In the next phase we will strengthen our trust, deepen our connection and collaboration to add more value to each other and to all children. This is a venture in shared responsibility and joint endeavour to inspirelives with greater opportunity and choice. Succeeding in our mission:
Inspiring every child to flourish through an inclusive, all-through education that nurtures opportunity, equity, and agency for life.
A mission that ensures 11,000 children flourish and develop greater self-agency, becoming the masters of their fate. A worthy quest powered by 1,500 connected colleagues, empowered to do meaningful work.
For those that carry the most
We recognise that some children carry more than most, have had less opportunity and experiences in their early childhood and so need us more. They neither lack ambition or ability, but they have less capacity, fewer resources and face barriers that tip odds against them. In difficult times education has the power to transform lives, which is the business we are in. The performance and development of these children is the most important measure of our worth.
“We need equity in education, not equality. If someone can’t see straight because the world is falling in around them, we need to raise them up to clearer skies.” Poor, Katriona O’Sullivan
Anchored by our Values
Everything we do is held by our shared values:
Our stable core enables our innovative edge
We continue to build a strong trust with great schools that focuses on getting every day right and building a stable core: consistently delivering high quality provision with effective systems and shared approaches, enables our frontlineobsession.
We stand on our stable core and what we choose to do the same, so that we can innovate on the edge, expertly developing approaches to improve provision and inspirelives. This is a collective, connected and developmental endeavour through collaboration.
Towards 2030 | why we exist
To build a strong trust with great schools. Offering high quality education over 570-weeks that closes gaps for those that most need us. So that the trust exists in a higher performance space and exploits our collaborative advantage that yields a trust dividend.
Our focus on partnerships and places builds better communities for children to grow up in and flourish. Colleagues create greater opportunity through deliberate local and regional collaboration,seeking to improve other trusts and the sector.
The trust is deeply connected within itself. There is a strong collective desire and shared responsibility to add value for all children in every setting. This collaboration enables a level of innovation and shared approaches that add more value. As part of a human organisation colleagues are well connected, making a greater difference to others in and beyond our trust.
The consequence of our work over five years is that the trust becomes self-improving, the systems, shared approaches, trust improvement model, collaboration, horizontal leadership and empowerment is creating more value over time and is self-sustaining.
Colleagues enjoy more opportunity and are proud to do meaningful work that is enabling all children to flourish through an inclusive, all-through education that nurtures opportunity, equity, and agency for life
Higher performance space | in search of the trust dividend
There is an unswerving, shared responsibility and desire to raise standards. To build a strong trust and great schools that exist in a higher performance space that particularly enables disadvantaged learners to thrive and attain well.
So, where next…this year
In the next phase, to summer 2026 we will prioritise these six areas:
Innovative Edge | Inspiringlives
This year we will invest in our inclusive all-through education (570-weeks) and apply greater equity to close gaps for children that need us most. A focus on place-based improvement will build strong community partnerships and support improvement beyond our trust.
Stable Core | frontlineobsession
We will continue to invest in our stable core, by building a strong trust that enables great schools. Our colleague focused strategy will invest in all colleagues and create the conditions for our frontline obsession. Aiming to create a self-improving trust, investing in lateral leadership, connection, collaboration and strong systems.
570 Weeks | inspiring all-through education
To build an inspiring, inclusive, all-through education: as an entitlement for all children. Enacting excellent provision for every child throughout their 570 weeks of education. Prioritising:
Trust Curriculum | curating and enacting a shared curriculum across all year groups. (SDP)
Attendance, inclusion and transitions | to secure stronger attendance, strong inclusion and high-quality transitions, disadvantage first. (SDP)
Best Start in life | investing in the strongest possible start for all children through nursery and early years, enabled through a set of core commitments. (SDP)
Outstanding Personal Development | outstanding personal development curriculum builds character and offers greater opportunity for all children in every setting.
Closing gaps | seeking social justice
To apply equity and unswervingly commit to meeting the needs of children experiencing disadvantage and SEND, securing attainment and attendance that closes gaps and builds agency for each child. Securing greater social justice by prioritising:
The trust-wide development of teaching | systematic focus on the development of teaching to enact our shared curriculum. Our strongest lever for closing gaps. (SDP)
Disadvantage first | unswerving focus on the performance of disadvantaged pupils, through targets, data and quality assurance, as the indicator of the quality of our provision. (SDP)
Catch-up, Keep-up | systematic tracking all learners and applying equity, doing different and more, so that all children are caught up and kept up. (SDP)
All leaders, leaders of SEND | developing our SEND provision, focusing on ‘all leaders as leaders of SEND’ – securing a systematic strategy to meet SEND needs.
The importance of place | community partnerships
To build partnerships with educational and community partners to secure stronger communities and 570-week educations for all children. Using expertise in the trust to reach out and secure improvement in schools, trusts and the sector. Growing our reputation and influence by prioritising:
Strong recruitment built on growing reputation | securing stronger recruitment of pupils into our schools to inspire more lives and better serve our communities.
Trust Growth | securing appropriate and strategic growth of the trust to secure financial opportunities and grow our reputation and influence.
Collaboration with local trusts, local authorities and partners | seeking strong collaboration to secure improvement beyond the trust – seeking to influence all 570-weeks
Sector reputation and influence | playing an active role beyond the trust, including with the DfE and other partners, to influence policy, improve other trusts and the sector.
Colleague focused | developmental and collaborative
Investing in all colleagues to be connected, to collaborate, develop and grow to lead and contribute toward the mission and feel empowered to do meaningful work. Prioritising:
Recruitment and Retention | building a strategy to recruit well and to attract and retain strong colleagues. Considering our approach to flexible working.
Professional Development | creating on-going opportunities for professional development, held in a curriculum. Developing, inspiring and creating more opportunities for colleagues.
Induction | investing in and building strong induction to support all colleagues to have the best possible start to their career in our trust.
Well-being and mental health strategy | securing approaches across the trust to support all colleagues with their well-being and mental health.
Strong Trust, Great Schools | standardise, empower, sustain
Ensuring that the trust improvement model offers the foundation for colleagues to lead great schools. Complicated systems well embedded across the trust to drive effectiveness and efficiency. Prioritising:
Deliberate enactment of the Trust Improvement Model (SIM) | developing our standardised approaches, enabling empowered areas and sustaining the model to secure improvement.
Financial stability and clarity | Ensuring the trust maintains the present financial security, secures wider responsibility and enables greater investment in the trust.
Professional Services | developing professional services, to strengthen platform, offer capacity, expertise and secure the environment to empower all colleagues to deliver the mission.
IT Strategy | ensuring colleagues and pupils have the tools they need to thrive now and in the future. Developing our digital vision and cloud-first approach. Exploring the opportunities of AI.
Towards a self-improving trust | lateral trust leadership
Creating the expectation and conditions for horizontal improvement across the trust. Connectivity and collaboration that are more effective and efficient at driving the School Improvement. Prioritising:
Trust Leadership Curriculum | investing in and enacting a trust leadership curriculum and to extend the sense of leadership curriculum through networks and the layers of the trust.
Networks and Subject Communities | connecting colleagues with purpose, formally and informally, to enable the development of strategies that raise standards.
Lateral leadership, 20% time | creating the expectation and the structure for colleagues to work beyond setting to support lateral leadership and secure a self-improving trust.
Succession Planning | investing in succession planning and talent management to ensure the future leadership security for our trust.
First Steps… into Term 1
And our first steps in Term 1 will see us deepen our connection and collaboration and prioritise:
Understanding performance and setting the ambition and targets for 2026.
High quality Induction and line management, starting out strong.
Strong start and focus on Attendance, disadvantage first.
Best Start in Life, embedding our core commitments.
Enacting our shared curriculum.
Focus on the development of teaching through Steplab.
Embedding the new Planergy software in Finance.
We choose to venture on this journey to 2030 not because it is easy, but because it is hard, and because our ambition will serve to organise and measure the best of our energies and skills, because the challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win (adapted, John F. Kennedy)
So, breathe, commit … and go inspire lives with greater opportunity and choice.
We are in the business of growing human beans, and beans have dreams.
Some have dreams that are delicate, wispy-misty bubbles, but, more frightsome, some beans believe dreams are for others and not for them. So, whilst all kiddle beans have dreams, some are lost before they grow to be whunking. For the world has a habit of bursting the bubbles of beans.
“Dreams,” he said, “is very mysterious things. They is floating around in the air like little wispy-misty bubbles. And all the time they is searching for sleeping people.” Roald Dahl
Tread softly | zozimus is fragile
We grow beans and all beans spread their dreams under our feet.
But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams W.B. Yeats
So, tread softly, but do deliberately step and set the stage for dreams to appear, exist and grow. Dreams require our guardianship, for the moment a child ceases to believe, they step back and separate themselves from those whose dreams are well preserved and soundly protected. For the dreamless beans we are their only second chance: exunckly why we choose to be here, doing what we do.
“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.” Peter Pan
Leaders of Dreams | dealers in dreams
“Leadership iscommunicating to (human beans) their worth and potential so clearly that they are inspired to see it in themselves.” Stephen Covey
We must curate the conditions that convince beans of their worth and potential so clearly that they are inspired to see it in themselves. Leadership that deals in dreams and has the courage to apply equity, might just create the opportunities that change lives of human beans, because childhoods last a lifetime.
“Dreams is full of mystery and magic… Do not try to understand them.” Roald Dahl
The land of less | surviving childhood
All human beans depend on supported opportunity to thrive. Opportunity, however, is largely a feature in the land of advantage. A place where beans go on quests, fueled by belief and held to high expectations. In their land, they stride sure-footedly, supported, resource laden, time enabled, in the direction of their dreams, with eyes affixed on the horizon.
Contrariwise, the land of disadvantage has less. Whilst, all beans are seeking to survive childhood, beans and often their grown-ups, in this land have less time, fewer resources and fleeting opportunity. Whilst ability and ambition are distributed equally in beans, dreams evaporate quicker in this land, quests revert to quiescence as under-resourced beans seek to survive, focused on the foreground, suspichy of their future.
Of course, the odd thing about the land of the less is that it is expensive to exist, to get by; there is a scarcity of money, and of resource and of time. But, we know this, and as educators we do have the resource and the expertise to offer the specific, targeted support that can lift horizons, to short cut and create cheat codes that close gaps and grow opportunity in the land of less. We are not yet brave or courageous enough to hack the system, one diddly and different bean at a time.
“Every human bean is diddly and different.” Roald Dahl
Igniting dreams | shifting self-image
Human beans are the sum of their experiences. Some of which are potent enough to ignite something deep inside making beans fall helplessly in love with their future passion. We are not yet experts in ignition; we pay too little attention to these life-changing moments and yet we are all shaped by them.
“Beneath every big talent lies an ignition story – the famously potent moment when a young person falls helplessly in love with their future passion.” Dan Coyle
All children are social beans, deeply sensitive to the words and actions of all adults. In every action, interaction and intonation we choose to construct or de-construct, to convey status, or not. Our role is to ignite and guard dreams, secure excellent provision and apply equity to gift beans a new notion of what is possible, daring them to dream, guiding them to look up and beyond.
“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.” Ron Berger
Fields of dreams | seeding serendipity
Only the application of equity in the right conditions can overcome the insidious influence and impact of having less. We must seed greater opportunity, deliberately to both specifically target and to increase the probability that unmoored beans will grow, flourish and accumulate advantage over time. For success is not a random act, it arises out of a predictable set of circumstances, more readily and typically evident in the advantaged realm.
“…success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities …replace the patchwork of lucky breaks, context and arbitrary advantages that determine success…with a system that provides opportunities and the conditions for all to feel success.” Malcolm Gladwell
To accumulate advantage for those with less, we should recreate the conditions of the land of more, being braver to give what is specifically needed so that beans do not feel unremarkable and separated from their world.
Full of Beans | inspiring lives with opportunity and choice
“Somewhere inside all of us is the power to change the world.” Matilda
We are full of beans, they are everywhere, and so are their dreams. Together, we have a responsibility, to grow both beans and dreams. To find that little bit of magic asleep inside each and everyone. In doing so we might just influence the lives of those who exist in the land of less, who carry more, who need, indeed rely upon, our expertise and our belief in them. As enthusiasts in life we can inspire the lives of those with less with greater opportunity and choice. But we should choose to close gaps at full speed, to embrace it with both arms, to become passionate about it, because lukewarm is no good.
“I began to realise how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. If you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it full speed, Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it and above all else become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good.” Roald Dahl
Pause. Before we launch into the new term, we should check we are prioritising what matters… serving those who need us most.
Childhoods that are constrained by poverty are shaped by steep challenges, limited resources, and few opportunities. Children surviving under the weight of hardship, cope with more, with less help, are more vigilant, anxious, and mistrusting of the world they navigate. Childhoods that are shaped by poverty lead to adulthoods that never quite escape the impact of growing up poor, because childhoods last a lifetime (Floella Benjamin).
“Even as an adult the ripples of that (poverty) still affect me.” (Katriona O’Sullivan)
As educators we must do more to understand what it is to grow up poor, to grasp some understanding of the lived experience and the visceral truth. We should cut through our own jargon, our own perceptions and assumptions to understand the barriers, the struggle and the occupying weight of what some children are forced to carry.
“‘Poor’ cuts through a lot of jargon – words like ‘disadvantaged’, ‘underprivileged’, ‘deprived’, ‘under-class’, ‘under-resourced’. Words that have their place but don’t capture the visceral truth of what it is to grow up the way I did. The way thousands of children are growing up right now.” (Katriona O’Sullivan)
We need equity | inspiring lives with greater opportunity and choice
“We need equity in education, not equality. If someone can’t see straight because the world is falling in around them, we need to raise them up to clearer skies.” (Katriona O’Sullivan)
In these times, as schools return, we must apply the equity required to enable all children to flourish, to clear their skies, and to not feel marginalised in their world. “We cannot keep pretending it’s an equal opportunities education system. It is not.” (Katriona O’Sullivan) Applying equity is giving what is needed, offering the opportunities for more children to thrive, to have greater choice in their lives, to open doors that let in the future.
“There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.” (Graham Greene)
This is not about planning and plotting an escape for a few but creating the conditions for all children to feel success in their school and their community. Applying equity to create the opportunities and experiences that inspirelives and unlock doors.
Tipping the odds | valuing what matters
As educators, we need to choose to better use our power, to be braver, to tip the odds and create the conditions that enable more children to flourish in their lives, where they are. To do so requires us to value and measure what matters, high attainment and attendance for the most vulnerable. This reveals the quality of provision and the closing of gaps is the evidence of success. We can and should do better.
“I was lucky, the timing for me was right – I managed but so many others don’t. The world is less because of that. The education system can and should do better. We all should do better.” (Katriona O’Sullivan)
Children living in poverty are not problems to be solved, the system is mis-aligned, lop-sided and intransigent. An uneven playing field that starts from birth and is exacerbated though childhood. Our system creates adverse conditions, fails to value diversity and has narrow success measures that perpetuate the present order and condemns those with the least. Poor assumptions and preconceived views of ability and ambition fail to unleash the potential and contribution of too many children. We need to re-engineer and reconfigure our system, avoiding the traps of meritocracy.
Our deficit discourse, language and vocabulary, both intended and unintended is deafening and maintaining the status quo, ensuring that a child’s poverty extends into all aspects of their lives. Only the deliberate application of equity addresses the a-symmetry of childhoods. Equity, tips the odds.
The deeper implications of poverty | levelling up
“Most of the time being poor felt like a sodden blanket was lying heavy across my shoulders, dragging me down into dark waters.” (Katriona O’Sullivan)
Whilst poverty is fundamentally about having less money, the impact of poverty extends far beyond, eroding self-confidence and a sense of worth:
“… ‘poor’ for me was also feeling like I had no worth. It was poverty of mind, poverty of stimulation, poverty of safety and poverty of relationships. Being poor controls how you see yourself, how you trust and speak, how you see the world and how you dream.” (Katriona O’Sullivan)
If we are to influence how children see the world, how they dream and how they build their future, we need to be bolder, to call out our unhelpful narratives, excuses, and assumptions that fixate on escape and tales of rags to riches. We must enrich their world, create more opportunity, more experiences, offer greater belief in individual children so that they feel more success and have stronger self-belief. You’ve got this.
“… opportunity, money and support. The middle classes are born with those three things in spades; the poor are born with none of them. And the truth is, we are losing some brilliant minds in the trenches of poverty.” (Katriona O’Sullivan).
Beyond the brilliant minds, there is considerable benefit to society when we create conditions that include, that value diversity and broaden access to success. Conditions that privilege all children disproportionately levels-up those who are traversing a world that is loaded against them.
“Sometimes, even these days, I feel like an interloper. I need reassurance sometimes that I am okay. Deserving. Worthwhile.” (Katriona O’Sullivan)
The smallest act | surfing on the ripples of others
Our influence on those closest to us and those that depend on us is more significant than we believe. How we are, what we say, do, behave, deeply affect those around us; children particularly so, who seek clues and are vigilant of snakes…
“Are there snakes here? …you become hyperaware. Mistrust becomes a tool of survival. Whenever I met anyone in authority, I was instantly suspicious, instantly mistrustful… it is actually a safety meter.” (Katriona O’Sullivan)
We have an opportunity as educators, as schools and trusts to shape and inspire lives, to remove snakes, hold ladders, create the conditions for children to feel secure, to belong, to have status, to feel less anxious, less wired, more trusting and to grow in an environment that values the uniqueness of each child. And one of our greatest gifts is to give children their voice, the oracy to confidently contribute, to step forward, and stop their lives being narrated by others.
“My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs.” (Tara Westover)
Sadly, not our present system, which is perfectly designed to create the reverse, to exclude children from and within schools. Schools need to be riddled with details, interactions, and sparks that pivot young lives.
“Every development in life pivots on small, contingent details, ad infinitum. We’d like to pretend it isn’t true, but reality doesn’t care what we think. We forever surf on the ripples of others.” (Brian Klass)
But, here is the thing, whilst our influence on others carries significant responsibility, humans are beautifully contagious; And, amazingly, importantly, thankfully, even the simplest acts, set of words, an acknowledgement, a moment of belief in another, changes every constellation, shapes a life and creates ripples for others to surf.
“The smallest act in the most limited circumstances bears the seed of boundlessness, because one deed, and sometimes one word, suffices to change every constellation.” (Hannah Arendt)
So, at the start of term, we should pause, and plan to create the conditions for more to flourish, to apply equity and build schools that privilege all children and disproportionately support those who need us most. Prioritising what matters…
…to seek excellent educational provision: the strongest curriculum, enacted well, inspiring thought and stalking awe, where assessment follows learning to meet need.
…to never lower our expectations of what a child can achieve, because if we let them off, we let them down. Focused on high attainment and attendance, to build belonging and gift agency so that all children possess the keys to thrive through childhood, into adulthood. Because there is no lack of ambition, and a significant desire for self-agency …
“We don’t need to waste time raising people’s ambitions. Idleness and low aspiration have never explained the lack of mobility. Presented with greater opportunity, most people grasped them …(seeking) the control over their lives and (the) choices that offered.” (Selina Todd)
…to apply equity, the permission to give what is specifically needed, to meet need, remove barriers, do different for those that need us most and give strong, timely, specific feedback, the golden thread of an advantaged upbringing. To need want to do different, to create the pathways and encouragement for children to ‘play on’ (Jemima Montag).
“I am giving you this feedback because I believe in you.” (Jo Boaler)
…to create incentives, currency, performance indicators that place value and reward the closing of gaps and gap-closers, so that no child is left behind, written off or able to be discounted. The attainment and attendance of disadvantage, reveals the true quality of provision.
…to build culture that privileges disadvantage and those in poverty, unswervingly never giving up on a child, because it is who we are and what we do. A commitment etched into our identity.
Perhaps then…
…we can create the conditions for colleagues to wittingly and unwittingly inspirelives with more opportunity so that we create the conditions for those living in poverty to prosper in their world, in these times. It is why we are here … to be the Myles for others.
“If not for Myles, I wouldn’t have been on that train. As distant as he was, his impact on my life was still tangible – only wishing I had the chance to thank Myles for the path he unwittingly set me on.” (Ashley John-Baptiste)
so, breathe, commit … and go inspirelives
Much of this piece is inspired by Katriona O’Sullivan, whose book “Poor” is an extraordinary exploration of what it is to grow up in poverty. Read it.
Dr Dan Nicholls | The White Horse Federation | August 2024
Securing provision that privileges disadvantaged children requires a deliberate balance of Excellence, Equity and Culture. A system in 3 dimensions. An excellent education made accessible by the application of equity held within a culture of high expectation closes gaps into adulthood for under-resourced children. Shifting the identity of schools and organisations to systemically privilege those that need us most, because it is who they are and what they do.
Privileging disadvantage and closing gaps is futile without excellent provision. Effective enactment of a progressive, sequenced curriculum, every lesson, every day, as a universal entitlement, offers far greater opportunity for all. Whilst our strongest lever is an excellent education, this alone, is not enough. Schools also need to apply far greater equity, to be braver and fiercer to do different for under-resourced children, so that they are empowered and able to exploit the excellent education. An alchemy of excellence and equity.
“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)
When schools secure an excellent education, allied with the deliberate application of equity, children are enabled to, supported to, and expected to take the opportunity. This creates the conditions that disproportionately advantage disadvantaged learners. A potent mix of excellence and opportunity.
“…schools remain one of the few remaining trusted institutions equipped to help create a fairer society. -explicitly thinking about how teaching can be genuinely inclusive to benefit all pupils, while relentlessly identifying, understanding and overcoming barriers to learning outside (and inside) school – are the interlocking foundations of equity-based education.” (Lee Elliot Major)
Privileging disadvantage in three dimensions.
Sustaining this potent combination of excellence and equity requires a strong culture, where colleagues take responsibility for enacting the very best provision and to unlock it for all children (psychologically and structurally). Cultures of high expectation, never give up on individuals, let them down or off, they meet them there, step (push) them forward, in an ‘advantaged-like’ environment, upheld by all. Creating a culture that changes the life chances of those that have had the least, because childhoods last a lifetime, and we may be their only second chance.
“4.3 million children, 30% are growing up in poverty in the UK.” (Department of Work and Pensions)
Closing gaps and privileging disadvantage requires Excellence, Equity and Culture:
Excellence | Securing an excellent education for all learners – our strongest lever.
An excellent curriculum, sequenced, progressive and enacted to secure powerful knowledge and understanding, with eye-wateringly high expectations of all children, is our strongest lever. It requires our full attention to be uncompromising in pursuing social justice, confer power and an entitlement to the strongest possible provision.
“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)
To disproportionately support disadvantage learners, we need all teachers and leaders to really understand the architecture of each subject, the most fundamental substantive core concepts, the most powerful knowledge and the key disciplinary concepts. We need to not stray far from thisspine of the curriculum so that we weave baskets and schema that fundamentally support children to make links and learn more in the future. Arbitrary subject wanderings is kryptonite for disadvantage learners, confirming it is not for them and too abstract to connect and engage with.
Seeking to bounce up and down through a spiral curriculum, often, reinforces the spine, increases the proximity of the presently known to new knowledge and reinforces over time what is the most important and fundamental for learning. Do seek to inspire, expect much, and be geeky about the subject spine.
Excellent teaching must invest in strong explanation and direct instruction that assumes less about previous knowledge and experiences, tethered closely to the spine of the curriculum. Don’t hide explanation in slides or complicated context. Exposition is teaching and learning. Prioritise human explanation, modelling and analogy, enacted in real time, in plain sight, in simple language, visually accumulates advantage. High quality teaching triggers attainment mobility and realises potential.
Enabling disadvantaged learners to find their voice requires an effective school-wide systematic development oforacy. When there is strong oracy we privilege disadvantaged learners, because…
“… it is utterly transformative. It changes the way we feel about ourselves. It changes the way in which other people see us. It changes the way in which we relate to friends and family members. It changes our ideas about what we might go on to do in the future.” (James Mannion)
Seek to prioritise the building of vocabulary, particularly tier 2 vocabulary. This is key for joining thoughts and ideas together, deepens oracy and enables deeper thinking. Also actively lift the quality of all conversations, in all interactions, all the time, in the school. All colleagues have influence and skin in this game.
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, unlocks the world, quality of life, belonging…
“I didn’t know words could hold so much.” (Kya Clark)
Nudging, narrating, and coaching is a feature of an advantaged upbringing. From formative years advantaged children receive constant feedback and commentary that supports growth and is the driver for accumulating advantage. Formative assessment needs to be an intentional and deliberate part of an excellent education, it is a strong expression of care. I am giving you this feedback because I believe in you. The strongest teaching seeks to hunt, not fish, being precise about where individual children are and offering specific feedback. Follow learning to meet need.
Creating a strong culture of professional learning, with colleagues engaged in incremental coaching, often and specifically on aspects of teaching creates classrooms of opportunity for disadvantaged learners.
Children taught by the most effective teacher in that group of 50 teachers, learn in six months what those taught by the average teacher learn in a year. (Hanushek & Rivkin)
Equity | to enable all children to take advantage of an outstanding education.
“Fair doesn’t mean giving every child the same thing, it means giving every child what they need.” (Rick Lavoie)
We tend to under-use equity, in favour of equality, which often stops us giving what individual children really need. Applying equity, fiercely, bravely and deliberately, enables children to access and take advantage of excellent provision, but it requires us to understanding children as individuals. To do so requires us to genuinely walk in their shoes and see the world through their eyes and then to remove barriers and create an optimal environment. Applying the disadvantaged lens.
“90% of my time is spent thinking about and watching people … (to) genuinely get inside their shoes and see the world through their eyes … (to) create an optimal environment where a human being is going to have the best chance of being the best they could possibly be.” (David Brailsford)
To grow up advantaged is to exist in a world of opportunity and high expectation, it is demanding. We need to have the highest of expectations for disadvantaged learners, if we let them off, we will let them down. Each time we lower the bar we are complicit in widening the gap. Disadvantaged learners are not less able, it is an economic label only… and labels are dangerous.
To grow up advantaged is to be held to high expectations and encouraged to participate in supported opportunities over time. A childhood that encourages risk taking, a low safety bar (with safety net), offers commentary of the journey through life and reaffirms a child’s internal locus of control. We need a system where all children have someone who believes in them, someone (maybe many) to meet them there.
“The biggest benefit in being the child of a scientist? Low safety bar. As soon as Mad could walk, Elizabeth (Zott) encourages her to touch, taste, toss, bounce, burn, rip, spill, shake, mix, splatter, sniff, and lick nearly everything she encountered… Nevertheless, she lived.” (Bonnie Garmus)
Focus on Attendance first, compelling and engaging all colleagues to drive up attendance of disadvantaged children, as the priority. If children aren’t in, our influence is zero, they need us to reach out and pull them in.
Mentoring and tutoring, in addition, is an overt expression of equity and a typical feature of an advantaged upbringing. Schools must focus on careers and future planning, so that disadvantaged learners see and know what is possible, because disadvantaged children are not less ambitious.
We need to apply equity to every transition point, to step in, hold disadvantaged learners and build a secure sense of psychological safety. It is within transitions that advantaged parents step in, navigate, and support children over the multiple transitions of childhood. It is not just between schools, or years, or terms, or days, it is all the time; our lives are punctuated by transitions. We need to be the bridge, to be the ladder.
Beware of being complicit in creating schools within schools. Too often schools inadvertently create pathways, perfectly designed to widen gaps and exacerbate disadvantage. Alternate realities do not exist in schools that privilege disadvantage. We measure ourselves and our status against those we spend time with. We should seek to create conditions for attainment mobility and wide social connection.
Culture | Privileging into the long term is about culture change, seeking irreversibility.
“Your goal is your desired outcome. Your system is the collection of daily habits that will get you there… you do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” (James Clear)
In schools where under-resourced children thrive the strength of culture and shared responsibility is evident and tangible, you feel it. These schools have systems that entirely privilege all children, subconsciously carved into the expected norms, habits, routines, language and behaviour as an irreversible commitment to educate and apply equity to all children. Disadvantage even over
Schools that privilege disadvantage have exothermic systems that generate their own energy and subconsciously (but by design) close gaps, rather than endothermic systems that require external energy, conscious focus, initiative, strategy and tables on websites. The first is a permanent shift in identity and values, the latter is ill-equipped to close gaps. Schools becoming what they repeatedly do.
Our interactions, language, and the attention we give to others defines our attitude towards themand influences the way children see themselves. Language really matters, it warrants deep consideration and development over time, it is the artefact of any culture.You belong here. Systems that privilege disadvantage call out behaviours, attitudes, actions, language and intent that widen gaps.
Schools that close gaps measure what matters, because and what we measure, we care about. The true measure of the effectiveness of an education is revealed in the attainment, progress, and attendance of disadvantaged learners. The best schools prime the conditions, reward gap closers and gap closing as part of the values, even over other metrics.
Closing gaps in 3D | In brief
Step one: Seek to secure an excellent education, where great teaching of a well sequenced, progressive, conceptually driven curriculum, disproportionately supports learning of disadvantaged children, every lesson, every day to close gaps.
Step two: Really understand all children, remove barriers, maintain very high expectations, and apply equity to secure full access for all children to an excellent education (over privileging and applying equity as necessary).
Step three: Build a culture that ensures the excellent education is accessible and unavoidable for all children by applying equity. Shift the identity, to one that privileges disadvantage in everything.
Then:stop talking about disadvantage, disadvantage strategies, PP Plans and initiatives, instead talk about high quality provision, accessed by all, because it is who we are and it is what we do for all.
If we do so, we just might create the conditions that disproportionately support disadvantaged learners to accumulate advantage and close the gaps that we currently perpetuate. An education, where all children belong and feel success because it privileges disadvantage.
Seek Excellence, Equity, Culture | close gaps in 3D.
As educators, we choose to educate children, all children, and to make a difference to the lives of others; it is what brought us here. We do this surrounded by good people seeking to use the power of education, in darkening times, against the backcloth of a fracturing social contract and weak social justice, to do good. It is a noble quest, but for those that need us most, at this time, it is a quest that we are not winning, at least not collectively winning. We need to show greater courage, to be braver, to do more to close the gaps that tarnish our system; heroes needed.
Being Braver
Educators definitely do care, really care, about closing the disadvantage gap, we deeply do, and yet this care is not enough, because gaps are growing and our system is not working for too many children; far too many are becoming invisible. We are all involved, we all have skin in this game and we are all implicated in our inability to close the gap.
We could choose the comfort of an external locus of control, and say too big, too ingrained, too difficult and seek comfort in our personal insignificance, against the magnitude of the prevailing system; a resigned acceptance of how life is. Or we could choose to become braver, recognising that small (and big), deliberate strategies, the application of equity, advocacy and action, challenging norms, attitudes and behaviours can tip the system. Adjoined effort of collective strength to change and transform provision that privileges all children. To call out, build provision and influence a system so that it disproportionately advantages disadvantaged children; levelling the playing field, viewing our world through the disadvantage lens.
Whilst the forces that perpetuate the gaps, are insidious and part of the accepted fabric of schools and society, we have the power and agency to challenge our cultural norms, accepted truths, and attitudes that prevail in our system. We must be braver and bolder to build schools, provision and a system (including our accountability system) that addresses the chasm between those that have and those that have not; it will need to look and be quite different.
Being more Ferocious | An active not passive process.
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 fiercely educate those that need us the most. 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.A shared endeavour to lift lives, one by one. Creating the conditions for a movement to lift-up a generation; a deeper, more ferocious, expression of care.
We are being braver and more ferocious in some schools that deliberately act to build cultures and approaches that successfully privilege disadvantage, that exercise equity and create the conditions that close gaps. Cultures that privilege all children and not just those who benefit from an education system “…which has been constructed and is maintained primarily in the interests of those who find learning easy*.” (Ben Newmark)
*an easiness born out of supported opportunity and experiences over time that present as more able (even talented).
Apply Equity | to give what an individual actually needs.
We must be braver and more courageous to apply equity, so that many more children get the care, focus, provision, resources, supported opportunities and experiences they, specifically, need. Adults willing to be braver, to question how things presently work to apply greater equity. This will require us to do different and feel happy to do differently; gaps are widening under the present conditions; equality achieved through equity, hunt don’t fish.
“Fair doesn’t mean giving every child the same thing, it means giving every child what they need.” (Rick Lavoie)
Privileging disadvantage | see through the lens, always.
We need to try harder to really understand what it is to be disadvantaged (in each setting and individual circumstance). Understanding the impact of the system, of attitudes, norms and beliefs that accumulate disadvantage. To privilege disadvantage everywhere and in everything requires us to prioritise disadvantaged learners in all decision making, in provision, in opportunity, a culture of ambition for all children, going beyond just caring. A system that firmly privileges disadvantage in all that it does, such that it becomes the norm; a system perfectly designed to close gaps. How we do anything has an impact, positive or negative, on disadvantaged learners. It is written deep in the ‘cultural fabric‘ of any organisation.
How we do anything, is how we do everything.
Measure what matters | attainment mobility.
“You should measure things you care about. If you’re not measuring, you don’t care and you don’t know.” (Steve Howard)
How far do we evaluate our provision and performance based on the attendance, attainment, and progress of disadvantaged learners; even over? This is the true test of the quality of provision, as advantaged children bring much of what they need to school, whereas disadvantaged learners rely on schools to close the gaps.
“…the evidence suggests that national education policy needs to be rebalanced to recognise the job many schools do in countering stark inequalities outside the school gates, while maintaining high expectations for under-resourced students.” (Lee Elliott Major)
We need systems and the system to motivate, give greater permission and reward provision that chases disadvantage attainment (and attendance); attainment mobility as the truest measure of the quality of provision. 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.
Attendance first | every day missed, widens the gap
“One measure of poverty is how little you have. Another is how difficult you find it totake advantage of what others try to give you.” (Michael Lewis)
One way to guarantee the gap widening, is to accept poor attendance, everyday a disadvantaged learner is not in school the gap grows, they cannot take advantage of what is offered to them. It takes a whole school to improve attendance, because it is a team sport, with an individual focus. Seeking preventative strategies based on reallyknowing our individual children and families, as well as our responsive actions, reaching out and building relationships that 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.
Give Status | it is free.
Disadvantaged learners are more likely to have an external locus of control, to step back and to opt out of learning. Our sense of status determines how far webelong, connect, and ultimately whether we feel part of the game. 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.
As individuals, we have an un-ending well of status and to give status is a fundamental human gift. 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 valuesand plays out in every interaction. How far are schools places of status how far are all colleagues truly on the side of children?
I believe in you | An invitation to dance (always)
Every child needs to have at least one adult who believes in them. Magic happens when all colleagues believe in all children.
To grow up advantaged is to have adults who deeply believe in you, hold you to high expectations, encouraging (demanding) participation in supported opportunities over time. A childhood that encourages risk taking, whilst holding a safety net and offering commentary, narrating the journey through life, reaffirming and strengthening a child’s internal locus of control incrementally, day by day.
And in this we see what must be done, to re-design the system to enable disadvantaged to participate, to have supported opportunity and wider social connectivity, with a back stop of someone who believes in them, who creates a safety net and supports them as they interpret life. Get up, go again, you have agency, you are always invited to dance.
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 be braver and apply equity to stage manage and connect children so they find (not lose) themselves in transition.
Curriculum is the key lever | Quality of teaching the determining factor
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 key substantive and disciplinary concepts and powerful knowledge required to achieveattainment mobilityfor all children; placing our chips on curriculum, the golden ticket. Securing the spine of the curriculum (and tight to the spine), the core concepts and powerful knowledge that weaves the warp and weft of children’s schema to accumulate more, later. Really understanding where children are and teaching the next bit, assuming less and adapting teaching to meet need. Measuring and targetting the attainment of disadvantaged learners (and progress) as the true (only) measure of teaching quality.
Being braver
Children need us to be braver, to be more ferocious, to use our power and agency to apply equity, to give status, to measure what matters, to build culture and curriculum that closes gaps; attendance first. And if we do so, we just might create the conditions that disproportionately support disadvantaged learners to accumulate advantage and close the gaps that we currently perpetuate.
Are we brave enough to re-think, to be unswerving in building provision (schools and our system) to apply the equity and give the resource required to those children who are under-resourced, who need us to be braver?
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.
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 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?
“Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.” (C.S. Lewis)
We are coping, working and leading in extraordinary times. We are in the midst of a high magnitude, low frequency event; a global pandemic that has significantly shunted and disrupted life as we know it. An event that is more disruptive to education than any other in our living (working) memory. Considering how we lead in this pandemic era and in a post pandemic world provides a framework for us to seize opportunities and to imagine how education could be. (the pandemic, at the very least, demonstrates that anything is possible).
Under times of stress we are conditioned to focus on surviving and coping; our horizon is near, our perspective is narrow. Whilst this is a necessary phase of crisis management if we step back and look into the future we can start to take control, rationalise and address the challenges and prepare to exploit the opportunities that this hiatus to normal provides, so that we increase the chance of an extraordinary destiny.
Hiatus: a pause or break in continuity in a sequence or activity.
If we name it, perhaps we can manage it. … and as educators we must manage it; children and communities rely on us to make sense of this hiatus and to lead beyond it, into a post pandemic world. Indeed the way schools have responded to the pandemic has elevated their role as a civic actor; there has never been a greater opportunity to rethink, evolve and establish an education system, led by and developed by our sector.
Situational Awareness
The following diagram provides a representation of the pre-pandemic phase, the pandemic and the post pandemic world; providing a framework for discussion and greater situational awareness.
The framework identifies how we moved from sensing the change that might be caused by the pandemic to the reality of the high magnitude event; an external shunt to the system that forced educators into crisis management. The traumatic change, in mid-March, closed schools across the country with educators leading from one hour to the next. This then shifted to a period of stabilisation, in the present pandemic era. A new normal, characterised by distance learning under lock-down.
At some point in the future, in a post pandemic future, we will prepare to re-join normal. This is where educators will need to show strong and deliberate leadership that addresses, among other issues, significant challenges related to societal and cultural cohesion and the urgent need to address the hiatus in the education of disadvantaged children as well as key year groups, 5, 10 and 12. The flip side is a significant opportunity, using this hiatus in normal to trigger a new paradigm; perhaps a once in a generation opportunity to understand how education could be. A release from our organisational (sector) blindness.
“Something very beautiful happens to people when their world has fallen apart: a humility, a nobility, a higher intelligence emerges at just the point when our knees hit the floor.” Marianne Williamson
Paradigm shifting | our system has been externally shunted
As humans we live by accepted norms; cultural, societal and educational; taken together these create the present paradigm; one which has been thrown into chaos. How we see the world and perhaps what is possible has shifted..
Paradigm shift: a time when the usual and accepted way of doing or thinking about something changes completely.
The following diagram, which represents the same time span as above, identifies the former paradigm, the new temporary paradigm during the present pandemic era and the new paradigm that will establish in the post-pandemic world.
Whilst we have shifted into the pandemic era we necessarily play a finite game where the immediacy of the situation necessitates coping, supporting and crisis management. As we stabilise in the pandemic era we need to extend our time horizon and think with a more infinite mindset necessary to plan for and realise what we can build as the next educational paradigm. (influenced by Sinek, 2020)
This requires us as a sector and educationalists to have a purposeful awareness of the opportunities that can shape education in the new world. This requires us to seed and occupy an Innovation space, created and stimulated by the hiatus and the paradigm shift forced by the global pandemic… a unique opportunity to seize.
Our challenge | pandemic, post pandemic and beyond
The following is some initial thinking in broad terms (and far from exhaustive) of the challenges and opportunities we have a sector in these three phases…
Within the pandemic era…
Secure provision, defined by distance learning, that is sequenced, efficient, consistent and accessibleand one that has (at least a sense of) human interaction and narrative. To maintain our curriculum, learning and a sense of normality to our children.
Understand the impact of distance learning on disadvantaged children; an urgent concern, one that could have an irreversible legacy. (if there was ever a strategy to further disadvantage disadvantaged children then distance learning would be it.)
Supporting and maintaining societal cohesion; acting with community agencies to support families in these challenging times.
Supporting and maintaining contact with our most vulnerable children and families and those that become so.
Preparing for a post-pandemic world
Planning and preparing for children to re-join their education. A pastoral and curricular challenge.
Planning specifically to rationalise and empower children, particularly those in Years 5, 10 and 12 to experience a curriculum and assessment structure that does not compound the hiatus in their education.
Planning specifically to support disadvantaged children; deliberately and rigorously seeking to tackle the growing disadvantaged gap, which will be exasperated, not supported by distance learning; a challenge that will be measured in years not months.
Paradigm shifting into a new education era
Understanding what we need from the national assessment and examination structure. Not just for Year 5, 10 and 12 in 2021 (whose gap and random curriculum coverage is already undermining the fairness of 2021 exams and assessment, particularly if you are disadvantaged), but in the long term. There has never been a better opportunity to rationalise this structure and understand how we could better prepare all children for adulthood and to be economically and personally successful.
Building on the role of schools, academies and Trusts as community partners; how far does this pandemic re-shape and re-articulate the position of schools and Trusts at the heart of their communities?
Capitalising on the role of parents and families as co-partners in educating their children; building on the deep investments being made by parents/carers in their child’s education.
Re-imagining therole of technology in supporting learning in and beyond school. We are already seeing a significant jump in the use of technology; a foothold in the virtual space that will not recede.
Deeply considering and understanding thekey/leveraging curricular elements that enable children to transition to adulthood (or secondary, or Post-16); something that is required in the planning of Year 5, 10 and 12 , 2020-21 curriculum.
Exploiting the depth of altruism and support between Trusts and the wider sector evident through this crisis, to build a self-supporting, self-improving system.
The future of school inspection in a post-pandemic world; and the opposite opportunity to build sector-led quality assurance, based around a greater understanding of what matters. What does education look like with limited performance tables and a hiatus in curriculum continuity?
“Always seek out the seed of triumph in every adversity.” Og Mandino
Into the Innovation Space | Don’t go into hibernation
So from adversity may come opportunity, perhaps one that is rich enough to bring significant good from the present struggle. One that may transform education and support our children to thrive in this uncertain world.
So go into the innovation space, avoid hibernation and dare to dream of an education system at the heart of the community, working in deep partnerships and focusing on the right things for our children and the future generations.
This hiatus may well be the jolt to the system that allows educationalists and the sector to create a new paradigm; one that will better serve our young people… but only if we seek it.
Dan Nicholls 