Secondary schools fail to push poorer pupils

Poor children fall behind pupils from better-off families when they are at secondary school, even if they have out-performed their classmates at primary school, a study has shown.

Pupils from low-income families achieve an average of almost half a GCSE grade lower per subject than other teenagers and this achievement gap has grown rather than narrowed in the past five years, research for the Social Mobility Commission found.

White British children whose parents are in low-paid jobs or on benefits do worst of all, getting on average almost two thirds of a grade lower in eight core GCSE subjects.

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Sir Peter Lampl, chairman of the Sutton Trust, an education charity, called the findings very worrying. He said: “It is vital that all pupils are enabled to reach their potential, and schools should use the pupil premium effectively to do this. That’s why it is so important that schools use evidence of what works best and that they ensure they have high expectations of disadvantaged pupils.”

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