If we are to overcome the forces in our society and schools that insidiously widen gaps, between those that have and those that have not, we need to be more ferocious, more tenacious in creating the conditions that enable our disadvantaged learners to flourish. This requires educators to be more honest, to ask uncomfortable questions and make braver decisions to fiercely educate those that need us the most.
Photo by Efe Yagiz Soysal on Unsplash
To fiercely educate is to replicate the stage-managed, high expectation and sharpened elbows of an advantaged childhood. Being fierce means guarding a child’s education, expecting much, staying alongside, pushing from behind, consistently and persistently championing individual children.
An advantaged childhood holds, expects and elevates children, who are fiercely loved and as a result feel more secure.
“Okay, well, Eleanor has this mother. She intimidated me at first actually because she just – she’s fierce. Fiercely loving. … but I could tell she felt safe in that house. She grew up feeling safe and fiercely loved.”
“And you and I didn’t get that, not because we didn’t deserve it, we just got dealt something else. But the people who did get that love, they grew up to be different from us. More secure.”
Coco Mellors | Cleopatra and Frankenstein
To be fiercely loved* is to be challenged, extended, stretched, to reach and risk, and at the same time, to be held tightly, more secure. “You will be brave, I have got you.”
*the emphasis is on fiercely rather than loved. Families who are socio-economically deprived do not love their children less, often quite the opposite, but the time, money, space to create opportunity and supported experiences to translate that love, ferociously, is compromised at every turn.
Advantaged families interpret the world for their children, translating experiences and interactions to maintain their sense of security and renew their agency. Setting and re-setting a desired narrative of what it is to be and feel successful, to step forward once more, even when the randomness of life and experiences intrude beyond the home. There is always an ongoing invitation to dance. Sitting out is not an option.
To grow up advantaged is to step forward through a life punctuated by opportunities, reaching, risking and stepping forward, it is a secure pursuit. These are childhoods, with guide ropes and safety harnesses, that see failure as an obstacle on the path to eventual success.
“If you are lucky enough to be born in a world made in your image, you probably think of a failure as an obstacle on the path to eventual success. If you are a marginalised person in any way you internalise that failure more closely.”
Elizabeth Day
Without a deep sense of security, a disadvantaged child is far more likely to internalise failure more closely. It is precisely this self-reflection, the connection of failure with self that perpetuates over time and maintains an inhibiting mindset that convinces that it would be safer not to try. Without the ferocity of expectation, the unwavering (taught) belief in their own agency, a child’s hand goes up fewer times, they step back rather than stride forward and live with a constraining belief that the world is not built in their image or for their circumstance.
If we step forward less we tend to surround ourselves with others who are also less likely to step forward in life. It is the five closest individuals with whom you measure your status, the ones that set the bar, the ones we compare against. And where we create schools within schools we set expectations of what is possible (and not possible). We must work harder to cross-connect social circles, orchestrating and intervening to be more inclusive.
“Each starling is only ever aware of five other birds,” she said. “One above, one below, one in front and either side, like a star. They move with those five, and that’s how they stay in formation.”
“Who are your five then?” asked Cleo. “The ones you watch?”
Coco Mellors
It is an inconvenient truth that schools create these self-fulfilling groups, reinforce the conditions for advantage and disadvantage to accumulate. We are the problem more often than we admit, more often than we see, more often than we realise. To see the conditions we create, those that we have come to accept, we must apply the disadvantage lens on ourselves and our schools, be more honest and evaluate what we are willing to accept, what we hold up and measure as success. This is about confronting and tackling the perpetuating inequity, seeking to halt social fractures at a time when society is fracturing.
Hope: to want something to happen or to be true, and usually have a good reason to think that it might.
A childhood of advantage is one of agency and hope; a life on an exciting journey of opportunity, where what is wanted, sought after, is within reach and based on previous experiences, have a good reason to think it might be achieved. And if it does not, any failure slides off, it does not define. After all, the failure is not about me reaching out, because I act on the world. And yet for our disadvantaged children each failure is another hit on self-belief, self-image, another example of the world acting on them. “This world is not for me.”
An advantaged childhood also has purpose (one insisted on, and then internalised by the child), a beacon that directs effort and demands persistence. We must work harder to create, expect and articulate purpose so that it fuels the persistence required to close gaps.
“When we have a purpose, we are able not only to endure and persist but also to provide a beacon that reminds us of what’s important and to make the right decision at the right moment.”
Steve Magnus
Too many journeys through school are riddled with children being let off, in conditions of low expectation where interactions are compromised by collusion. We are prone to making poor assumptions about background, present levels of attainment, context, aspiration, resilience; missing the fact that we are both the problem and the solution.
We need to be more honest and braver as educationalists, guarding each child’s education and building great schools that deliberately step in to create pathways for disadvantaged learners to thrive and flourish. It takes the whole team to maintain provision that privileges disadvantage everywhere, only shared endeavour has any chance of systematically closing gaps; culture over lists of good intentions/interventions.
So:
There is little in this world more powerful than someone who deeply believes in you; educators have that power. An unconditional acceptance from a trusted adult gives a child the warm sense of belonging; a psychological safety that says we believe in you. Unpicking disadvantage is a team sport, focused on individuals to apply equity.
We are disproportionately influenced by those that we spend time with (sometimes chosen, sometimes destined, sometimes orchestrated); schools need to remove the school within school phenomenon – our choices around setting, staffing, curriculum either perpetuates disadvantage or removes it.
To fiercely educate is to have educational provision that reaches those that need us most. We need to measure what matters: the attendance and attainment of disadvantaged learners. Attendance first… we cannot fiercely educate any child we cannot see.
Our journey through education is disproportionately shaped by small acts; these are rare, often serendipitous experiences that shape us the most. How far do we purposefully engineer and create these moments of ignition within a child’s education so that they see themselves differently?
The disproportionate influence of five sentences within the novel of our lives.
Our interactions, language and the attention we give to others defines our attitude towards them and influences the way children see themselves. It is easy to understate the importance of culture and collective attitude in schools.
A child’s self-belief, self-confidence and self-image can be so fragile that inconsequential comments, experiences and actions can erode any belief that exists. As educators we can choose to fill or not fill these lockers. Removing deficit and neutral discourse in our shared language really matters; our words make a difference, both ways.
Simply adding “I am giving you this feedback because I believe in you,” changed students’ learning trajectories significantly (Cohen & Garcia, 2014).
“They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.”
Carl Buehner
We need great teaching in great schools to understand where children are in their learning and teach the next bit. Seeking to hunt not fish and to apply the equity that disadvantaged learners need. Weaving nets to catch the curriculum.
We are hard-wired to see success as talent and gift and not the expression of supported opportunity and accumulated hard work over time; it is the latter that disadvantage learners need, it is the former that perpetuate poor attitudes to individual potential and widens gaps.
We may well be witnessing a significant shift in the social contract. The contract held between families and school is eroding, relationships and attitudes are shifting. Whilst we wrestle with a whole range of challenges we must not forget, rather increase our investment in the individual children that walk into our schools everyday.
… you have the power to change lives, to weave a future for children, just as the threads of society are unravelling for too many children. You are the hope, for many the only second chance.
“History will judge us by the difference we make in the everyday lives of children.”
A sense of belonging: is one of humanity’s most basic needs; feeling an affinity with a group, that accepts you.
Enabling colleagues to feel a sense of belonging is an exercise in leadership. Leadership that creates the conditions for colleagues to feel psychologically safe and able to engage in meaningful work. It is under these conditions and when the climate is right, that colleagues feel a sense of belonging, that they have status and are empowered to use their agency to add value. When colleagues are encouraged and empowered they feel the protected and secure sense of being an insider.
“To feel a sense of belonging is to feel accepted, to feel seen and to feel included by a group of people… to not feel belonging is to experience the precarious and insecure sense of an outsider.”(Owen Eastwood, 2021)
Organisations that seek to be as amazing as the colleagues within, actively create the conditions for belonging. Under these conditions colleagues feel an affinity to the group and to the mission, they feel the security and acceptance that gives them the mandate to bring themselves to others and to their work. Where leaders create these conditions there is an alchemy of purposeful engagement that is self-sustaining and creates momentum; the momentum of the many on a mission.
Enhancing belonging requires nuanced leadership that understands the complexity of humans and human motivation to empower and align collective effort; freeing capability and capacity. It is this nuanced leadership that deliberately leads, makes decisions, upholds values, sets parameters and direction to a compelling future that empowers colleagues. Under these conditions colleagues feel the security of deliberate leadership that both holds and frees colleagues to make good decisions, more often and aligned in the pursuit of meaningful work.
“…an organisation is not a machine – it is a collection of individual human beings. …built on normal, everyday human relationships, and it will work so much better for us if we approach its design from a human-level perspective …understanding the “cultural magic” that makes an organisation feel truly human and creates a sense of connection and belonging.” (Tracey Camilleri, et al., 2023)
The following identifies the conditions required for connection and belonging.
Relationships, relationships, relationships
“It is difficult for us to realise how much information is socially transmitted, because the amount is staggering and the process is largely transparent.” (Pascal Boyer)
Treat people well. If belonging is an exercise in leadership, then leadership is an exercise in relationships. Leaders who engage with, listen to, seek to understand, learn, connect colleagues and at the same time make decisions, bring clarity, lead and set direction, create the climate for belonging. Be a host, not a guest.
Strong leaders use time to listen, learn and build relationships. This is about ensuring colleagues are known as individuals, individuals with a unique story, a story that is heard. Understanding an individual’s story allows colleagues to weave collective stories into the future; creating insiders, who feel and believe that they each belong.
“Isn’t it odd. We can only see our outsides, but nearly everything happens on the inside.” (Charlie Mackesy)
Taking time to build relationships and understanding what is on the inside is not just about securing belonging, it is also a matter of status and esteem.
Belonging that is alive in the DNA
Creating the conditions for belonging is not accidental, it is a deliberate attempt to influence the climate in which colleagues thrive. The organisation’s values, explicit and implicit, are the antecedent conditions for creating the climate for belonging. Values are never achieved just in words. Values need to be lived, to be meant, to be evident in artefacts, actions, behaviours, routines and language; our words matter, a lot, they are the window into the soul.
“…your culture is… (the) assumptions your colleagues use to resolve the problems they face every day …how they behave when no one is looking. If you do not methodically set your culture, then two thirds of it will end up being accidental, and the rest will be a mistake.” (Ben Horowitz)
Values that are just written, cliché ridden or tokenistic will erode, not build, belonging. Colleagues want to feel part of something bigger than themselves, something tangible and meaningful. Building culture is the result of all interactions and actions, over time, secured in years not months. Strong organisations invest deeply in values, they map values through the organisation, challenge anti-value behaviours and seek to nudge and reinforce values over time; it is what we do, it is what we are, it is how we come to be.
“Integrity is doing the right thingeven when no one is watching.” (C.S. Lewis)
Connect peers with purpose | describe a compelling future
Life is too short not to do something that matters. Connecting peers with purpose, encourages joint enterprise and individuals to have skin in the game, in the shared pursuit of something bigger, triggering a greater sense of belonging. Strong leaders paint pictures of what could be; building loyalty to the joint mission, rather than the leader.
Communication from set pieces to seemingly inconsequential comments, constantly set tone, reinforce culture and create the lived experience of what it is to be a member of this group. The art of leadership is revealed in meaningful communication, which connects colleagues to a shared purpose; knowing why we exist, gives us identity and something to belong to.
Belonging evaporates in a vacuum. Colleagues are cast adrift and feel a reduced sense of belonging where leaders fail to make decisions, set rules and implement well. Colleagues are not well held in an environment of constant initiative and u-turn or one that lacks direction or purpose. Place a few bets well; bets that all colleagues have a stake in, long term investments.
…and connect peers with each other. Build collaborative structures, give permission, provide mandates and expect colleagues to collaborate in a shared quest that adds value. This is at the heart of a learning organisation, one that frees colleagues to explore together, to learn together, to support each other and to make a difference.
“To be successful beyond the very short run, all organisations must incorporate moral purpose, respect, build, and draw on human relationships; and foster purposeful collaboration inside and outside the organisation.” (Michael Fullan)
Give away the ending, step away from the plot and the characters.
Leaders should give away the ending of the story/quest/mission in technicolour detail. They should also begin the story with the truth of the present situation, setting the scene, the baseline for the quest to follow. With the start and the end in place, leaders need to empower others to develop the plot, the twists, the character development that create the story; empowering others to find the way.
“…people rise to the occasion when they are helped by leaders who develop others to do something that is individually and collectively worthwhile. Such leaders tap into fundamental virtues of humans – and when they do, improvement happens quickly.” (Michael Fullan)
Leadership is not a passive activity, it is deliberate, seeking to empower colleagues, giving permission to exercise agency within the bounds of the shared values, headed toward our compelling, shared future. Colleagues thrive when they have purpose and the autonomy to seek mastery (Dan Pink).
Clarity is kindness. Colleagues need to understand the rules of the game and to understand what constitutes success in this team; how they belong. Without clarity, there is an uncertainty in action and a risk in expressing agency. Humans like rules, it is this clarity that creates safety.
Resist the temptation to simplify the complex.
Leave room for colleagues to express their agency. The dance between leading/directing and empowering drives the dividend, the value an organisation adds. The sweet spot between directing and empowering, enables more to contribute to the mission. Over directing, stifles contributions and agency, it denies professionalism and local decision making.
“When we build a culture of people who eagerly seek out and take responsibility, we build a culture that enables a special kind of resilient freedom.” (Seth Godin)
Feel the tension, leaders need to live and be happy with cognitive dissonance. Holding ideas in tension and resisting simplifications, or the urge to codify too far into the professional space. Whilst being clear about how we do things here is important (for the complicated), where provision is complex, leaders must invest in professional learning and the professional judgement of those closest to the action. We tend to be compelled to simplify, when many areas in education are in tension and require nuance; strong leaders live with and exploit this tension.
As a general rule people do not simply do what they are told to do (or at least not well or over time). Creating the conditions for colleagues to bring art to their work creates the climate for ownership, experimentation to get excited about the work.
Creating places of belonging is an exercise in nuanced leadership that invests deeply in human relationships. Leadership that influences the daily weather to create the long term climate that builds organisations as great as the colleagues within.
“In the end, all that matters is how we feel about the places we spend most of our time in. It is the sense of belonging that defines our experiences.” (Rob Carpenter)
When the weather conditions in our sector seem to be decreasing belonging, it is reassuring that belonging is typically situational, built, grown and strengthened locally with leaders building havens that we need to deliberately nurture more widely for our sector; a sector worth belonging to and where more feel that they belong.
Please hold while we try to connect you, your life is important to us
dis: the lack of, not…
We live in a time when increasing numbers of children are becoming disconnected from their world. Too often, circumstances and events act to disconnect disadvantaged learners, who become increasingly disillusioned and disenfranchised from society and school; pushed to the fringes. As children become disconnected their status, sense of belonging and self-esteem diminishes, encouraging retreat.
We live in a time of increased disconnection and social inequality, that is tipping life and opportunity away from increasing numbers of children who are presently disadvantaged. Disconnection is an ever-present thread, a process, through life, accentuated by key events that chip away at a child’s belief in what is possible. This is an on-going and sometimes catastrophic erosion of agency over time that encourages children to step back and not forward into opportunity.
“Disconnection is a fearsome state for a social animal to find itself in. It is a warning that its life is failing and its world has become hostile: where there’s no connection, there is no protection.” (Will Storr)
Looking through the lens of disadvantage we can see the circumstances and experiences that create disconnection and accentuate disadvantage. Almost none of it is purposeful, but we are inconveniently complicit through our actions and collude with practices that disconnect. The failure of a child to connect positively time after time, increases the likelihood of disconnection that drains the joy, the ambition and colour from life, profoundly harming well-being. Once disconnection leads to disillusionment, children find themselves on the outside, where return is possible, but rare. The powers of education are weak at this distance, too often any existing connection irretrievably snaps.
“…loneliness can quite literally make us sick? Human beings crave togetherness and interaction. Our spirits yearn for connection just as our bodies hunger for food.” (Rutger Bregman)
We can counteract and remove these “forces of disconnection” and create better climates and cultures that enable children to grow, to belong and to have more agency. Only then will children feel like the hero in their story through life. Heroes that need equity for their quest, to be privileged, to not be let off and to be held by high expectations worthy of hero-status. We do, however, need to meet them there and up the bandwidth of connection to reach out and say you belong here.
The pandemic is the greatest “disconnection event” of our time and it has entrenched and exposed a world that is already riddled with disconnection. A world where connection systematically weakens over time for increasing numbers and gaps become chasms between those that have and those that have not. The following explores just a few examples of disconnection.
Alternate realities | schools hidden within schools
Alternate reality: a self-contained separate world, coexisting within the real world.
Schools are navigated entirely differently by each child. We may like to generalise provision, but children are the only real experts of their experience. The reality for too many is that they attend a school within a school, disconnected and parallel to the best provision. These alternate realities hinge on a range of factors: levels of attainment, timetable, staffing, setting, banding, reputation, pathways, peers, groupings, pre-conceived ideas, expectations. Typically, high attaining children experience a privileged route, whilst lower attaining children endure a less privileged route; different reality, same school.
“The last thing a fish would ever notice would be water.”(Ralph Linton)
The decisions we make about how we organise provision, have consequences for learners, that create or deny connection, systematically over time. We have come to accept the alternate realities, where those presently disadvantaged are disproportionately represented in the less connected, lower performing, under ambitious, alternate reality. They do not often feel the privilege of the high attaining reality.
“What provokes our outrage depends on what surrounds us – on what we consider normal.” (Cass Sunstein)
Lost in Transition | mind the gap
Children navigate many transitions as they move through their education. Advantaged children leap confidently across these transitions, whilst disadvantaged gingerly and uncertainly step across; this is not for me. Whether it is the summer break (any break), moving schools, moving years, options or pathway choices, advantaged families step forward, stage manage, resource and guide readiness and decision making. At the same time disadvantaged learners get lost in transitions and lose connection, disconnected from seizing opportunities. In these transitions they are reminded that this is a world that happens to them, they step back, not forward and the gap widens, on repeat. We need to stage manage and connect children so they find (not lose) themselves in transition.
We assume too much | pedagogy and teacher that connects children to what is possible
Classrooms should build connection, not just between peers or with adults, but also with the joy of learning and the richness of subject. A connection that enables children to feel clever, to build knowledge and understanding that opens their eyes and inspires them to feel enfranchised and empowered; connecting and giving them access to the world.
Too often we make assumptions that erode connectivity and deny access, particularly for disadvantaged learners. Each time we assume knowledge, cultural capital, language, vocabulary, ability to attend to verbal and written instruction, resilience, persistence in seeking to understand… we limit accessibility and the ability to connect. Assuming too much over time, disenfranchises learners; there is a limit to how often a child will go back and try to connect.
“Making good use of school time is the single most egalitarian function that schools perform, because for disadvantaged children, school time is the only academic learning time, whereas advantaged students can learn a lot outside of school.” (Hirsch)
Enhancing connection in classrooms:
Invest deliberately in a Reading Strategy; perhaps the most important enabler for learning, connecting to the best that has been written. Literally connecting a child, forever, to learning and the world around them; fundamentally enhancing quality of life.
Invest in vocabulary, the keys to language, to comprehension, discussion, building fluency and falling in love with words.
Invest in oracy; supporting children to find their voice to articulate, apply and explore their understanding out loud, connect to others and have a voice that is heard.
Tell stories that bounce up and down through the curriculum, reducing assumptions, inspiring, connecting knowledge and understanding in rich retrieval spaces.
Weave schema nets: really understand the architecture and structure of subject. It is this spine, these key organising concepts that create the net or holding baskets for future learning.
Keep the curriculum tight, spiralling and bouncing not far from the core spine of the subject. Too much unconnected breadth or arbitrary content disconnects disadvantaged learners; who are much more likely to blame themselves than the quality of teaching.
“The curriculum should whisper to our children, you belong. You did not come from nowhere. All this came before you, and one day you too might add to it.” (Ben Newmark)
Connection lost | attendance first
Looking for the disconnected? they aren’t in. Everyday too many children are physically disconnected from school. If we do not consider attendance first and reach out to reconnect we reinforce disconnection. In our endemic world the forces disconnecting children from their education are strong. There is a growing sense of wider disconnection that is shifting attitudes and weakening the contract held between families and schools. Children need to feel like they belong, that they can succeed, that it is worth attending and that we deeply care if they are in. Belonging is rarely achieved through compulsion or penalty.
Small moments of prestige | interactions can have serious repercussions for the future
“Anything you do could have serious repercussions on future events. Do you understand?” (Doc Brown, BTTF)
Tread carefully, you know not where your influence will lead. Each interaction or experience can trigger a child to connect or disconnect to a new self-image a new sense of whether this is for them; whether they step forward and persist or step back and dissociate. Each positive connection fills a child’s “confidence locker” stacking evidence that they can do.
“An ignition story … when a young person falls helplessly in love with their future passion … a tiny, world shifting thought lighting up your unconscious mind: I could be them” (Dan Coyle)
Small moments of prestige, give status. We all need to feel clever, to achieve something, to be acknowledged, to be truly listened to, to be invested in, to see yourself in the learning, to build belonging and status over time. Every interaction, word, comment, response, expectation, experience builds or breaks a child’s sense of what is possible (often stickily into adulthood). It is too easy for individuals to grow disconnected and to feel the insecure sense of being an outsider.
“To feel a sense of belonging is to feel accepted, to feel seen, to feel included.. to not feel belonging is to experience the precarious and insecure sense of an outsider“(Owen Eastwood)
Our language and expectations are an expression of our attitudes towards others. Deficit language erodes connection, we need to invest in specific language, in high standards and expectations; if we let you off we let you down. High expectations are an expression care, that connect and include individuals. To grow up advantaged is to be shaped by high expectations.
“My expectations about you define my attitude towards you.” (Rutger Bregman)
“some of us may need to start with bubbles of safety.. when we belong and where we are encouraged or at least allowed to make a contribution, the magic happens.” (Jon Alexander)
Strong Trusts build collaborative structures and platforms for great schools to create more value for all children, over time. This trust dividend enables groups of schools to achieve more than the sum of their parts, and more than before. Strong Trusts are values-led, purpose-driven, learning organisations who establish the conditions for colleagues to create collaborative intelligence that becomes trust wisdom that strengthens great schools.
“Instead of seeing trees (schools) as individual agents competing for resources, she proposed the forest as ‘a co-operative system’, in which trees ‘talk’ to one another, producing a collaborative intelligence she described as ‘forest (trust) wisdom’. Some older trees even ‘nurture’ smaller trees.” (Robert Macfarlane)
There is now enough maturity in our system to identify how strong Trusts create enough value to sustain groups of great schools; school is Trust, Trust is school. Deepening this understanding will enable educators to take greater stewardship of the sector and build strong Trusts that work together for all children. The following identifies five functions of a strong Trust that, taken together, create a trust dividend that supports, empowers and sustains great schools.
The five functions of a strong Trust | in brief
One: Strong Trusts are values-led and purpose-driven, they understand why they exist, live out their values, achieve their purpose, tell stories of the future, create coherence and clarity to establish a climate where colleagues belong to something bigger and are empowered to add value.
Two: Strong Trusts standardise areas of provision that build platforms for colleagues to stand on and exploit, areas that are high dividend and rise the tide, particularly a shared curriculum, shared assessment and wider professional services. These are significant investments in high dividend areas, over time, that add future value.
Three: Strong Trusts invest in leadership, particularly of headteachers, so that there is a deep investment in relationships, setting direction and implementation within schools. Leadership that builds and sustains a strong culture and great teaching, hallmarks of great schools and areas that are largely empowered to and owned by schools.
Four: Strong Trusts create collaborative structures, an architecture enabling colleagues to collaborate across the Trust in networks and communities, creating, designing, developing and aligning approaches that add value. Trusts are risk-informed, distorting resource and expertise to tackle underperformance.
Five: Strong Trusts maintain high standards creating the conditions for healthy competition, great schools joined in the shared endeavour of raising standards, transparently using trust-wide data, building shared intelligence and using research-led approaches to inform implementation and school improvement.
+One: Strong Trusts act within and on the system, working together with other Trusts, to create a collective dividend and take responsibility for the education system, serving communities as anchor institutions and working with other civic partners to support all children.
The Five Functions of a Strong Trust, the next level of detail
One: Values-led, purpose-driven | building culture and belonging
Strong Trusts know and understand why they exist. They have a set of compelling values and clarity of purpose that galvanises colleagues into shared endeavour and collective responsibility. This clarity aligns colleagues, informs the strategic investments and paints a compelling future, that guides the big and small decisions made across the Trust by all colleagues every day. It is in these actions, over time, and not in the written words, that culture emerges.
“…understanding the “cultural magic” that makes an organisation feel truly human, and creates a sense of connection and belonging.” (Tracey Camilleri, et al.)
Without this clarity of purpose, colleagues struggle to place themselves and their work within the Trust. Strong Trusts create a sense of belonging, give status and build esteem, because the rules of the game are clear, colleagues understand the journey and are empowered to add value. This is a significant investment in people, actively building well-being to create psychologically safe, high trust, heart felt collegiality that holds people in the Trust.
“To feel a sense of belonging is to feel accepted, to feel seen and to feel included by a group of people… to not feel belonging is to experience the precarious and insecure sense of an outsider.”(Owen Eastwood, 2021)
Strong Trusts bring coherence and clarity on how we do things here, what is standardised, empowered, the routines and collaborative structures that secure school improvement at scale. Deepening understanding of the Trust’s Theory of Action empowers colleagues to build great schools on the platform of the Trust.
Two: Standardisation | creating a platform for colleagues
Strong Trusts deliberately standardise areas of provision, typically complicated areas, that add value and create platforms for colleagues to focus on the Main Thing(s). Amongst the most important to standardise: a shared curriculum, shared assessment, syllabi and professional services.
A shared curriculum where learning is progressive, sequenced, and coherent over time is one of the most important levers available to Trusts; being experts and collaborating on one curriculum, rather than many.
A shared assessment system across all year groups, based on the shared curriculum and shared examination syllabi create an accountability framework and the intelligence for raising standards. This provides the elements required for co-opetition and the transparent sharing of data for the purposes of school improvement; school is Trust, Trust is school.
Three: Trust Leadership | empowering leadersto build great schools
Strong Trusts invest in leaders, particularly Headteachers, as the key agents in building and sustaining great schools, investing in their knowledge, development and wellbeing. Great leadership builds relationships, sets direction and implements well. Strong Trusts seek to drive-up the quality of this leadership, they build a curriculum for it and create the conditions that empower leaders to lead great schools, within a strong Trust.
Strong Trusts understand where to standardise (complicated) and where to empower (complex). Whilst great schools are great at many things, two areas stand out. Firstly, great schools propagate a strong cultureof high expectation that is scholarly and builds character. Secondly, they secure greatteaching, through professional learning and developing individual teachers. Both areas are largely empowered to schools as they require contextualising and local decision making, to follow learning to meet need and to build culture in context.
Four: Deliberate collaboration I networks, communities and expertise
Strong Trusts create collaborative structures for colleagues to build collective intelligence and understanding; an investment in people. Networks and communities connect colleagues horizontally across the Trust and within and beyond phases to create the conditions for improvement, the sharing of practice and alignment; moving towards a self-improving Trust. Creating the architecture, time, artefacts and purpose of collaboration that empower colleagues to focus together on the Main Thing(s).
“…we can speed this process (trial and error) up by creating systems and platforms where we search for new knowledge systematically… integrate the result into our body of knowledge, and apply it into new ways of doing things.” (Johan Norberg)
Strong Trusts deliberately build expertise and improvement tools that support school improvement, particularly in areas of provision that are specialist and in high demand; one of the key advantages of Trusts. The accessibility and use of expertise commissioned and utilised by schools and headteachers creates the conditions for a self-improving Trust.
“The stars we are given. The constellations we make.” (Rebecca Solnit)
Strong Trusts are risk-informed, use information, intelligence and data to concentrate and distort the resources developed by the Trust to improve areas of underperformance. They develop expertise and capacity over time, commensurate with scale, and use school improvement teams and specific expertise to improve schools in a timely, proportionate and deliberate way.
Five: High Standards | competition and transparent performance data
Strong Trusts balance co-operation and competition to drive up trust standards; co-opetition. The transparent, deliberate use of data (democratised data) to understand performance and school improvement, in high-trust environments, builds intelligence and informs improvement. Great schools invest in quality assurance as part of strong implementation practices, supported by the trust and accessing trustworthy expertise, resources and tools.
Strong Trusts are research-led, often working in cognitive dissonance, holding opposing ideas in tension; resisting simplified swings based on trend; tempering influences and instead leaning on seminal readings and peer-reviewed research. They are learning organisations who use the Trust as a test-bed to understand performance and deliberately share intelligence.
+One: Sector engaged| all trusts working together for all children
Strong Trusts work within and on the wider system. They understand that the success of the Trust hinges on the success of other Trusts and that we all have a shared responsibility and stewardship for the education system as a whole; all trusts working together for all children. By working in partnership and with a sense of altruism, Trusts can better understand how to add value, achieve dividend, and take greater collective responsibility for our system.
By building strong, resilient Trusts that are connected as partner Trusts, we can seize our opportunity to serve communities, build partnerships and exploit the opportunities afforded by civic leadership, anchor trusts and investing in place. This creates a stronger education system, better able to secure equity through education, social mobility, justice and to reach those presently disadvantaged; disadvantaged even over.
Great schools, strong Trust |the five functions
The five functions seek to create a trust dividend, establishing a strong Trust with great schools. The functions create the opportunity for Trusts to be self-improving, with leaders empowered and connected to lead on the platform of the Trust. This long-term investment builds strong Trusts who can work with partner Trusts to add a collective dividend that transforms the life chances of children. All trusts working together for all children.
Dan Nicholls | February 2023
The thinking presented here is based on the work, experience and thinking of colleagues across Cabot Learning Federation.
“We need a social contract that is about pooling and sharing more risks with each other to reduce the worries we all face while optimising the use of talent across our sector … It also means caring about the well-being not just of our own pupils, but of others’ too, since they will all occupy the same world in the future.” (Minouche Shafik)
For just over a decade, schools have been coalescing and forming into multi-academy trusts. The forces that push and pull these schools together are born as much out of circumstance and chance, than intelligent design. As Trusts mature, there is an ever-increasing responsibility falling on educators to find coherence, to create more value and to secure a Trust Dividend. A dividend that enables groups of schools to achieve more than the sum of their parts, and more than before.
Whilst Trusts have grown and matured, the sector remains under development, with trust leaders building purposeful collaboration across groups of schools to seek additional value. There is now enough maturity in our system, to understand and explore how Trusts create the conditions and climate for higher performance. This will require us to lift our horizon, to think beyond the immediate distractions, including growth and to take a longer-term view. So that together, altruistically, far-sightedly, we continue to build Trusts that make a difference now and into the future. It is a moment of uncommon opportunity to take greater stewardship and together build a stronger education system, where all Trusts, work together for all children.
“I would contend that now is a moment of uncommon opportunity, and we should seize it.” (Jon Yates)
By building strong, resilient Trusts that are connected as partner Trusts, we can seize our opportunity to serve communities and exploit the opportunities afforded by civic leadership, anchor trusts and investing in place. Seeking far greater equity through education, for all children in these challenging times and creating a stronger education system that creates social mobility, justice and reaches those presently disadvantaged; disadvantaged even over.
“Whether the systems that emerge… are better or worse than the current dispensation depends on our ability to tell a new story, a story that learns from the past, places us in the present and guides the future.” (George Monbiot)
We should continue to seek a story and a sector that is developed more through joint enterprise, than tribalism, and invest deeply in people and partnerships. A shared endeavour that explores how best to secure a trust dividend, adding value that is significant, persistent and contingent on the existence of the Trust, and a collective trust dividend that transforms our system now and into the future. We may need to re-orientate from a sector where Trusts struggle for existence to one where Trusts are joined in a struggle for performance. Creating an education system that is values driven and built on a collaborative model that transforms lives; the real promise of academisation and Multi Academy Trusts.
“History will judge us by the difference we make in the everyday lives of children.” (Nelson Mandela)
The following seeks to explore how Trusts can intelligently implement high dividendapproaches and strategies to secure a trust dividend. Decisions made in these spaces on what is standardised, empowered and how these are sustained and intelligently implemented will determine the long-term trust dividend. It is not a framework or a checklist. It seeks to offer a language for discussing and thinking coherently about what Trusts are, what they need to be and what they can achieve.
“In these difficult times of upheaval and uncertainty, it is up to us now to build a resilient school system that has the capacity and can create the conditions to keep getting better. We believe that is the potential of a trust-based system.” (Leora Cruddas)
The Trust Dividend
The purpose of a Trust is to add more value than the sum of the parts and more than before. This additional value is the Trust Dividend: A significant and persistent level of performance that is contingenton the existence of the Trust and enables schools to work in a higher performance space over time, above that which would have been achieved without the Trust.
Securing a trust dividend, is contingent on the actions taken by a Trust, typically including a level of standardisation, empowerment and collaboration that creates value. As a Trust matures and makes good decisions about where to invest in high dividend strategies there is an inflection point when a discernibledividend is evident that holds the Trust in a higher performance space.
The following diagram compares the impact of a Trust (in blue) with the performance of the same schools if they had not become a Trust (in green). Over time, if the Trust successfully implements approaches that are significant and persistent a trust dividend is created above that of the original schools.
As a rule of thumb, a dividend is hard to achieve and to sustain, we should assume young and maturing Trusts have relatively low influence and capacity to secure a dividend. We should seek evidence of systemic and sustained influence of the Trust on performance and provision to build confidence in the existence of a dividend. The timing of the inflection point is dependent on a range of factors, including scale of trust, strategic decisions, founding principles, values, capacity, capital (intellectual and financial), geography etc. Engaging as knowledge building organisations, Trusts can build a body of knowledge that informs decision making to create stronger dividends.
“…we can speed this process (trial and error) up by creating systems and platforms where we search for new knowledge systematically… integrate the result into our body of knowledge, and apply it into new ways of doing things.” (Johan Norberg)
A Trust Dividend is a composite suite of strategies and approaches that Trusts employ to add value over time. Consequently, some actions and strategies add value sooner, some are stubborn, and barely add value, and a few unintentionally decrease value.
The Trust Dividend needs to be significant and persistent
We need to exercise caution, too often we over-estimate the impact of the Trust, too often mis-understanding cause and effect and attributing impact where it is not warranted. Achieving a trust dividend is a high bar it requires Trusts to implement high dividend strategies and approaches that are significant and persistent.
Where it is neither significant or persistent it approximates to normal to status quo. If it is significant, but not persistent, it may have an impact, but not over time, may be dependent on transient conditions, inputs or specific people (Teflon). Something that is persistent and not significant, sticks, but is of low value (Velcro).
A higher performance space | seeking the signal in the noise and antifragility
The Trust Dividend holds schools in higher performance space that may become irreversible and ultimately self-improving (where normal routines hold the trust in the higher performance space) beyond that of stand-alone schools and the previous system. A dividend should be sought across provision and in schools within a Trust, it should act to reduce variance and improve standards within a Trust over time. A dividend that is identifiable, and undeniably contingent on the actions of the Trust. Whilst quantitative measures are the easiest to interrogate for evidence of a Trust Dividend, qualitative dividends add significant value and are often the foundation for quantitative measures.
Reliably identifying a trust dividend requires that we search for signal in the noise. The dividend that emerges from the noise needs to be beyond the noise of normal variations in performance over time. The emergence of a dividend is likely to not happen across a Trust at the same time or with the same potency. An evaluation of positive deviants in the population may indicate early dividend and/or where we should seek future value. Understanding the causes of variation between schools, particularly over time, in the same Trust is invaluable in understanding how value is added and dividends created.
Whilst a trust dividend should be significant and persistent, we should seek dividends that display antifragility, the dividend becomes stronger not weaker under stress. This indicates that the Trust is moving into a self-improving space that sustains and holds up performance that will go beyond our time and become a long-term dividend.
Seeking Expected Value (EV) and Future Value (FV)
As trusts seek a dividend it is helpful to consider the Expected Value (EV) and Future Value (FV) of strategic moves. Whilst this pushes us to think in bets, these are not one-off punts, more a strategic identification of areas of work (in the right order) that the Trust invests in deeply, to secure irreversible improvement and conditions for performance. It is an inconvenient truth that seeking this added value is typically high effort for lasting impact and, annoyingly, it is rarely quick to pay-off. Areas including shared curriculum, shared assessment, deep investment in Trust culture, professional services and building trust leadership are considerable undertakings, but carry high expected and future value.
Why do you (your Trust) exist?
If a Trust is to secure a dividend it needs to know where it is going and what it seeks to achieve; to know why it exists.
It is the reason for existence that directs the dividend. Too often values, mission statements and visions are cliché ridden, assumed, taken for granted and superficial. Unless you know where and what you specifically aim to achieve, where you want the trust to go, then anywhere will do. Leaders who paint the clearest picture of the preferred future, who tell stories of what will be, in high-definition, inspire movements, create greater value, and create the climate for stronger dividends.
“If everything is important, then nothing is… When you know your reason for existence, it should effect the decisions you make.” (Lencioni)
If the values, collective purpose and direction of the Trust is widely owned, this creates the climate, language, habits and behaviours that secure a dividend that is more self-sustaining; pointing colleagues in the right direction, joined in a shared endeavour and mission to make a difference.
Mis-aligned energies will weaken the force and dilute the dividend, we tend to approximate the value that would have been achieved if the Trust did not exist.
A Trust dividend acts like a force that holds the trust in a higher performance and cultural space. The values, principles, ethos and culture of a Trust creates psychological safety to colleagues, a place of belonging and one that gives status and esteem. This gives identity, motivates and encourages discretionary effort that taken together lifts the Trust into a self-improving space; creating the purpose and the autonomy to seek mastery.
Where to play? | Standardise the complicated, empower the complex
Achieving a significant dividend requires Trusts to make good decisions about how they work. Aspects of provision can be broadly divided in to complicated or complex. Understanding this difference supports decisions about where Trusts (and academies, departments or any team) should standardise and where they should empower colleagues.
Areas that are largely complicated are open to standardisation. Complicated areas act largely the same way each time. These areas can often be reduced to a checklist; if this, then do that. Trusts should play in these areas and standardise as there is limited need for local decision making or creativity. For example, shared curriculum, shared assessment, professional services, data, Trust values, Trust leadership, governance…
Areas that are largely complex should be empowered to schools and colleagues. Complex areas respond differently each time and are typically influenced by the unpredictability of human action and interaction, requiring in the moment decision making. In complex areas of provision, we need to push decisions closer to the action where quality and outcome is linked to the situation as it emerges. For example, academy culture, ethos, behaviour, teaching and learning, academy leadership, quality assurance…
…under the conditions of true complexity – where the knowledge required exceeds that of any individual and unpredictability reigns – efforts to dictate every step from the centre will fail. People need room to act and adapt. …they require a seemingly contradictory mix of freedom and expectation …and also to measure progress towards common goals. (Atul Gawande)
“You can mandate to get the system from awful to adequatebut not from adequate to great. To do that you have to unleash potential and creativity. This cannot be centrally mandated but has to be locally enabled.” (Michael Barber)
Where should Trusts standardise and empower?
“Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work” (Seth Godin)
As Trusts standardise areas of provision a column is built on which colleagues can lean and stand upon to focus on the Main Thing(s). Where these standardised areas are developed by teachers for teachers (curating curriculum and designing assessment), we move to a self-improving system owned by colleagues across the Trust. On this platform all colleague across the Trust are empowered to Red Dance, to do what they do best and what they signed-up for; to make a difference to the lives of children.
Areas of provision that are standardised and empowered need to be sustained, guided, held and validated. Empowerment can be supported and magnified by strong values, principles, trust standards, co-opetition, transparent data, horizontal collaboration and a deliberate development of trust leadership and implementation. It is the investment from the Trust in these sustained areas that reinforce the high dividend areas of work and create the conditions for a persistent Trust Dividend.
The following table identifies the key areas that are standardised (typically complicated) and areas where Trusts should empower (typically complex). Contextualisation ensures that standardised and empowered areas strengthen the dividend, owned locally; how we do things here.
The need to standardise, empower and sustain works at all levels within the trust, it is fractal, relevant at Trust, academy, team-level.
Creating the column holds colleagues, simplifies approaches and builds a platform for red dancing, to do what they do best, reducing workload and removing the need to re-invent complicated provision. Empowering colleagues is an expression of trust, it says that they are best placed to make decisions in complex areas and make a difference. We create the sustaining collaborative structures, invest in trust leadership, networks and communities, democratise data and quality assurance to create the conditions for colleagues to feel secure and feel success. This investment is about belonging, giving status and building esteem.
Overcooking Standardisation into the complex areas
It is desirable for Trusts to build standardised approaches that raise the tide and create Trust effectiveness. As the level of standardisation increases it reaches a sweet spot where there is a desirable balance. Beyond the sweet spot further standardisation stifles local decision making and reduces effectiveness.
Trust Leadership | Headteachers as the key agents of improvement
In any Trust it is hard to understate the importance of headteachers. Whilst a number of things separate high and low performing schools, it typically hinges on the quality of leadership and particularly that of the Head.
This is still very much true within Trusts. Seeking and securing a Trust Dividend is strongly hinged on the colleagues that turn up in schools every day. Great heads are experts in relationships and implementation, understanding the complicated and the complex and standardising, empowering and sustaining to seek a dividend. Trusts need to invest in an on-going leadership curriculum the secures and develops trust leadership, focused on Headteachers. Michael Barber’s model is useful for considering implementation, the importance of execution and the boldness/promise of a strategy.
Trusts and headteachers need to place a few bets well, principled innovation on high dividend strategies, that are executed well to achieve improvement and transformation, a dividend. Multiple initiatives that promise much (or little) that are not well executed will be ignored or cause controversy; if this happens too often it weakens the credibility of leadership.
Sustaining and enhancing a Trust Dividend requires strong collaborative structures within a Trust that purposefully connects colleagues to collaborate, creating the conditions for intensely focused collaboration. This is perhaps the greatest advantage that Trusts have. Expert Networks allow the sharing of expertise and development of practice across the Trust, aligning and strengthening the standardised as well as the empowered. Subject Communities, curate curriculum, design assessment and focus on enactment and pedagogy: by teachers for teachers. The sum of this connectivity and collaboration enhances and develops practice that adds dividend and becomes self-sustaining, self-improving.
“Communities of Practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.” (Etienne Wenger)
All Trusts working together for all children
We have an uncommon opportunity as educators to build an education systemthat is more about joint enterprise and shared endeavour. Trusts working together for all children, seeking trust and collective dividends that exploit our collaborative structures within and between Trusts to bring greater coherence and effectiveness; reaching all children and bringing light in these gloomy times.
A greater understanding of why we exist, what constitutes a trust dividend, and what does not, the nature of complicated and complex, how this links to standardisation, empowerment and how this can be sustained as well as the importance of Headteachers, implementation and collaborative networks and communities can secure dividends. Seeking a sector that is a co-operative system, where collaborative intelligence becomes wisdom and we enable groups of schools to achieve more than the sum of their parts, and more than before.
“Instead of seeing trees as individual agents competing for resources, she proposed the forest as ‘a co-operative system’, in which trees ‘talk’ to one another, producing a collaborative intelligence she described as ‘forest wisdom’. Some older trees even ‘nurture’ smaller trees that they recognise as their ‘kin’, acting as ‘mothers’.” (Robert Macfarlane)
Dan Nicholls | February 2023
The thinking and ideas in this piece are heavily influenced and created by colleagues across Cabot Learning Federation.
“Of course, poverty isn’t the only way in which people get overlooked by society; there are many ways that the world has of saying, “you don’t belong here.” … I wanted to say, “yes, you DO belong. We all belong here.” (Tom Percival, 2022, from “The Invisible”)
Our world is getting darker. In the enveloping gloom, individual children are becoming invisible, trapped by circumstance. We urgently need to wield our collective power and throw light on those who are fading. If we choose to work in education, and we do, then we also choose to make a difference to the lives of all children. And if it is about all children then we are compelled, through our shared duty of care, to tackle the eye-watering and widening inequality. Together we must secure far greater equity through education, giving individuals what they specifically need and seeking to close the growing chasm between those that have and those that have not.
It is already too dark, for too many: the cost-of-living crisis, fuel, inflation, pandemic, political uncertainty, instability, conflict, the education system… has disenfranchised and exacerbated hopelessness. Everywhere you look in education the gap is widening. Whilst advantaged children and families have some (much) immunity, the world is forcing disadvantaged children and families to re-prioritise and step further back. This is cumulatively, and seemingly irreversibly, eroding status, belonging and undermining esteem.
Over 4 million children, and rising, are growing up in poverty. Everywhere, families are struggling to meet their basic needs, forcing education and wider experiences to be inaccessible, unaffordable (in time and money). Securing the basic needs overwhelms, gradually removing the colour and slowly, intractably dissolving individuals who are ever more invisible in our world; hidden in plain sight.
”(Our) focus on (eye)sight means that we often are at a loss on how to deal with things that are invisible… and it works against us when it’s … invisible over time (like disadvantage). When there’s a conflict between what we know and what we see, we often default to the wrong one.” (Seth Godin)
As educators, we are, for many children, the only second chance, but we are evidently not yet meeting that challenge. There is a heartbreakingly large number of individuals fading within our society and in our schools. But it is not hopeless, we should take heart, because we have what we need. We can create the conditions that offer hope, build status, esteem and agency; empowering children to become more visible. Ensuring that those experiencing disadvantage, are given the opportunities and experiences to be the masters of their fate and captains of their soul. (William Henley)
Together we are obligated to tackle this invisibility and empower the marginalised, at a time when we are also distracted by these darkening times. Our collective endeavour, is to use education to illuminate and bring more colour, to more lives. It is through our leadership and in teams, that we can unswervingly focus on our best levers, teaching and culture to bring light to this darkness and to say, “yes, you do belong.”
The following explores the key bets for securing greater equity through education for presently disadvantaged children. Whilst far from exhaustive, they seek to stop children from fading and becoming invisible.
“One measure of poverty is how little you have. Another is how difficult you find it to take advantage of what others try to give you.” (Michael Lewis)
One way to guarantee the invisibility is to accept poor attendance, everyday a disadvantaged learner is not in school the gap grows. It takes a whole school to improve attendance, because it is a team sport, with an individual focus. Seeking preventative strategies based on really knowing our individual children and families, as well as our responsive actions, reaches out and encourages/expects attendance. We must commit to persistently and insistently working to remove barriers to attendance. So that we, meet them there, apply equity, ensure that they are pushed and pulled to school, resisting the forces that encourage retreat.
It is not good enough to just have good provision, we must support individuals to be present, visible and to take advantage. This is, of course, tightly linked to the quality of education, no one actively misses high quality provision, or the best party in town. Disadvantage attendance is the one measure that can be chased and improved every day; and every day counts when we tackle invisibility.
Measure what we care about (Leadership)
“You should measure things you care about. If you’re not measuring, you don’t care and you don’t know.” (Steve Howard)
Not measuring what matters adds another layer of invisibility. Measuring what matters focuses our accountability systems and our attention towards enacting the level and depth of equity required to make a difference. Giving permission and incentivising colleagues to chase what is worth having; giving children what they specifically, individually need.
“This is Vanity Fair a world where everyone is striving for what is not worth having.” (William Thackery)
The early advantage, linguistic privilege and supported opportunity that advantaged children enjoy, accumulates success, regardless and sometimes in spite of school. With less early advantage, disadvantaged learners need schools to be excellent, only then will provision reach and achieve the equity required to accumulate advantage. It is the attainment of disadvantaged learners, even over, that is the best measure of the effectiveness of provision. How far a school or Trust achieves attainment mobility and closes gaps to be in line with advantaged learners is the barometer of the quality of provision.
“Making good use of school time is the single most egalitarian function the schools perform, because for disadvantaged children, school time is the only academic learning time, whereas advantaged students can learn a lot outside of school.” (Hirsch)
Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing(Teaching)
“Teaching quality is important. It is arguably the greatest lever at our disposal for improving the life chances of the young people in our care, particularly for those from disadvantaged backgrounds.” (Peps McCrea, 2016)
The quality of education, particularly teaching, and the culture of schools are the main things for securing equity and growing great humans, with the agency needed to exploit their future. This is the bet, consistently applied, over the 12,000 lessons and the 15,000 hours they are in school (age 4 to 16), that will reverse delayed attainment, linguistic under-privilege and accumulate advantage.
Disadvantage learners disproportionately thrive when teaching is strong. When it is weak, advantaged learners still make sense of it, whilst disadvantage learners fall even further behind. When teaching is purposeful, precise and where language and explanation includes and does not exclude learners, disadvantage learners make more progress. Where expectations remain high and where we scaffold to fill gaps in understanding, spiralling and bouncing back and forth in the curriculum we secure a narrative that has the footholds, ropes and ladders for disadvantaged learners. We need to avoid presumptions of language, background knowledge and self-efficacy (Marc Rowland). Of course, disadvantage learners really need us to follow learning to meet need, to explain clearly and well, model expertly and to engage in explanation; making learning explicit, coherent and accessible.
Viewing teaching through the disadvantaged lens forces us to really explore, know and understand where learners are, find out what they know, what they don’t know and teach the next bit (Asubel). Whilst knowledge is power, it is understanding and application of knowledge that is king. The mind best understands facts when they are woven into a conceptual fabric, such as a narrative, mental map, or intuitive theory. Disconnected facts in the mind are like unlinked pages on the Web: they might as well not exist (Stephen Pinker). Teaching that deeply understands subject, the substantive concepts, its architecture, offers the best route map for disadvantage learners; it weaves nets.
Weaving curriculum nets(Teaching)
Decisions about what knowledge to teach is an exercise of power and therefore a weighty ethical responsibility. What we choose to teach confers or denies power (Christine Counsell). There is nothing more important for disadvantaged learners than a well sequenced, conceptually coherent curriculum that efficiently, and intentionally enacts the best of what has been thought and said. If the curriculum is overloaded, disconnected, full of arbitrary knowledge we will not be weaving conceptual nets and much will slip through as unresolved cognitive conflict. It is the progressive and precise sequence, coherence and clarity that disadvantaged learners really need.
When we teach out of sequence, disadvantage learners assume that they do not understand, and this encourages further retreat and desk top truancy. Really, deeply thinking about why this, why now is so important – we often seek to cover too much, to move on too quickly and to be activity/task driven, instead of securing the conceptual spine that, once in place, will hold and accelerate future learning. Disadvantage learners need us to really know our subject and the progression, they neither have the time or the wider schema to make sense and find their way through the arbitrary or the ill-sequenced. Curriculum is arguably the most important lever that we have, it is further developed here: Closing the gap curriculum as the lever
Vocabulary | give the keys of language(Teaching)
“Education is the process of preparing us for the big world and the big world has big words. The more big words I know, the better I will survive in it. Because there are hundreds of thousands of big words in English, I cannot learn them all. But this does not mean that I shouldn’t try to learn some.” (David Crystal)
Big words, for a big world. Vocabulary gifts the keys of language, the basis for deeper understanding, but even more importantly gives access to culture, enfranchises and privileges learners. Being vocabulary-poor disenfranchises and excludes, it takes the colour away. Teaching (exploring, marvelling at) words in context, in subjects, connected to big ideas and concepts makes children feel clever, builds esteem and, most importantly, the words are stickier in schema.
“The large amount of school time spent in direct word study is not being spent on systemically becoming familiar with new knowledge domains, where word learning occurs naturally, and up to four times faster, without effort.” (Hirsch, 2017)
It is a feature of growing up in an advantaged home that words become jewels in conversations. And it is the etymology and structure of words that really intrigue and make individuals feel clever. Gifting a wealth of words to children, unlocks doors into the past, into interesting places and times, uncovering provenance, quirky connections and ; Joy filled learning.
By paying attention to vocabulary growth at the micro level, we can better understand it, we can go to cultivating it and in so doing every child will be gifted a wealth of words.” (Alex Quigley, 2018)
Oracy |valuing everyone’s voice(Teaching)
“It may seem an obvious thing to say, but one of the best things we can do with young children is to have interesting and enjoyable conversations with them.” (Michael Rosen)
Oracy exposes language, vocabulary, thought, cultural capital and understanding to all. Our sentences and words open the window to our understanding and how individuals navigate the world. Disadvantaged learners need full immersion in rich conversation, be given permission to listen, encouragement to be heard and the safety to articulate understanding out loud. In doing so they fire the connections, build word wealth and secure schema that grows confidence, cognition and enables musing and exploration. It is why we should be picky on full response, why we should provoke and encourage discussion and debate. It is also on this sea of talk that great writing happens. We need to articulate our ideas and thoughts, our opinions and cogitations to bring colour to learning, to revel in thinking and for individuals to find their voice.
“If we are truly committed to empowering every young person regardless of their background, with the belief that their voice has value and the ability to articulate their thoughts so others will listen, then it is time to get talking in class.” (Beccy Earnshaw)
Reading | opening eyes to multiple worlds (Teaching)
“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” (Dr Seuss)
Reading and the development of reading is fundamental for accumulating advantage. It is hard to over-state the importance of reading: it develops cultural capital, comprehension, vocabulary, thinking, empathy, inference, confidence, concentration, oracy, writing, esteem… all the ingredients required to achieve attainment mobility. Alex Quigley offers this helpful summary on developing reading:
Start with careful planning a broad and balanced curriculum that brings a world of knowledge alive.
Ensure pupils do lots and lots of reading of challenging texts.
Support pupils to develop, connect and cohere their knowledge.
Give pupils targeted, text sensitive support to deploy reading comprehension strategies, with a gradual release of responsibility.
Avoid over-practising comprehension assessments that can compromise curriculum time for read extended texts. (Alex Quigley, 2022)
More than any other subject, English – and especially reading – gives pupils access to the rest of the curriculum and is fundamental to their educational success. (Ofsted, English Research Review, 2022)
Hunt don’t fish(Teaching)
“Fair doesn’t mean giving every child the same thing, it means giving every child what they need.” (Rick Lavoie)
We are pre-programmed in education to seek equality, which in most areas of life is essential. But disadvantaged learners need more than equality, they need equity, they need what they need, not what everyone needs. This ensures that we privilege and prioritise the needs of disadvantage learners – to know exactly where they are and give them what they need – and to do that we need to hunt not fish. To fish is to cast the net and do the same for all (privileging advantaged) to hunt is to seek to meet the individual needs (privileging disadvantage).
Advantaged childhood; one of high-demand and expectations(Culture)
Sit up at the table, elbows, don’t talk with your mouth full, use the right tense, sit up, can you rephrase that, do you know where that word comes from, you know that links to this and what we saw there, finish all of that, put you knife and fork together, dry-up, put away, finish your homework, when is your tutoring, tidy your room, what time is training? have you got your violin out for tomorrow? do you need a new reading book? what time do I pick you up from rehearsal? we are going to the theatre on Saturday after hockey, have you applied for that part time job?….
To grow up advantaged, is to experience the constant drip of expectation, self-fulfilling and accumulating advantage over time. The shaping, informing, correcting, pickiness, opportunity laden, supported experiences add up to add advantage that presents to adults as innate ability, even talent. Those experiencing disadvantage (only an economic label) have had fewer opportunities, less education and guided experiences, which slows progress, accumulates disadvantage and presents as less able (less talented) and once this sets-in, it holds on through life. This perpetuates the opposite of a virtuous circle, a vicious circle, where we consistently over time (perhaps subconsciously) expect less of those with delayed attainment and increase the gap. Disadvantage is a process (born out of circumstance(s)), it is not an event (Marc Rowland).
Our job is not to collude with circumstance, but to maintain high expectations, understanding that if we let them off, we let them down. We must avoid deficit discourse, assumptions of innate talent and loose language that reinforces, often unintentionally, disadvantage. When we see delayed attainment, we acknowledge that nothing fundamental can stop attainment mobility or the closing of gaps, except, of course, if we fail to advantage those presently experiencing disadvantage.
Give Status(Culture)
“It is difficult for us to realise how much information is socially transmitted, because the amount is staggering and the process is largely transparent.” (Pascal Boyer, 2018)
As individuals, we have an un-ending well of status to give to colleagues and to children. The opportunity to give status is a fundamental human gift to others. To give status is to be interested in every child, who they are, what they are doing, smiling, acknowledging, encouraging, noticing, being present. It costs us nothing, is a measure of our shared values and plays out in every interaction.
“…feeling deprived of status is a major source of anxiety and depression. When life is a game we’re losing, we hurt. …status is a resource as real as oxygen or water. When we lose it, we break.” (Will Storr, 2021)
Given that we measure our status against those with whom we spend time, our classrooms are crucibles of comparative status.Our classroom cultures must level status upwards and not inadvertently reinforce disadvantage or status based on early advantage and current attainment.
“We can’t help leaking expectations, through our gazes, our body language and our voices. My expectations about you define my attitude towards you.” (Rutger Bregman)
Build belonging, distribute esteem(Culture)
It may not appear obvious, but schools are the most trusted, resourced and the most able to tackle inequality and to combat the growing darkness in our communities. Our superpower is education and that is where we can shine the light and support children to find colour, to belong.
“To feel a sense of belonging is to feel accepted, to feel seen and to feel included by a group of people… to not feel belonging is to experience the precarious and insecure sense of an outsider.” (Owen Eastwood, 2021)
How then, do we create belonging in our language, values, artefacts, behaviours, routines in schools to say to all children that they belong. To what extent do we see the development of culture in schools as a curriculum to be taught and enacted, not left to social forces? This seeks to create an empowering and ordered culture to enable psychological safety, creating the climate to tackle disadvantage.
The development of shared languageand lexicon is a purposeful activity that understands that some words, phrases and attitudes reduce status and belonging (often unconsciously). We must select, develop and reinforce an empowering language to enable individuals to belong, feel safe and be able to prioritise learning.
In this decade, with the inevitable challenges, our duty of care to the children we educate is to build their self-esteem, so that children have purpose, dignity and feel the glow of accomplishment. A marker of our success will be the extent to which we are able to distribute and redistribute esteem.
“…we need a redistribution of esteem… to live lives of decency and dignity, winning social esteem. …we can travel the road to 2045 with purpose, dignity and accomplishment.” (Peter Hennessy, 2022)
In the dark there is light (Team)
“How a society treats its most vulnerable is always the measure of its humanity.” (Matthew Rycroft)
Whilst it is darker and ever gloomier, we should remain optimistic and empowered. Those who are presently disadvantaged depend on us, we are their greatest hope, their best second chance. We do, however, need to actively choose to care, to privilege and to apply equity through education. To measure what matters, drive up attendance, focus on the main things, invest in curriculum, teaching, vocabulary, oracy, culture. To have high expectations, to give status, create belonging and systematically build esteem.
This is our duty of care, it is what matters, it is why you are here. Go forth, build a coalition, a movement within your schools, across schools and across Trusts, for communities, within our regions. A movement that seeks to bring light to those who need it, to support children who are fading, to build the colour back in and to make sure every child has a fair chance, so we can say, “yes, you DO belong. We all belong here.”
“We are bound by a sense of shared belonging and collective responsibility; about strong local communities, active citizens and the devolution of responsibility. …ensuring that everyone has a fair chance to make the most of their capacities and their lives.” (Jonathan Sacks, 2020)
Dan Nicholls | October 2022
Thinking and content heavily influenced by colleagues within Cabot Learning Federation
Building a sequenced, coherent, cumulatively sufficient and spiraled curriculum from 3 to 19 is perhaps the most important bet we can place for disadvantaged learners
The world is an increasingly challenging place to be a child; the compounding combination of the pandemic, economic hardship and political uncertainty has exposed and entrenched disadvantage in society; threatening to define and harm a generation. Without stronger leadership and greater action, our legacy may reflect that we did not do enough for those who needed us most.
This think piece explores our best bets for closing the disadvantage gap. Whilst far from exhaustive, it highlights the central and critical role that curriculum (and the enactment of curriculum) needs to play as the key lever; a bet that accumulates advantage year-on-year and is best placed to privilege those who are presently or previously experiencing disadvantage. (and all children)
How … do we privilege those presently and previously experiencing disadvantage … (and) apply a lens (to) ask searching questions about what we should value and how we must act. Now is the time to use the expertise and experience across our region to make a discernible difference? from: what if we are the hope and we fail
Placing the curriculum under the disadvantage lens allows much greater specificity in response to this challenge. Identifying the connected best bets that will secure the circumstances and opportunities for children to accumulate advantage in our schools; disproportionately supporting disadvantage learners so that we (upwardly) close the disadvantage gap…
“Success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities…” (Malcolm Gladwell)
Successful people are not gifted; they just work hard, then succeed on purpose.” (G.K. Nielson)
The curriculum, and particularly what we choose to value, how we structure it and how we enact it, is the key lever and our best bet for disadvantaged learners.This long term investment seeks to secure the irreversible conditions required to achieve attainment mobility for all children and prepare disadvantage to thrive in an uncertain world; placing our chips on curriculum.
The impact of disadvantage on learning is not static. It is a long-term process, not a moment or an event. (Marc Rowland)
Give the golden ticket: As educators what we choose to include and how we sequence and curate the curriculum confers or denies power for our disadvantaged learners. Designing the curriculum as the golden ticket to the world for all children is a weighty ethical responsibility. We must think hard about what is in and what is out; what of all that has been thought, written and said gives the very best chance for disadvantaged children to thrive and have self agency throughout their lives. Not everything is of equal importance; we need to seek deep subject domain expertise to consider, identify and curate the key substantive concepts, disciplinary knowledge and powerful necessary knowledge wrapped together in a well-conceived curriculum; as an ever-onward investment.
Curriculum is all about power. Decisions about what knowledge to teach are an exercise of power and therefore a weighty ethical responsibility. What we choose to teach confers or denies power. (Christine Counsell)
The potential of a progressive, sequenced, cumulatively sequenced Curriculum is our best bet for securing greater…
Social justice: Theequal access to wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society.
Social mobility: The ability of individuals, families or groups to move up or down the social ladder in a society. Social mobility is often used to describe changes in wealth, but it can also be used to describe general social standing or access to education.
Equity: Ensuring that everyone receives what they need to be successful. In short, equality is not enough to combat disadvantage. “While the world in which we live distributes talent equally, it does not equally distribute opportunity,”
…as well as systemically and upwardly closing the disadvantage gap year-on-year.
Think hard about the Conceptual Backbone of the curriculum. Prioritise, as our most important bet, a progressive, cumulatively sufficient curriculum that has a well-conceived conceptual backbone; the key substantive and disciplinary concepts that provide the conceptual fabric and holding baskets (Mary Myatt) for future learning. Weaving vertical threads through subject ropes.
Cognitive psychology has shown that the mind best understands facts when they are woven into a conceptual fabric, such as a narrative, mental map, or intuitive theory. Disconnected facts in the mind are like unlinked pages on the Web: They might as well not exist. (Stephen Pinker)
We know that the mind best understands facts when they are woven into a conceptual fabric of the subject. Thinking hard about the conceptual backbone and how this identifies the Big Ideas/Substantive Concepts to be considered through a disciplinary approach, imprints and builds the cognitive architecture. Onto this backbone substantive concepts are thrown into sharp relief and brought to life by judiciously selected necessary, powerful (subject) knowledge, seeding the ground, weaving the nets, creating the Velcro for future learningand for remembering more.Schema sticks knowledge.
It is precisely this schema development, this access to the organising concepts, that is the nurtured gift that advantaged learners bring to our schools as the consequence of experience and supported opportunity over time. It is why the year-on-year progression and securing of the substantive concepts, as threads through the curriculum, is so essential for disadvantaged learners to connect and create conceptual holding baskets for powerful knowledge that self-perpetuates in the future… creating precisely the Mathew Effect that has given an advantage to advantaged learners from birth (and before).
It is this conceptual architecture, schema and backbone that secures the big ideas, makes sense of and holds necessary, powerful knowledge that develops disciplinary understanding to build historians, authors, mathematicians, geographers, artists… who develop their states of being over time (…and with it their identity, self-esteem, sense of place, agency and belonging).
Concepts are sitting in every part of the curriculum and they cannot be left to chance, because they are acting as holding baskets for a lot of information. (Mary Myatt)
See the Curriculum as the progression model; it raises the tide. It is the year-on-year progression through a cumulatively sufficient curriculum that is the biggest opportunity and the best bet for disadvantaged learners to close the gap.
Learning should not only take us somewhere; it should allow us later to go further more easily. (Bruner, 1960)
Constructing and curating the curriculum and the enactment of it is a long term bet that requires a long term investment – it is precisely the coherence and sequence built progressively over time that lifts and raises the tide for all and particularly disadvantaged learners. As educationalists we need to give the capacity, space and time for subject experts to carefully craft, curate and develop curriculum. Children get one chance, one opportunity to experience a coherent, progressive curriculum; incoherence and arbitrary knowledge is leaving the guesswork to chance and children.
The curriculum requires an infinite mindset; one that requires educators to plant trees for the future. The development of curriculum through a child’s lens lasts at least from age 3 (although we also know the first 1001 days from conception is a significant determinant) to age 19 and beyond; approaching two decades. A daunting, yet helpful perspective. If the power of curriculum is its cumulative coherence and sufficiency over time – regular revolution and change of curriculum is detrimental for learners; and particularly disadvantaged learners. (how often has curriculum changed in the last 15 years? how has this lack of continuity and coherence impacted on the progress of disadvantaged learners?)
The curriculum should not be half baked. Random curriculum (or poorly conceived curriculum), can present the prospect of multi-serendipitous findings for advantaged learners to make sense of within their well-connected schema, an opportunity to meander and make meaning. For disadvantaged learners it feels more like a trek into an abstract unknown, poorly structured and sequenced, day on day struggle to work out how this bit fits. This cognitive conflict and dissonance gradually erodes confidence and shifts the blame onto themselves, reaffirming that they do not belong. (Discontinuity and incoherence is damaging for disadvantaged learners; hence the presently widening gap as the impact is not felt evenly).
Stay close to the backbone– its strength isrealised over time; it holds, supports and directs the curriculum, but it is an investment that should be viewed in years… decades (resist mission creep into a world of arbitrary knowledge, topics, lists, whims… ). Too much curriculum and teaching steers too far from both the substantive concepts and disciplinary approach to deliver arbitrary knowledge not held by the conceptual/big ideas of the subject or supported through the development of disciplinary knowledge and states of being.
Staying close to the backbone requires teachers to consider less content and to deepen teaching that hangs around on the big ideas, concepts and the judiciously selected necessary knowledge that catalyses and provides the stickier holding baskets for future learning; covering what matters most, better.
Beware the noisy, content heavy, multi-topic curriculumthat is bursting with arbitrary knowledge – chasing that which is not worth having (or that which will not stick in the absence of a conceptual backbone or secure holding baskets, or because ultimately much detail is forgotten in the long term).
Arbitrary: based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system ‘an arbitrary decision’
Instead judiciously select necessary knowledge that exposes, simplifies and exemplifies the organising concepts and big ideas of our curriculum; think networks of knowledge held by concepts and less about facts and lists. Understanding that it is the substantive concepts and the disciplinary understanding that is the goal of the curriculum, which is brought to life through judiciously selected knowledge; gifting the thrill of insight and knowing more to disadvantaged learners.
Arbitrary knowledge, content and topics selected randomly or as a personal (or historic) whim is kryptonite for disadvantaged learners. Understanding the organising concepts gives the thrill of insight and the ‘feeling of being clever’ that super-charges curiosity; as disadvantaged become advantaged and see the world differently and are then in turn increasingly motivated to test new experiences and information against their new view of the world. Gifting how subjects are organised and the concepts that define it not only tackles disadvantage in the present, but also into the futurewithin and beyond the subject – setting the type of schema and conceptual awareness that many advantaged learners bring to school.
Subject is King. Curriculum is enacted through the lens of subject. These domains organise and structure our curriculum into distinct realms. Only deep investment over time on how subjects are constructed will provide the insight that teachers need to teach (not present) the substantive concepts, build disciplinary understanding and secure the pertinent and president knowledge that allows pupils to know more, remember more and do more. (understanding that much will be forgotten, but that the organising concepts will live on to allow learners to know what to do when they do not know what to do, throughout their lives). Pushing wide open a door for colleagues to think deeply and celebrate widely the unique aspects of their subject; to get their subject geek on(but not in the undisciplined pursuit of content, but in the underlying structure that is so important to learning).
There is significant‘polymathic’ demand on primary teachers and schools. To realise the intention of the new framework and to invest deeply in curriculum and subject requires significant subject domain expertise… unlikely to exist within a single primary. Educators from across 3-19 must work together altruistically across our sector to think hard about and curate accessible and understood subject curricular for teachers (and pupils). Groups of school creating the collaborative structures and subject knowledge expertise to curate curriculum that will disproportionately support those presently experiencing disadvantage.
There is a reverse problem in secondary, where the degree-level expertise tends to lean towards content-heavy curricula that are prone to ‘arbitrary’ knowledge, whims and a breadth of curriculum that is too noisy and not efficient enough to secure and deepen understanding of the conceptual framework; placing responsibility for drawing connections across subjects with students. For some learners, this autonomy leads to meaning making and mastery and for others the incoherence leads to dislocation and disconnection. We need much greater debate and discussion on what it means to be a teacher of…
Sequence matters; really matters within learning episodes. Learning happens when we think hard and where we can connect new ideas securely into our existing schema. When disadvantaged learners meet new learning in our classrooms they really need it to be enacted in a sequence that is coherent and cumulative. Whilst advantaged learners have cultural capital and developed schema that is more resistant to poorly sequenced learning, disadvantaged learners are much less able to make sense of poor sequence; the curriculum literally becomes out-of-order (and out of reach) for disadvantaged learners if it is enacted out of order.
Disadvantaged learners are likely to have less well developed schema, which makes them far more sensitive to learning that is out of sequence. Given that disadvantaged learners often need to structure and re-structure schema as opposed to accrete or tune schema it really matters the order in which areas are taught. Learners with limited or less stable schema are more likely to reject (fail to resolve cognitive conflict) new learning that is not well sequenced and sensitive to previous knowledge and existing schema.
Sequencing that achieve an hours-worth of learning for an hours-worth of input will close the gap for disadvantaged learners. Typically, disadvantaged learners are far more likely to assume that they alone do not understand when learning/teaching is out of sequence; “that does not make sense, it must be me,” compared to advantaged learners who are self-confident enough to recognise poor sequence, “this is a bit odd, but I am confident with what I already know, I’ll tolerate the learning and assimilate as I go.”
Give Status; Small Moments of Prestige, that say you belong. Disadvantaged learners are more likely to have an external locus of control, to step back and to opt out of learning. Our perceived status drives are sense of belonging, our connectedness, our value and ultimately whether we are part of the game (and entitled to be…). The Pandemic has driven far greater disenfranchisement in education; if you do not see yourself as part of the game, you will opt out and protect yourself from further status harm by playing a different game or cutting losses to avoid playing and failing.
It is easy to forget we have status to give, that it costs nothing and it never runs out. …Allowing others to feel statusful makes it more likely they’ll accept our influence. (Will Storr, 2021)
It’s probably not a surprise to discover that feeling deprived of status is a major source of anxiety and depression. When life is a game we’re losing, we hurt. …To our brains, status is a resource as real as oxygen or water. When we lose it, we break. (Will Storr, 2021)
As humans we seek status, typically measuring against those that we are closest to. Classrooms are on-going status games, one that reflects a key aspect of being human.
…our curriculum should whisper to our children, “You belong. You did not come from nowhere. All this came before you, and one day you too might add to it.” (Ben Newmark)
Create learning spaces where all children belong. Without psychological safety we cannot attend to what is to be learnt. Within these spaces how do we gift Small Moments of Prestige and build every learners status, how do we have greater awareness of how we give status and build a fully inclusive space for all and particularly those learners experiencing disadvantage.
To feel a sense of belonging is to feel accepted, to feel seen and to feel included by a group of people… to not feel belonging is to experience the precarious and insecure sense of an outsider. (Owen Eastwood, 2021)
Build schema by weaving (conceptual) nets. Do not presume previous knowledge, weave conceptual nets, stop throwing fish at broken nets. We are the sum of our memories (and opportunities and experiences) over time. This means that each individual is unique; be wary of working to the average. This uniqueness is to be celebrated and yet it provides the wickedest of problems for teaching. Each of us bring a range of schema to our learning; some advanced and deep, others beginning and shallow.
People are not born with fixed reserves of potential; instead potential is an expandable vessel, shaped by the various things we do throughout our lives. Learning isn’t a way of reaching one’s potential but rather a way of developing it. We can create our own potential.” (Anders Ericsson)
Our understanding of the world and our place in it is built over time through the development of schema.
“…our brains do something vastly more impressive, forming neural nets from billions of cells, each connected to thousands of others. And these networks are organized into larger structures, … and so on, in a complex hierarchical scheme..” (Leonard Mlodinow, 2018)
When we meet new information (and when we are primed to attend to it) we typically do one of four things:
Accretion: Add it into existing schema with little cognitive conflict, like inserting a new puzzle pieceinto existing puzzle.
Tuning: Tweak and reshape what is already known or understood in light of new insight. The puzzle picture shifts to reveal a new truth or connection.
Restructure or structuring: New information is acquired by thinking hard about it and securing a few connections together that can hold fast. New puzzle under construction (without repeating or see in other contexts, learning likely to be insecure).
Rejection: New information is beyond proximal zone, cannot resolve the cognitive conflict. No puzzle to add too, starting a new puzzle is too abstract or teaching not made the leap to existing puzzles.
Deepening the wicked problem; the importance of the proximal zone a space that is typically narrower for disadvantaged learners. Understanding where children are in their learning and the scope of previous knowledge is particularly important for disadvantaged learners who have much less scope to wrestle with learning that is beyond schema.
Disadvantaged learners typically have less developed schema supported by cultural capital and opportunities and experiences over time. This is not linked to innate ability. Whilst advantaged learners typically spend time in the accreting and tuning space, and within their proximal zone much more often, disadvantaged learners typically spend more time structuring or restructuring, wrestling often beyond the proximal zone to build understanding and retain exemplifying knowledge. Careful structuring of learning episodes to systematically build in the fundamental and foundational concepts and the introduction of ‘necessary knowledge’ gives a greater chance for cognitive dissonance to be resolved.
“The sweet spot: that productive, uncomfortable terrain located just beyond our current abilities, where our reach exceeds our grasp. Deep practice is not simply about struggling; it’s about seeking a particular struggle, which involves a cycle of distinct actions.” (Dan Coyle, 2009)
In this way we can build conceptual nets that allow more knowledge and understanding to be caught by disadvantaged learners; levelling-up the playing field towards advantaged learners who drag thickly woven nets (conceptual fabric of the subject) that are steeped in cultural capital and understanding that collect much of what is available in classrooms (even where it is poorly taught). It is why advantaged still make progress with poor teaching and why poor teaching has a disproportionately negative impact on the progress of disadvantaged… (Helpfully the reverse is true, highly effective teaching secures greater progress for disadvantaged compared to advantaged).
Consistent, insightful formative assessment, that allows teachers to build conceptual understanding and to teach the next bit, disproportionately advantages disadvantaged learners. We need to consider particularly the pre-work and the structure of sequences of learning to address previous conceptual and knowledge gaps and at the same time consistently build learning with one eye on future learning.
Seek subject domain experts to inform, curate, collaborate and evolve the conceptual backbone of the curriculum (as an ever-onward); those who will know and understand the threads that weave vertically through the subject. Subject Communities and Subject Groups who together curate an efficient curriculum that enables all learners to secure the substantive concepts, disciplinary knowledge, meaning and understanding through the judicious selection of powerful knowledge. Where subject is celebrated and seen as an academic pursuit, where the discussion and talk is deep, expert and about how subjects are uniquely structured and organised, revealing the conceptual backbone essential for holding and accelerating learning over time…
“Communities of practice are groups of people who share a passion for something they do and want to learn how to do it better by interacting regularly.” (Etienne Wenger)
Double down on and build deep understanding of the conceptual backbone with teachers and other colleagues. Teachers and colleagues often engaging in deep professional subject specific discussion and debate on the nuances and peculiarities of concept development over time. So that against this backcloth and architecture we can identify and judiciously select the necessary powerful knowledge, Tier 3 vocabulary, and secure understanding and meaning to allow all learners to know more, remember more and do more. We must create the conditions for collective endeavour, the pursuit of subject and collaboration; creating Communities of Practice in each subject/department, where teachers deliberately plan, sequence and play with pedagogy that will best enact the shared curriculum. A powerful alchemy is created when colleagues discuss practice on aligned curriculum across schools and evaluate often.
Teachers ensure that pupils embed key concepts in their long term memory and apply them fluently (Ofsted Framework)
Create much more space for teachers to debate, discuss, test and evaluate the pedagogy and teaching that is most efficacious in every way for the delivery of the specific subject necessary knowledge and conceptual framework; this can only be done in the consideration and shared planning of specific sequences of learning that fit the curriculum backbone and are an exploration of curriculum, assessment and pedagogy. We should deeply invest in Communities of Practice; the result of these curriculum conversations are our disadvantaged learners best chance of experiencing teaching that is efficient, effective and focused on what matters most.
Deeply consider and discuss Pedagogy. Teachers teach, presenters present. The careful selection of pedagogy in planning sequence and in response to following learning to meet need within learning episodes is the determining factor on the quality of the curriculum. Where the teacher habits, skills, strategies and approaches are highly aligned to the subject content and disciplinary nature of the subject we will accelerate learning, year-on-year. Whilst it is important to build habits and skills of teachers, particularly those that maximise learning time, secure routines and create climates that maximise attention and attending to learning, these are just the starting point of establishing the climate for learning. Those habits and skills that are deeply linked to the specific subject knowledge acquisition and for developing subject conceptual understanding and the disciplinary aspects of the subject will secure greater learning now and in the future. Matching the pedagogical choices to the particular curriculum item, subject nuance and specific desired learning over time.
Don’t build Knowledge in a vacuum; curriculum is not a list it is a network. We learn and remember knowledge and build understanding in relation to what is already known and understood. We compare and contrast and attempt to resolve/assimilate what is new with what we already know.
“The importance of knowledge is not in question, but knowledge alone is not enough.” (Mick Waters)
Stacking knowledge in isolation of context and concept slows learning. Acquiring knowledge and building understanding in context accelerates learning.
The large amount of school time spent in direct word study is not being spent on systemically becoming familiar with new knowledge domains, where word learning occurs naturally, and up to four times faster, without effort. (Hirsch, 2017)
…we should be wary of assuming stacking vocabulary in a list for some quick quizzing offers anything like the deep understanding and rich connections pupils need to make between words, phrases, concepts and big ideas. (Alex Quigley)
We also need to balancing another wicked problem: how do we judiciously introduce new knowledge and new understanding in and within context, without increasing noise and surplus information far beyond the conceptual scope of some disadvantaged learners?
We need to offer insight and examples to embed learning so that learners wrestle with co-occurrences, varied examples and contexts to secure connections and deepen understanding. Using analogy, explaining and modelling expertly so that we explore the multi-faceted richness experienced when growing up advantaged.
By paying attention to vocabulary growth at the micro level, we can better understand it, we can go to cultivating it and in so doing every child will be gifted a wealth of words.” (Alex Quigley, 2018, Closing the Vocabulary Gap))
Seek rich retrieval. Retrieval practices should seek rich context based retrieval in preference to memory tests; teaching should seek to be memorable more than a test of memory. Engaging, rehearsing, exploring, discussing, explaining, defending… are far richer for memory than fact checks and quizzing.
It is inefficient to learn facts, vocab, knowledge in the absence of the conceptual fabric of the curriculum. Tier 3 vocabulary for example requires anchoring in learner’s schema. Where necessary knowledge is built within context and where it is judiciously selected to reinforce the conceptual fabric of the curriculum backbone the new information is stickier and retained up to four time faster. Where this is linked to a strong narrative and mental model we have an opportunity to disproportionately enable disadvantaged learners to close gaps efficiently and more precisely.
Investing deeply in debate, discussion and oracy. We have an opportunity to accelerate the learning of those experiencing the most disadvantage through effective oracy practice. As we support our learners to discover and use their voice as part of their learning and as a result of their learning, we enable them to develop more deeply their own sense of belonging and sense of self, with significant impact on mental health and well-being – not as a tokenistic sidebar, but as an embedded pedagogy upon which the curriculum rides. The very thinking needed as children journey through our curriculum can in many cases most effectively be done as part of dialogic learning, using subject as the ‘grammar’ and talk as the vehicle to develop critical thought. (Neil Phillipson, Dialogic Education: Mastering Core Concepts). Understanding that the development of individual and collective oracy as curriculum is essential for accelerating advantage for disadvantaged learners.
Tell Stories to tap into what makes us human. Dan Willingham highlights that, “our brain privileges story.” Fortunately, stories exist across the whole curriculum and yet our enactment of the curriculum can often revert to something far colder and transactional.
“…stories perform a fundamental cognitive function… when we encounter a complex issue and try to understand it, what we look for is not consistent and reliable facts, but a consistent and comprehensible story.” (from Out of the Wreckage, George Monbiot, 2017)
There are many things that attract and hold the attention of brains. Storytellers engage a number of neural processes that evolved for a variety of reasons and are waiting to be played like instruments in an orchestra: moral outrage, unexpected change, status play, specificity, curiosity and so on. By understanding them, we can more easily create stories (curriculum and sequences) that are gripping, profound, emotional and original. (Will Storr, 2019)
Tell stories about words. Etymology offers the opportunity to discover the roots of words that build stories around each word that makes them stickier (connection-wise) in the brain and offers further capacity for future learning. Mary Myatt insightfully highlights that this taps the curiosity of children (something innate in humans) and makes them feel clever. This disproportionately benefits disadvantage who go deeper into the learning and secure the necessary knowledge that will close the disadvantaged gap as well as giving status to learners, empowering them and give them the ticket to culture.
Seek to support learners to use Tier 3 vocabulary with the ease, confidence and fluency that more befits Tier 2 vocabulary. A significant passport not just to the world but also to conceptual understanding that creates the holding baskets for future learning.
Provoke, even anger learners, make them care about learning. Curriculum that provokes, that challenges is one that is much more likely to persuade the brain that this is important enough to encode, that this is important enough to release chemicals to secure connections and wrap myelin, that this is important to me and my life and my future. Curriculum that has provoking questions/hypotheses/conjectures, demands a response and tap emotions. Emotionally linked experiences, both positive and negative, are encoded much more quickly and secured in the longer term; if learning through the curriculum feels more like a quest or a mission it is more likely to be both coherent, memorable and remembered.
Make it irresistibly important, give a sense of urgency. We learn what we care about. Cognitive science has highlighted the chemical changes that happen when we code new learning. If the content of what is to be learnt is not deemed important enough, if it is not compelling enough to think hard about, it does not trigger the emotional/chemical response to connect and encode it.
Inside the brain, this relevance is expressed through widely reaching systems that release chemicals called neuromodulators… releasing with high specificity (to) allow change occur (in the brain) only at specific places and times. … The presence of acetylcholine… tells it to change… they increase plasticity in the target areas. When they’re inactive, there’s little or no plasticity (learning). (David Eagleman, 2020)
So when we attend to something, whether by free will, a burst of emotion, under coercion or by finding meaning in it, we hugely increase our chances of remembering it. (Alex Beard, 2018)
Clearly teaching is not about performance, but it is about moving learners to care enough to trigger chemical and attention cues so that new information is encoded and wrestled with. To this end making learning irresistible, provocative and conflicting is vital.
We learn what we attend to, what we think hard about. Unless the classroom climate enables such focus, particularly for disadvantaged learners who may become distracted in class (because if you bring less into the classroom, or you have other things on the mind, it is harder), and by events out of class (because we need both psychological safety as well as being able to park ‘the multi-distractions of life’ at the door), then learning is slowed and the gap widens. We learn when we attend to the information at hand, when we enhance it into focus, released neurotransmitters to encode, create connections, wrap connections and stick long enough at it to secure connections.
It is my fear there are a great many struggling children who believe they are colluding in a game in which their role is to be physically present in a classroom and to make a pretence they are learning in it, but that nobody really believes anything meaningful is ever accomplished and this doesn’t really matter. (Ben Newmark)
Make learning compelling and irresistibly important. We are competing for attention and convincing other humans (disadvantaged learners) that this is too important to be ignored. Allied with the award of status across the class and judicious issuing of small moments of prestige; learners feel valued, empowered to learn more and to take risks.
You couldn’t learn something you didn’t pay attention to. Yet the process of paying attention to something was complex, and not always under our control. It could be enhanced… in a few ways: things that created an emotional reaction were much more likely to be remembered; repetition helped a little; wanting to remember didn’t help much; reflecting on meaning had a positive effect, such as knowing where something fitted in a story or schema, whether personal or general.” (Alex Beard, 2018)
What if learning and our understanding of the world is more catastrophic than we think? Our view of what we are capable of, of how we understand the world, a subject, a concept often progresses catastrophically and not in a linear way. Once we have seen what we are capable of (or see the world differently) we are never the same. Teachers and the curriculum should create fertile grounds for this insight, born out of the curriculum, opportunity, feedback, modeling, explaining etc.
Great teaching create serendipity fields for all learners, but particularly disadvantaged learners who need to have experiences and supported opportunities that grow and intertwine understanding that is the structure for powerful knowledge that needs to accelerate learning if we are to close the gap.
Whilst the world is an increasingly challenging place to be a child, we have an opportunity as educators to address the embarrassing inequality that exists and work together to close the disadvantage gap. Our collective capacity and shared expertise applied to the development and enactment of curriculum is our best bet, or set of linked bets, to advantage disadvantaged learners. This is the key lever that accumulates advantage year-on-year and is best placed to privilege those who are presently or previously experiencing disadvantage.
Our best hope is to adopt a laser like focus on disadvantage. We can then shine a light on those left behind at school and find ways to ignite their minds. (Lee Elliott Major, 2022)
Dan Nicholls | February 2022
This is significantly influenced by the insight and expertise of colleagues from across the Cabot Learning Federation.
Pre-reading for the South West Disadvantage Network | 18th February 2022
As educationalists, we are the greatest hope and the biggest resource that children and their families have to reverse disadvantage* and give each child the agency to decide their future. However, we are falling short and we need to face the inconvenient truth that we are part of the problem. We must take our opportunity fulfil our obligation to those who trust us and need us most. It is time for us to feel outraged and impassioned by the inequity and asymmetry in our society and, dare we admit it, within our schools. We need to understand and overcome the forces that act explicitly and implicitly to reinforce disadvantage over time; we need to systemically and collectively reconsider what is normal (and acceptable).
“What provokes our outrage depends on what surrounds us – on what we consider normal.” (Cass Sunstein, 2021)
The pandemic has not been felt evenly, it has exposed and entrenched disadvantage and threatens to define and harm a generation. Without greater action and decisive intervention our legacy will reflect that we did not do enough for those that needed us most. To remove doubt, there is no choice, no opt out, if you are in our sector you are complicit, you are already responsible. Together we have the collective capability and expertise to make a difference. Together we must reverse disadvantage and close the 19.9 month gap that opens by age 16 in the South West (10.5 months at the end of Primary) so that those that have the least are supported to take what is offered…
“One measure of poverty is how little you have. Another is how difficult you find it to take advantage of what others try to give you.” (Michael Lewis, 2021)
*throughout this piece there are generalisations that place children as either advantaged or disadvantaged, the reality is far more complex, there is a full range of advantage and disadvantage (and attainment) and not all advantaged are advantaged and not all disadvantaged are disadvantaged. This simplification does not deny the need to consider all children as individuals.
I am more than a number
“Don’t call me disadvantaged, I’m Alice, and to clarify I may be presently experiencing disadvantage or have a legacy of disadvantage, but it has not, does not and will not define me. I am Alice, I don’t need a label I need equity… to be offered the supported opportunity and high expectations that allow me to take control of my life; to have the agency to choose what I do, where I go, with whom, when…. I do not need you to collude with me, or pity me, I need you to notice me, knowme, to teach me, to support me to step forward, not backward. I need you to give me what I need (deserve)… and one more thing, I may appear less ambitious than others, I’m not, but I have experienced less opportunity and this can erode what I believe is possible.”
As educators we need to fully understand those we educate, not on the surface, but as humans who are finding their way in our world. Reversing disadvantage is a deeply personal challenge and mission for us all. Not least because when we know something about someone it becomes personal. Only action born out of knowing individual children, where it is everyone’s business and privileged in everything we do, will we have the chance to support all children who are presently or previously experiencing disadvantage; that is what Alice and the 144,310 individuals who are presently experiencing disadvantaged in the South West (19.9%) need from us.
Privileging disadvantage in everything that we do
How do we mobilise and organise our effort, through everyone, for every child; delivering the equity that all children deserve? By privileging disadvantaged learners in everything we do, by applying the lens of disadvantage and understanding what it is to be presently or previously disadvantaged we will turn the dial and make the difference that we came into education to achieve. We can do this by optimising the talent that exists across our region…
“We need a social contract that is about pooling and sharing more risks with each other to reduce the worries we all face while optimising the use of talent across our sectorand enabling individuals to contribute as much as they can. It also means caring about the well-being not just of our own children, but of others’ too, since they will all occupy the same world in future.” (Minouche Shafik, 2020)
Through the lens of disadvantage | the sobering truth of the reality of disadvantage
“How a society treats its most vulnerable is always the measure of its humanity.” (Matthew Rycroft)
Once you apply the disadvantage lens and seek to see through their eyes all provision and teaching is thrown into a different light; a sobering light, one that reflects the built in tilt towards advantaged children. What if we considered performance and the quality of provision only in terms of the attendance, attainment and progress of disadvantaged learners (remembering that it is attainment that trumps progress for unlocking future opportunity for disadvantaged learners)?
When we apply the lens of disadvantage we may well see the wood for the trees. This is something as educators and as a system we are not strong at; we see averages, big cohort numbers, we hide groups in plain sight and amalgamate – when what we need to do is seek to understand. When we apply our disadvantage lens we might actually be measuring the true efficacy and impact of our provision. Only strong provision reaches through to disadvantaged learners and closes gaps; it is a strong litmus test for effectiveness.
Even over…
What if we committed to disadvantage even over… other groups, not that other groups are not important, but even over? Without this focus any push to shift provision, improve teaching and tackle the omnipresent forces that widen the gap between the have and have nots, will fail. If we are to deliver any sense of equity through education, then we must be unswerving; we may need to strive for something else, something much harder to achieve, something that is not predetermined through previous opportunity and experience.
“This is Vanity Fair a world where everyone is striving for what is not worth having.”
Accumulated advantage versus accumulated disadvantage over time
To understand what it is to be disadvantaged (previously or presently) we need to understand the forces within society, culture and within our schools that accumulate advantage and disadvantage over time. To do this we need to see pupils and students as the outcome of everything they have interacted with; we tell stories to ourselves about who we are and these are a result of our (positive) interactions, (supported) opportunities and (rich) experiences over time. The result is that only an equitable approach has a chance of offering individual children what they (actually) need.
“…who you are emerges from everything you’ve interacted with: your environment, all of your experiences, your friends, your enemies, your culture, your belief system, your era – all of it.” (David Eagleman, 2020)
How far do you recognise the two journeys below? Disadvantaged journey on the left and an advantaged journey on the right, considering their past and their future…
How do we shift the narrative our children tell themselves through life (a life within which we are one of the (important) narrators)? Understanding that we need to focus as much on the future for disadvantaged learners and giving them what they need to thrive as well as addressing their key gaps from their lack of opportunity and support in the past.
70 plays 30
What if, in general terms, advantaged children already carry much of what they need into our schools? An advantage that allows them to make sense of even weak provision. What if…
Advantaged children bring 70% of what they need through the school gates?
Those previously or presently experiencing disadvantage may only bring 30% of what they need?
If this is true then schools and provision should be evaluated on their ability to support those that bring the least from outside and to not over-evaluate or exaggerate our impact on advantaged children. After all the quality of teaching matters much more to a disadvantaged child than an advantaged child, who can make sense of poor provision…
Hunt don’t Fish
To fish is to cast out and seek any fish; to hunt is to purposefully track and find a specific quarry. To achieve equity through education we need to hunt not fish. Those presently or previously experiencing disadvantage do not need equality where we hope class-wide teaching or cohort opportunity will level-up and provide the equity needed; it will not. To hunt is to understand the needs of each child, to have high expectations and be tenacious about ensuring disadvantaged learners are making more progress so that their attainment has a chance of making a difference; one that opens doors (good doors) in their future.
Equity through Education
What is clear is that we should seek equity over equality to support disadvantaged learners to have the (supported) opportunity and (leveraging) experiences that will allow them to feel success. How far do we actually give what every disadvantaged child needs?
“Fair doesn’t mean giving every child the same thing, it means giving every child what they need.” (Rick Lavoie)
Attainment mobility
“Enabling children to attain higher than would be expected based on their starting points.”
Attainment Mobility is the reversing of delayed attainment, linguistic under-privilege andlack of early opportunity, so that children self select (not self de-select) and accumulate advantage (not disadvantage) through life.
Having the highest of expectations of all pupils, irrespective of background. Remembering that disadvantaged pupils don’t lack talent or ability, but can lack opportunity and support over time. Prior attainment should not set limits on our ambitions for all pupils.
…And it is attainment that matters
To be clear, progress may well not be enough; it is attainment that counts, it is attainment that opens doors and provides the future opportunity and the empowerment and agency to make decisions.
Have unswerving expectations – it is the background music of advantaged children
What stands out in an advantaged upbringing is the level of expectation from birth. It is an upbringing that is full of rules, routines, structure, boundaries, etiquette, expectation and self-fulfilling achievement. It permeates language, attitudes and mindset. It establishes the locus of control to be with the child and not the environment, it gives the power of control to each child to be the commander of their destiny; it is an advantage that is demanding, but liberating.
Our disadvantaged children need us to be unswerving in our expectations of what they can do, they do not need us to collude and lower our expectations.
Keep it simple | What matters is Great Teaching and (really) Knowing each child
How far do we focus on the main thing being the main thing for accumulating advantage: teaching well? How far is this focused on:
what matters most, having high expectations of what all learners can do. Provokes interest and curiosity by making learning compelling and important.
direct instruction, explanation, modelling; progression of key organising concepts and ideas brought alive by judicious selection of compelling knowledge. In particular building strong narratives and schema that create the structure for knowledge and understanding that many advantaged children bring to the school.
deliberate practice, building success on meaningful and challenging tasks. Enabling children to achieve meaningful work that allows them to see themselves in a new light, forever changed.
diagnostic assessment, high quality feedback: rapid, high quality feedback loops.
Literacy and Language: the cornerstones of unlocking disadvantage.
Future thinking | less about what has been missed, more about what could be…
How far do we consider the future and what individuals need to thrive and make the most of the opportunities that present themselves within the enigmatic variation of life (Michael Blastland, 2020)? Whilst academic qualifications act as a passport through future doorways, what else allows individuals to thrive? What is the balance of competence and character that supports progression? What secures a good quality of life? To be able to make their own choices? To be able to influence the world around them (directly and distantly)? How do we best support disadvantaged individuals to be competitive… going forward in their future?
Essentially accumulating advantage for disadvantaged children (and in specific areas), to create character and competence so that their, “Childhood is not a destiny.” (Robert Sampson)
“… lives are lived forwards but can only be understood backwards. Though life is shaped by various forces, as we know, it is also shaped by living, by particular experience as it unfolds.” (Michael Blastland, 2019)
It is not ability or talent, it is the combination of opportunity, support and experiences over time that put advantaged ahead
Creating the opportunity to bring innate talent to the surface for all individuals. Creating the opportunity for individuals to be inspired by, experience and persist long enough with something so that they become better than average; triggering something in their self identity that allows them to continue to develop confidence and competence in something over time that then in hindsight appears to be talent.
What we see as talent is almost always the product of practice (deliberate) over time. How then do we support disadvantage to develop competence that might in the future be deemed to be a talent?
Our use of language around this is really important; and our reference to talent and ability is ubiquitous. We should take all reference to natural talent, x factor, ability etc. and talk about present level of attainment; so our language does not limit learners and we do not infer attainment as pre-determined.
“It is difficult for us to realise how much information is socially transmitted. because the amount is staggering and the process is largely transparent.” (Pascal Boyer, 2018)
“Don’t give me abstract, disconnected facts/knowledge to recall over time | build schema, the framework for me to understand.”
“The importance of knowledge is not in question, but knowledge alone is not enough.” (Mick Waters)
We need to tread carefully around knowledge/retrieval and ensure that this is also about understanding/explanation, and not in that order. We need teaching to be about concepts, threads, big ideas, narrative that has a much greater chance of developing and deepening schema so that learning is much more about being memorable, structured and connected. So that knowledge is judiciously selected to deepen understanding beyond memory and abstract recall. This is particularly important for disadvantaged who will make no sense of abstract compilation of knowledge – they need the narrative and schema that advantaged learners have accumulated through time as part of their enhanced access to cultural capital.
“…stories perform a fundamental cognitive function: they are the means by which the emotional brain makes sense of the information collected by the rational brain… beliefs about (information) are held entirely in the form of stories. When we encounter a complex issue and try to understand it, what we look for is not consistent and reliable facts, but a consistent and comprehensible story.” (from Out of the Wreckage, George Monbiot, 2017)
“Collecting a teacher’s knowledge may help us solve the challenges of the day, but understanding how a teacher thinks can help us navigate the challenges of a lifetime. Ultimately education is more than the information we accumulate in our heads.” (Adam Grant, 2021)
Beware strategies that make us feel good | the seating plan fallacy
When seeking to reverse disadvantage, as a sector, we are prone to gimmicks and good intentions that can do the reverse of what we intend. For example, labels are dangerous, they can confer, define and condemn. Labels give us excuses, they deepen stereotypes and generalisations and worse they give us reasons to normalise disadvantage or excuse (explain) lower attainment.
“…don’t label me, place me in a seat, or put a dot or code next to my face on an A4 page and do nothing different. You are conferring disadvantage on me; it is delayed attainment not ability and I need you to really know me and know what I need.”
If we are to use tools like seating plans, then it must move to direct action or it has the danger of widening not closing the gap.
What if this is the challenge of our time, and we fail?
We have the capability, the expertise and shared understanding to do better by the families and children that need us most. We are not yet meeting this challenge, but we can. We also have the opportunity and obligation to do so. It has never been more challenging to grow up in our world and our record in the South West is not yet one we can be proud of.
How then, do we privilege those presently and previously experiencing disadvantage – let us open that debate and move to action. Apply the disadvantaged lens and ask searching questions about what we should value and how we must act. Now is the time to use the expertise and experience across our region to make a discernible difference.
As educationalists we still have an urgent, deeper problem; one that may already be irreversibly entrenched by a pandemic whose impact has not been felt evenly. It is more important than ever for us to work together to deliberately and systematically address deep-seated inequality and act now to slow the growing gulf between advantaged and disadvantaged children; so that children are not permanently defined by the pandemic, because they have the tools to choose what they become…
To give the power of choice is deeply embedded in our values as educators, but we will require the bravery to step into the light of the new normal and be the change that is needed, if only we’re brave enough to be it…
“When day comes, we step out of the shade aflame and unafraid. The new dawn blooms as we free it. For there is always light. If only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.” (Amanda Gorman, 2021)
Ten months after writing Urgent Action Required | addressing disadvantage we find ourselves still in the midst of a Pandemic, one which has touched our lives. The sad truth is that the stark asymmetry of society, education and opportunity, embarrassingly revealed by the pandemic, still dominates, condemns and limits the lives of disadvantaged children. It is very hard to under-play the steepness of the challenge that we as educators face.
“We must have a bold and comprehensive plan … a long-term strategy, fully funded, planned by educationalists with cross party consensus, that looks forward for the next five years to support those most impacted by COVID-19 over their educational lifetime.” (Sammy Wright, Social Mobility Commissioner, 2021)
There is increasing hope as we extricate ourselves from the pandemic, but the sickening reality remains, the impact of the pandemic and the deep economic and social cost will burden communities and individuals into the middle of this century. This piece of writing, however, is born out of optimism not pessimism, hope not futility. It offers a framework for understanding how we can support all individual disadvantaged children to thrive in our increasingly asymmetric society and acceleratingly complex future.
Accumulating disadvantage, the past, present and future | the asymmetry of life
“…what future?” (Enola Holmes) “There are two paths that you can take Enola, yours or the path others choose for you…” (Eudoria Holmes) “Our future is up to us!” (Enola Holmes, Film, 2020)
Accumulating disadvantage and advantage is founded in early life and is perpetuated through education to fundamentally influence and determine the opportunities that are available through adulthood. This accumulation cements and calcifies the asymmetries that are hard wired into our society and education system. The interaction and compounding impact of the factors that accumulate disadvantage and advantage are detailed below: (the table contrasts key factors that influence disadvantaged and advantaged children in the past and into their future)
Accumulating advantaged and disadvantage in the past and future: self-perpetuating and reinforcing
“…with each new thing you learn, the better you’re able to absorb the next related fact.” (David Eagleman, 2020)
Life as a series of opportunities | those that we take and those we miss
Between life and death there are opportunities that we play going forwards through childhood and adulthood. For some this is a a joyous stroll through a land full of possibility for others it is a world that happens to them, a life that limits their opportunity to try another life…
“Between life and death there is a library,” she said. “And within that library, the shelves go on for ever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices. Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?” (Matt Haig, The Midnight Library, 2020)
Considering life as a one way journey along routes punctuated by opportunities helps our understanding of disadvantage by pushing us to look forward and not just backwards to support disadvantaged children.
“…you possess only a single life, what you devote yourself to (or the experiences you have) send you down a particular roads, while the other paths will forever remain untrodden by you.” (David Eagleman, 2020)
Early experience and opportunity lay the ground (load the deck, build the foundation) for the future. Some individuals accumulate knowledge, understanding, self-esteem, self-confidence, self-belief, a set of tools that open doors and routes in their future (not initially foreseeable); the foundation for self-agency; picking and choosing and playing with opportunities as they present themselves.
The reverse is also true, if we consider life as a set of opportunities, disadvantaged children and individuals have had fewer opportunities in the past, now and in their future. Disadvantaged are, therefore, more likely to…
… have fewer opportunities (recognised or not) now and in the future, those that appear and those that are self-created.
… are far less likely to step forward when opportunities present; more likely to self-de-select themselves and step back.
… and have fewer tools to use, previous experiences or self-belief to exploit each opportunity.
Tackling our disadvantaged problem forwards (as well as backwards)
We remain very uncomfortable with the truth that…. however effective we believe our present education system is, it fails, year after year to address the disadvantaged gap; there is very limited evidence of attainment mobility in our schools; disadvantaged children at age 16 are 18.1 months behind their more affluent peers, and worse still “…we could be at a turning point .. we could soon enter a period where the gap starts to widen.” (EPI, 2019)
Whilst we need to assess the deficits in learning of disadvantaged children by looking back at what is missed or insecure (literacy, language being key levers), we should also look forward into their future and consider how we can load their dice and increase their (life) chances. Increasing the child’s chance of recognising, creating, stepping into opportunities in their future with a set of personal and academic tools and keys that will exploit the opportunities that life throws up.
How far do we consider the future and the specific tools that individuals need to thrive and make the most of opportunities that present themselves within the enigmatic variation of life (Michael Blastland, 2020)? Whilst academic qualifications act as a passport through future doorways, what else allows individuals to thrive? What is the balance of competence and character that supports progression? What secures a good quality of life? To be able to make their own choices? To be able to influence the world around them (directly and distantly)? How do we best support disadvantaged to be competitive?
A personalised approach that may also consider how best we build specialisms, areas of competence to accumulate advantage so that they are competitive with their more advantaged peers may prove a useful enablers for individuals. Essentially accumulating advantage for disadvantaged children (and in specific areas), to create character and competence so that their, “Childhood is not a destiny.” (Robert Sampson)
“… lives are lived forwards but can only be understood backwards. Though life is shaped by various forces, as we know, it is also shaped by living, by particular experience as it unfolds.” (Michael Blastland, 2019)
Present level of attainment, delayed attainment and attainment mobility
We must work harder to recognise a child’s present level of attainment as just that the present levelof attainment. This understanding of attainment removes assumptions, language (either conscious or unconscious) that attainment or ability is fixed. It usefully opens the door to discussions about delayed attainment (particularly pertinent now) and to attainment mobility the ability for children to progress from low to high attaining compared to peers (something that education does not achieve well). In this sense learning is a way of creating abilities; how far can we support disadvantaged to create their own potential...
“Learning now becomes a new way of creating abilities rather than bringing people to the point where they can take advantage of their innate ones … People are not born with fixed reserves of potential; instead potential is an expandable vessel, shaped by the various things we do throughout our lives. Learning isn’t a way of reaching one’s potential but rather a way of developing it. We can create our own potential.” (Anders Eriksson)
… it is also helpful not to be fooled into believing disadvantaged children are less ambitious and aspirational. This maybe how they present, but often the opposite is true, not having the means and being deeply influenced by our lived experience may tell a different story.
Talent identified in hindsight as the consequence of effort and practice over time
Creating the opportunity to bring innate talent to the surface for all individuals. Creating the opportunity for individuals to be inspired by, experience and persist long enough with something so that they become better than average; triggering something in their self identity that allows them to continue to develop confidence and competence in something over time that then in hindsight appears to be talent.
What we see as talent is almost always the product of practice (deliberate) over time. How then do we support disadvantage to develop competence that might in the future be deemed to be a talent?
Life chances turn on small things, moments and chance | an opportunity to sow seeds and load the dice for the future
“..we are each made up of numerous possibilities.. “We discover the possibilities by doing, by trying new activities, building new networks, finding new role models.” “We learn who we are in practice, not in theory.” (Herminia Ibarra, quoted by David Epstein, 2019)
The thing with disadvantage is that regardless of the present level of disadvantage we can accumulate advantage over time, at anytime, it is not something that starts when disadvantage is removed and it may well turn on small things as well as complex things, in seconds or years. How do we support children to fall helplessly in love with their future passion, perhaps in brief powerful encounters?
“Beneath every big talent lies an ignition story – the famously potent moment when a young person falls helplessly in love with their future passion. … Talent begins with brief powerful encounters that spark motivation (ignition) by linking your identity to a high performing person or group (or self image). This is called ignition, and it consists of a tiny, world shifting thought lighting up your unconscious mind: I could be them (or do that, or achieve that)” (Dan Coyle)
The path we take through life is influenced in complex ways as a journey of loadedchance and opportunity. How accessible the opportunities are depends on the level of advantage or disadvantage. The way that opportunities playout over a lifetime, in often unpredictable ways, means that increasing the future chances of success and accumulating advantage can arise in even the smallest conversation, some praise, meeting them there, asking how things went, building confidence, knowledge and understanding all have the ability to build a can-do identity and increase agency that unlocks opportunities. As educators we cannot see the future, but we can increase the chances of disadvantaged by creating a broader toolbox for these future opportunities and experimentation:
“… mental meandering and personal experimentation are sources of power, and head starts are overrated.” (David Epstein , 2019)
We are all responsible, there is no opt out | It is everyone’s problem
As educators we have significant influence on all individuals that we interact with; we leak our expectations and attitudes. Some of these will be inconsequential, but others may be life changing.
“Every day, we make each other smarter or stupider, stronger or weaker, faster or slower. We can’t help leakingexpectations, through our gazes, our bodylanguage and our voices. My expectationsabout you define my attitude towards you.” (Rutger Bregman, 2020)
The good and the bad news is that every interaction along life’s journey has an impact on us and informs our sense of self and our self identity. The good is that everyday there are multiple ways to influence those around us. The impact can be fundamental and is likely to bear little relation to the amount of time or investment it takes. Because we live life forwards there is no telling the impact the educators have on children on their journey through childhood into adulthood. Applying this underlines the importance of culture, the importance that it is everyone’s job, that we should not partition our disadvantaged work into time-limited strategies – it is an all the time thing. And we are all responsible.
“…who you are emerges from everything you’ve interacted with: your environment, all of your experiences, your friends, your enemies, your culture, your belief system, your era – all of it.” (David Eagleman, 2020)
The bad is that everyday in every interaction between educator and child we will consciously or unconsciously do one (or a mix) of the following. Underlining the complexity of addressing disadvantage we need to consider how far our culture, curriculum, teaching, culture, rules, routines, language, our assumptions, bias – condemns, confers, colludes, mitigates, or removes disadvantage?
Condemn: to assume fixed attainment and capability making disadvantage the defining feature of an individual. “That child’s disadvantage is permanent.”
Confer: to give someone the identity of disadvantaged. Applying all of the damaging stereotypes and generalities of disadvantage. “Yes, you are disadvantaged”
Collude: to act together in order to deceive through agreeing the extent and on going impact of disadvantage. “Yes, life is difficult because you are disadvantaged”
Mitigate: to support and reduce the impact of disadvantage “No, you have agency over what you do and where you go”
Remove: to undo disadvantage by accumulating advantage “This does not define you or pre-determine your future.” (could have been ‘reverse‘, but this does not fit with choices made going forward, and may inadvertently suggest unpicking the past, rather than adding to a character and competence toolbox that takes advantage of opportunities in the future, further this might be better termed as ‘adding advantage or accumulating advantage‘
Educators are not consciously the creators of disadvantage, but we do make choices, minute by minute, that can limit the impact of disadvantage on a child’s future, so that collectively, consciously, together, we enable our disadvantaged children to write their own stories, to grasp, shape and wrestle with their own future. Giving them access to the game and the rules and the tactics and the confidence and self-identity to have agency.
“It was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later. You have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in the future … believing the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart …and that will make all the difference.” (Steve Jobs)
Keeping the main thing the main thing | Teaching as the key lever for accumulating advantage
One of the biggest levers for accumulating advantage for disadvantaged is to invest deeply in supporting and developing professionals to teach well; professional development that focuses on:
the key spine of what matters most in the curriculum, delivered with purpose and passion; making it unavoidable and compelling. Build curiosity and questioning in all children to secure their ability to make decisions, take chances and have agency now and in the future.
direct instruction, explanation, modelling. Investing deeply in explanation so that we scaffold understanding, based on a progression of key organising concepts and ideas brought alive by judicious selection of the most relevant and compelling knowledge. Building schema that provides the foundation and touch points that will come easier to advantaged children.
deliberate practice. To build confidence and success on meaningful and challenging tasks.
diagnostic assessment, high quality feedback. The biggest advantage that advantaged children have had and have are rapid, high quality feedback loops. From a young age advantaged children are corrected and encouraged; this matures into a self-directed search for feedback as a positive mechanism for growth and improvement. For disadvantaged it can be something that exposes, humiliates or offers confirmation that the world happens to them. Feedback has the potential to be transformational and comes in all forms, a glance, a smile, a comment, conversation, caring, valuing the person, simply repeating what has been said, questioning, pausing, motivating, (written feedback), comparison, modelling… again revealing the importance of human connection
Literacy and Language: the cornerstones of unlocking disadvantage. All teachers and wider colleagues have a role in both literacy (all aspects) and language (including vocabulary). Particular focus on oracy is leveraging for disadvantaged; again this is precisely what happens in the homes of the advantaged from an early age.
Teaching that has a strong narrative that is conceptually strong, relevant and feels important so that learning is irresistible supports the likelihood that we will accumulate advantage in disadvantaged students. Particularly where we are able to cumulatively support and expect individuals to complete meaningful and challenging work; building self-belief, self esteem and igniting the curiosity present in us all.
“This change-only-when-relevant feature reminds us that the brain is not simply a blank slate upon which the world scrawls all its stories. .. Experiences turn into memories when they are germane (to our lives).” (David Eagleman, 2020)
Teachers who, “foster rethinking cycles by instilling intellectual humility, disseminating doubt and cultivating curiosity,” (Adam Grant, 2021) are more likely to equip students for their future; to know what to do when they do not know what to do.
“Collecting a teacher’s knowledge may help us solve the challenges of the day, but understanding how a teacher thinks can help us navigate the challenges of a lifetime. Ultimately education is more than the information we accumulate in our heads.” (Adam Grant, 2021)
What if our connection with Education is elasticated to the point of failure?
In middle and long distance races athletes describe the rubber band that exists between themselves and the runner(s) in front. Once this extends too far there is a point of no return, the band snaps and it is impossible to catch-up.
Sadly this may also be true for disadvantaged children over time (and accelerated during the pandemic). There is a point when disadvantaged children increasingly self-deselect themselves from engaging, attending and trying; they become disenfranchised from education. The elastic snapping and the checking-out of education may sadly be the case for an eye-wateringly high number of disadvantaged children. Our challenge, for these individuals, will not be simply to close gaps, but to prove to those who are no longer in the game that education, itself, is worthwhile.
What you have (or have not) in your locker counts (you in or counts you out)
When advantaged children get good at something they stack their internal locker with evidence of success (their sense of identity or self). Numerous affirmations build up in their locker to reaffirm their ability and alter, enhance their self belief and agency. The number of affirmations and the amount of evidence is not compromised by odd failures or negative comments; their sense of self (worth) is unwounded and their agency undiminished.
The reinforced, affirmation and evidence rich locker of advantaged individuals
For disadvantage, their lived experience can leave their locker for a range of aspects of their life sparse. This leads to a propensity to not try again and risk further weakening the locker that may lower self-agency and give a suffocating sense that the world happens to them. The downward spiral of which leads to on-going self de-selection from trying, risking failure, (that their locker will not resist). New opportunities are not seen as such (in fact the opposite) and the disadvantaged step back, not forward, further accumulating disadvantage.
The disproportionate impact of achieving meaningful and challenging work
Disadvantaged individuals (and all children) need to have the opportunity to wrestle with and succeed at meaningful and challenging work. This speaks directly to their identity as a learner. It gives a new sense of achievement, alters the self identity, contributes to their self-belief locker, accumulates advantage, loads the dice for the future, decreases the likelihood of self de-selection and strengthens agency. Bit by bit the more we, as educators, build these opportunities the more we mitigate disadvantage and accumulate advantage.
“Once a student sees that he or she is capable of excellence, that student is never quite the same. There is a new self-image, a new notion of possibility. There is an appetite for excellence.” (Ron Berger)
For a disadvantaged strategy, look within as much as out for answers, think in years not terms, reject initiatives, think systemic change, build culture not working groups
The scale of our disadvantaged problem is too big for short term strategy, initiative and short term interventions, it requires something deeper and systemic; our approach needs to become what we do (without trying), because it is in the culture, in the approach, owned by all. So…
… do look outside for inspiration, but build your approach on what you learn about disadvantage in your context; the answers and approach lie within you and your community; strategies do not travel well. Thinking deeply about disadvantage and context and ownership with strong execution matters.
… do not seek initiatives and short term interventions. Systemic change is required that is irreversible (not least because disadvantage holds on to individuals over time).
… plan to address disadvantage in the long term, think 3 to 5 to 10 years in terms of timeline. Resist the one year plan punctuated by short term interventions.
… do not think of disadvantage as one homogenous group; this issue is only understood by fully understanding each individual disadvantaged child and how best to accumulate advantage for them.
… do not just fixate on the past and gaps that exist, also consider the future for disadvantaged students, what do they need to thrive?
… do invest in teaching (the every lesson, everyday lever) and culture to accumulate advantage through the lens of competence and character (particularly self-belief and self-esteem) to give self-agency.
“Success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities.”(Malcolm Gladwell)
This is personal | the need for human to human contact | post-pandemic rocket fuel
Children typically think in the now. Emphasising human contact and quality interaction between and adult and learner in the magical places we call schools may well be the best recovery from the pandemic. Dwelling and colluding on the impact may not serve children well; keeping the Main Event, every lesson, everyday as the focus will likely best serve disadvantaged children.
“It is difficult for us to realise how much information is socially transmitted. because the amount is staggering and the process is largely transparent.” (Pascal Boyer, 2018)
Human connection is perhaps the most important contributor to accumulating advantage; it is perhaps the key ingredient in early advantage before the age of 4. The pandemic significantly reduced socialisation and human connection; reducing the staggering amount of information that is socially transmitted. We all bear this responsibility, that young people watch, imitate and learn from us and that this shapes them over time. This human connection may be the biggest loss during the pandemic, but may well prove our greatest super power in the post pandemic.
“We have to see to be able to do. … You play a role in passing on cultural norms and nuances. …people who we connect with, who we trust and who we are exposed to. These are the three fundamental factors that underpin who we learn from or imitate … shaping us at each and every moment of our lives.” (Fiona Murden, 2020)
Seeking equity | giving disadvantaged what they need
“Fair doesn’t mean giving every child the same thing, it means giving every child what they need.” (Rick Lavoie)
We should not consider disadvantaged as a single homogenous group; considering them as a group has significant negative consequences and troublesome stereotypes that will mis-serve disadvantaged children. We must maintain the view that disadvantaged children are individuals and as such we should not confer or label as disadvantage, but understand each child and give them what they need; seek equity give individuals what they need.
But what about the post-pandemic? | gifts for disadvantage from the pandemic?
The advancement of and use of technology to support learning has the opportunity to supplement the main event (every lesson, everyday) to support learning and to deepen learning. There is also significant opportunity to democratise learning and increase accessibility to teaching and learning 24/7. Securing accessibility to technology needs to remain a key priority post pandemic.
Starker understanding of the role of assessment in leaning and the need for feedback to support progress; the significantly weakened or limited in distance learning.
Disadvantaged individuals are likely to have weakened their present level of attainment relative to more affluent, advantaged peers. We should avoid demoting disadvantaged down set or to allow the new attainment level to limit our expectation of them. Before our situational blindness kicks in and the new level becomes defining; we need to seek equity alongside teaching the Main Event (every lesson, everyday)
We need to understand the impact of the pandemic on the self-identity/self-esteem locker of each child. Actively encourage and secure early success on meaningful and challenging work; building self-esteem, filling their lockers and ensuring they increasingly step forward, not back.
The deeper connections with family that have developed through the pandemic provide a significant opportunity to support disadvantaged children: whilst children spend c.950 hours in classroom and well over c.1200 hours in school each year, accounting for sleeping, they spend closer to 4000 hours per year with parents and carers.
The So What? | How far are we meeting the following challenges?
The following is offered as a set of challenging questions for us to consider how we are accumulating advantage for individual disadvantaged children, so that they feel and are more successful now and in adulthood; how best do we gift each child with the self-agency that allow them to make choices, seize opportunities and thrive in life.
How far do we know, at an individual level, the nature of disadvantage in our context: how it accumulates over time to limit opportunity generally and specifically in our community?
How far are we able to recognise “present level of attainment” and “delayed attainment” so that we do not inadvertently assume fixed ability and reduce attainment mobility?
How far is addressing our disadvantaged problem everyone’s business? Understanding that we are all responsible and leak our expectations all of the time.
do we condemn, confer, collude, mitigate or remove disadvantage?
do we focus on our language, actual and body language?
How far do we believe and invest in human connection as the key to accumulating advantage. The lack of human connection may have done the most damage in the pandemic, by contrast it is likely to be our superpower to influence and gift choice to our disadvantaged children in the post-pandemic.
How far do we know that this needs to be an investment over the longer term, aimed at system change (teaching and culture). Initiatives and intervention are poor substitutes for systemic, irreversible change that influences how we educate over time to accumulate advantage?
How far do we focus on the main thing as the main thing for accumulating advantage: teaching well? How far is this focused on:
what matters most, building curiosity and questioning in all children,
direct instruction, explanation, modelling; progression of key organising concepts and ideas brought alive by judicious selection of compelling knowledge.
deliberate practice, building success on meaningful and challenging tasks.
diagnostic assessment, high quality feedback: rapid, high quality feedback loops.
Literacy and Language: the cornerstones of unlocking disadvantage.
How far are we looking not to just to fill the past gaps for disadvantaged, but equally seek to load the dice for disadvantaged children by looking into the future and equipping them with the tools required to recognise and step forward for opportunities with competence and character that allow them to thrive and influence their world (building self agency)?
How well do we prepare disadvantaged students to:
recognise and create opportunities for themselves? (including being curious and asking question)
have the agency to step forward for opportunities?
have the tools to be able to exploit their opportunities?
How far have we really considered what it is that allows individuals to thrive now and in the future? How far does the present education system set individuals up for success? How do we tip the balance, load the dice to give disadvantaged access to life and the rules?
How far do we understand that an individual’s self identity and motivation to continue is determined by their sense of self and what they have in the locker? How far do we build in affirmations and evidence of success for children to actively build this confidence?
How far are we exploiting the opportunities afforded by our deeper connection with families and communities and our use of technology to democratise learning?
How far would addressing the above make everything else in education either less important or not required?
We should remain optimistic and hopeful for the future; we have remarkable educators in all areas of our sector; with the right focus we can help all children to make something of their lives in a future that is unlikely to be dull.
“Our task is to educate their whole being so they can face the future. We may not see the future, but they will and our job is to help them make something of it.” (Ken Robinson)
“Fair doesn’t mean giving every child the same thing, it means giving every child what they need.” (Rick Lavoie)
As educationalists we have an urgent problem. A problem that has always been there, one which we have struggled to address and now this problem threatens to disenfranchise and damage an ever increasing number of children. However effective we believe our present education system is, it fails year after year to address the disadvantaged gap; there is very limited evidence of attainment mobility in our schools; disadvantaged children at age 16 are 18.1 months behind their more affluent peers (EPI, 2019) and more than half a GCSE grade behind per subject (Progress 8 -0.45 to +0.13).
“Over recent years, there has been a dramatic slowing down in the closure of the disadvantage gap (at the end of Year 11), … the five-year rolling average now suggests that it would take 560 years to close the gap. … an increase in the gap in 2018 suggest(s) … that we could be at a turning point and that we could soon enter a period where the gap starts to widen.” (EPI, 2019)
This is now an urgent issue, the impact of the present pandemic will not be felt equally; our asymmetric society will become more so. As you read this the disadvantaged gap is widening quicker than ever. The inconvenient truth is that the legacy of the pandemic will be far reaching, will extend into the future, and for an increasing number of children the impact will be irreversible. It may well threaten the fabric of society, but it is the fortune of individual children that should motivate our action now and as we emerge into a post-pandemic world.
It will be hard to describe the challenge that our disadvantage children and families now face. In a World that acts explicitly and implicitly against the disadvantaged, the present hiatus in their education and the impact of school closure will have a deep pastoral and educational legacy exacerbated by a deep economic downturn; the level of disadvantage across the country will deepen and grow. The already strong propensity for disadvantaged children to self-deselect will grow significantly.
Of all of the problems that our sector now faces this is the most urgent; we must act now; not in isolation, but as a sector to address the expanding disadvantage gap. Not just because it is right for individual children growing up in uncertain times, but because our very society may depend on it.
“Education and organisations should be judged by how well it supports its most vulnerable and disadvantaged to achieve and feel success.”
Disadvantaging the disadvantaged | Distance Learning
For all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing even what they have will be taken away. (Matthew Effect)
If we wanted to design a curriculum and a mode of delivery that would disadvantage the disadvantaged then distance learning during closure would be it. Overlay a challenging unemployment and economic climate, the disadvantaged and newly disadvantaged will haveeven less ability to focus on education; will have even less opportunity and control over their lives.
The following table identifies the reasons for the widening disadvantaged gap through the lens of distance learning during the pandemic, … something that is also true during normal times.
During the time of closure there will be increasing numbers of children who are curriculum negative (accumulating disadvantage) and are falling behind; a group that will expand over time. At the same time there will also be curriculum and learning positive pupils (accumulating advantage), those who thrive in the home, making greater progress than if they had to contend with the noise of school. The result is a stretch in present attainment profile that is now widening the disadvantaged gap and significantly growing the number of children who will have delayed attainment; from those who have little, more will be taken away.
Again the impact of this will not be felt equally across schools and academies, those serving high disadvantage in highly deprived areas will have the greatest challenge; where the full impact of the pandemic and economic downturn will play out. It is in these areas and schools that we will need to work the hardest to maintain a child’s focus on education, secure attainment mobility and give them the opportunities to be be more than they thought they could be.
The impact of Distance Learning for disadvantaged (and other) children
The following chart identifies the impact of poor versus highly effective teaching on an average student and a disadvantaged student. Whilst this is true when children are in school it is also true, probably more so, when children are distance learning. This should focus us to view distance learning through the eyes of the disadvantaged learner, taking into account the barriers identified above and the suggested criteria for distance learning below.
Sutton Trust, 2011
If we are in any doubt that attendance is linked to progress, then the following graph identifies the Progress 8 score achieved by children whose attendance fall below 90% and where attendance is between 90-95% for disadvantaged (blue) and non-disadvantaged (grey). Again the disproportionate impact on disadvantaged reduces progress 8 by a further 0.36 compared to non-disadvantaged for children with less than 90% attendance. (sample data, not national data)
We will soon have the vast majority of children with attendance <90% for this academic year, but as with the pandemic, the impact is never felt equally across society; the asymmetry will deepen, the disadvantaged (and others) will fall further, loosing their foothold in education.
So what? how do we tackle this enormous challenge?
This is a question for the sector and it will need to evolve over time. The following is not exhaustive, but is a starter for 10, a plan for action based on some key periods of time:
During the pandemic | Now
Feed the disadvantaged and vulnerable children; prioritise the feeding of families during the pandemic, working with community groups to meet this basic need.
Keep disadvantaged and vulnerable children safe; do everything we can to keep children safe through the pandemic, maintaining contact and support to build their sense of psychological safety.
Get disadvantaged online (now and in the long term); we need to do more to tackle the digital divide, now more than ever with the current jump in technology and on-line learning.
Create effective Distance learning through the eyes of disadvantaged children through the pandemic; based on the following principles:
Accessible: High clarity, specific instructions, dependable in format, encourages routine. – limit all barriers to accessing and completing learning.
Sequenced: Ordered and progressive, does not assume high levels of inference or cultural context. – random content in the wrong order does not support learning and progression.
Proportionate amount: Is achievable, meaningful, and encourages completion – too much work will encourage opt-out.
Engaging and compelling: Build in hooks and engaging tasks that encourage return and continuation of learning. – reducing disadvantaged propensity to self-deselect.
Human interaction: The more we can give a sense of human interaction and narrative with the more likely it will generate motivation.
Validation and feedback: Encourage further working by validating and acknowledging completed work.
Expect and prepare for the reduced quality and coherence of distance learning as fatigue sets in and where there is a lack of long term vision for distance learning; consider key leveraging learning, lessons, resourcing that are focused on the most important key concepts and learning for the next phase of education.
Make this everyone’s challenge; unswerving focus and high ambition for disadvantaged children; lifting the ceiling of what we believe is possible; shifting culture and ambition will underpin all efforts to address this challenge; start now, build momentum with colleagues now – share the challenge, call for innovation.
Convert and recruit all Raising Standards Leaders to the cause; to focus entirely on the attainment and progress of disadvantaged children in every year group; championing and building the plan through others.
Build on-line and deliver Professional Development sessions during closure that focus on:
“Teaching through the lens of disadvantaged learners.”
“Leading through the lens of disadvantaged learners.”
Preparing to re-join the new normal | Next and in addition to the above
Review deeply the curriculum:
Map clearly what has been lost, not covered … assume universal coverage is low.
Debate then define the core spine of the curriculum; that which is now the key concepts, knowledge and skills that are most leveraging for the future.
Look to remove noise out of the curriculum; more than ever we need to take the shortest route to learning.
Plan how you will assess each child, when we re-join, to understand that key curricular and learning gaps; not to allocate a number to each child, but to understand the needs of each learner to inform the curriculum, planning and teaching.
Maximise and plan for the greater use of technology; exploit the recent jump in on-line learning – sift out the good and package it to supplement the curriculum for disadvantaged learners over time.
Plan for the deeper involvement and collaboration with families as co-educators of children. Plan how this can be directed to add resource to closing the attainment gaps.
Post-pandemic world | Academic Year 2020 – 2021
Do not drop disadvantaged children down sets.
Do give disadvantaged children the very best teachers and teaching, promoting disadvantaged up sets to get to the best teacher.
Invest deeply in quality teaching; the greatest determinant on disadvantage progress, ensure all professional development activity improves the quality of teaching. Be highly specific on the key spine of the curriculum, direct instruction, modelling, deliberate practice, interleaving, review, revisit. Sequence curriculum to have a strong narrative and a level of purpose that motivates and makes learning irresistible.
Teach disadvantaged more; this is about equity not equality. Consider extending the school day and holidays to address the widening gap.
Get every disadvantaged child on-line and with a suitable device; reduce competition for the device within the home. Direct learners to highly specific learning on the core spine of learning that will be most leveraging for closing the gap.
Do not just focus on the acquisition and accumulation of knowledge – without context, understanding, meaning and purpose this will not stick in the long term, to support understanding of the world, so that disadvantaged children have self agency in childhood and adulthood.
Long term change to education
We need to judge the quality of provision through those that most need it and keep disadvantaged attainment (and progress) as a defining measure of the quality of the provision.Measuring an academies ability to secure attainment mobility over time. Rewarding those who genuinely reverse disadvantage.
Do not create a national assessment and examination structure in 2021 that only serves to measure the impact of the pandemic and the deep inequalities in this country.
Adapt the present framework to address the deep needs of disadvantaged children in a post-pandemic world; one that will be harder not easier for disadvantaged children
“The question is, ‘What will normal look like?’ While no one can say how long the crisis will last, what we find on the other side will not look like the normal of recent years.”(McKinsey, March 2020, a quote from 11 years ago during the global financial crisis)
Whilst there are many things that are uncertain in a post-pandemic world, we already know that the impact of the pandemic and the economic downturn will hit those who will be least able to cope. We need to act now; if not now, when, if not you, who?
Dan Nicholls 