEs
• narrowing the gap between rich and poor students graduating from university.

The Fair Education Alliance says while progress has been made in improving standards, this has been uneven, with some pupils missing out. The FEA says more must be done, such as overhauling careers guidance and efforts to promote pupils’ wellbeing.

In a speech to the Fair Education Alliance at the launch of the report, HM Chief Inspector Michael Wilshaw mentioned Missing Talent again when he said that it is “worrying is that we are not doing well enough for our brightest children coming from poor backgrounds. There’s that damning statistic, the one that keeps me awake at night, from the Sutton Trust. Seven thousand of our brightest children, mainly from poorer backgrounds, were in the top 10% nationally at age 11 but were not in the top 25% at GCSE.”