Professor Ruth Lupton and Dr Stephanie Thomson, of the University of Manchester, say that while the Pupil Premium has resulted in more money going to schools with poorer intakes, wider policies including cuts to welfare benefits and services have hit disadvantaged families.
Their research paper has been published in the London Review of Education, an open-access, peer-reviewed online journal based at the UCL Institute of Education, as part of an investigation into the coalition government’s impact on education.
The paper, Socio-Economic Inequalities in English Schooling Under the Coalition Government 2010-15, says that the Pupil Premium was “an isolated policy”.
It states: “The introduction of the Pupil Premium moved the issue of educational disadvantage to centre stage in the coalition’s schools policy programme. It has been a prominent policy which clearly signalled that the government was taking action.
“However, it has also been an isolated policy – a rare example of investment in the life chances of disadvantaged children among a broader range of policies which have reduced family incomes and depleted services.”
In June 2010, the coalition’s emergency budget set out plans for deficit reduction, with 77 per cent of its target to come from public spending cuts.
While policies such as universal free school meals for infant children and the increases in the Income Tax personal allowance are expected to benefit low-income families, the paper still concludes that these families “have experienced sizeable net losses of income” of up to £2,000 per family.
It points to evidence showing “a clear relationship” between additional family income and improved educational outcomes.
The paper adds: “We can see that a low-income family with one child at secondary school and one at primary would have lost on average only a little less from their household budget than their children’s schools will have gained in Pupil Premium funding. While it is not yet clear exactly to what extent these changes will affect children’s educational attainments, some negative effects seem likely.”
It continues: “While schools spending was protected overall, other services affecting children have been cut. Local authorities have seen cuts to their budgets of around one-third with the most affected services being those that are not statutorily determined – such as libraries and community and youth services – leaving schools, with relatively protected or increased budgets, to take on more of the burden of support to children from low-income families.”
The paper also says that early studies of the effects of welfare reform have shown that “families have been cutting back on food, heat and electricity, and selling belongings, as well as relying on food banks”. Furthermore, it includes statistics showing that child poverty is set to increase in the future due to the effects of social security cuts implemented after April 2013.
The authors also raise concerns that, with £12 billion worth of further welfare cuts planned in the coming years, the problems of child poverty are not going away. They add: “Whether educational policies can be relied upon to narrow socio-economic inequalities while child poverty is rising must be in doubt.”
Elsewhere, the paper also questions broader policies including changes to GCSE assessment, the national curriculum, and cuts to the Building Schools for the Future programme, which the authors claim could act against children from low-income families.
Figures in the paper show that until 2013, the overall picture was one of narrowing gaps between free school meal pupils and their peers, but that this was a continuing long-term trend rather than a “Pupil Premium effect”.
However, in 2014, the GCSE results included the new rules in which each qualification only counts for one GCSE, there is a cap on the contribution of vocational qualifications to the overall score, and only a student’s first attempt at a qualification is counted. On the five A* to C measure, the FSM/non-FSM gap returned in 2014 to its 2006 level.
However, 2014’s results when using the old rules still show an increased attainment gap, suggesting that wider changes including the move to linear assessment, the removal of speaking and listening in English assessment, and the disincentive to sit exams early have had a negative effect for low-income learners.
The paper concludes: “Assessments of a government’s record in tackling educational inequalities cannot be confined to its flagship additional policies, but must also include mainstream educational policies and wider social policies affecting the distribution of income and, in particular, the circumstances of the poorest children whose attainment the targeted flagship policies are intended to raise.
“Results to date show that, at best, these policies in combination have made a very modest impact on socio-economic attainment gaps, with some evidence that they have made things worse for some groups of students – that is, low-attainers from low-income families and looked-after children.
“Moreover, the full effects of the coalition’s welfare reforms are yet to be seen and child poverty is predicted to rise.”
The September edition of the London Review of Education, including the full paper, is available under open access at www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ioep/clre