Society

It’s up to schools to close the attainment gap between rich and poor children

The Treasury has refused to pay to help pupils fully recover from lost learning after the pandemic. But schools can help the poorest children catch up by making their admissions policies fairer

June 19, 2021
Reach Academy in Feltham. Photo: PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo
Reach Academy in Feltham. Photo: PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo

There was once a country that went through a national crisis. Its leader was a larger-than-life fellow called Johnson with a reputation for outlandish claims, turbulent romantic relationships and winning elections. One day, Johnson wanted an expert to write a report on education. But when the report arrived, it wasn’t what he had in mind. That wasn’t due to lack of rigour. The report relied on thousands of surveys—each printed out and transported by road to schools across the country. Why not use the internet? Simply because, in 1965, it hadn’t been invented.

US president Lyndon Johnson’s decision to ask Professor James Coleman to produce a report on the US education system was a landmark moment. Johnson wanted proof that the southern states were financially favouring white majority schools. Coleman’s job was to provide it. 

Coleman was happy to help. Sure enough, he found the smoking gun; more money was being spent in majority white schools than majority black ones. But the more Coleman looked at the results, the less the gun looked like the murder weapon. The lack of money did not explain the poor results. There were too many poor schools doing well and too many rich ones doing badly. 

What Coleman found was that black children in 1960s America weren’t doing badly because of money. It was because of this segregation—the separation of mostly poor, black children from better off, white children. Whether a child succeeded was a “function more of the characteristics of his classmates than of those of the teacher.” The children were doing badly because the other children in their class were also poor.

The report’s recommendation was clear. The priority was to create schools “where children of all different social classes intermingled.” 

The president was furious. Coleman’s report was swiftly buried.

Earlier this year, a new Johnson asked a new expert for a new report. The prime minister wanted to know how to close the gap between rich and poor children that the pandemic has widened. This time, James Coleman’s part was played by Kevan Collins.

An ex-teacher, an ex-leader of schools and someone who has been at the very cutting edge of education research for a decade, Collins knows what he is doing. What he recommended was likely to work and to be much cheaper than the long-run cost of lost learning. But it looks like the Treasury was not prepared to pay the bill.

That being the case, let us dust off the Coleman Report again. Let us create schools “where children of all different social classes intermingle.” Since the report was written, it has become even clearer how much this intermingling matters. In 2012, four economists—led by Harvard-based Raj Chetty—committed two years of their life to becoming obsessed with tax records. They built a database with the salaries of every single American born between 1980 and 1982 and the salaries of their parents. They compared the two to try and find the magic bullet for social mobility.

They considered pretty much everything, from university fees to the employment rate, levels of redistribution to the amount of local investment. They found that all these factors had less impact than bringing people from different walks of life together. School funding helped, but they found that mixing children together mattered more. And yet, here in the UK, half of our poorest children are being educated together in just a fifth of the schools, with the result that they do worse than they should at school and then lack the networks and the connections they need to get ahead.

It is time to change this. Ten years ago, the government made it legal for every state school in England to reserve places for children who can’t afford to live in the catchment. It is not difficult for schools to do this. Every school by law is required to have an admissions policy. They must lay out who gets prioritised if places are oversubscribed. Most schools take the same approach: children in care first, then siblings, then whoever lives nearest. The problem is that parents with money who love their children will, entirely rationally, pay to live near the best school. The result is that house prices rise until only people with money can afford to live in the catchment.

Making a change is easy. School governors simply have to add this line to their admissions policy: “We will reserve 20 per cent of our places for children who apply who are on free school meals.” If every school did this, it would nudge us towards the great meritocracy many of us claim to want. And yet, a decade later, only a few leading schools have made this simple change. Those that have—like Reach Academy in Feltham—are deeply proud of having done so. So then, school governors, the ball is in your court. We don’t need a Johnson to make our schools fairer. We could do it ourselves.