Closing the Poverty - Attainment Gap in Scottish Education

1. Closing the Poverty - Attainment Gap in Scottish Education Dr Edward Sosu • Widening Access to Higher Education Conference May 2015

2. Poverty and Education in Scotland “Little of the variation in student achievement in Scotland is associated with the ways in which schools differ... Who you are in Scotland is far more important than what school you attend, so far as achievement differences on international tests are concerned. Socio-economic status is the most important difference between individuals” (OECD, 2007, p.15).

3. Who ARE ‘the poor’? • 66% of children in poverty were in working households (2011/12) • Up from 43% (1996/97) (Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, 2013) • In 2013 around 17% of households were ‘workless’ • Within this 8% never worked – constitutes 1.5% of all households (MacInnes et al., 2013)

4. Who ARE ‘the poor’? • (MacInnes et al., 2013)

5. Who ARE ‘the poor’? • (MacInnes et al., 2013)

6. Poverty-Attainment Gap: Early Years(GUS [Bradshaw et al., 2011) • The gap starts in the early years • Gap between children from richest and poorest background at age 5 6-13 months in problem solving 11-18 months in expressive vocabulary

7. Percentage of pupils performing well or very well by deprivation (Numeracy SSLN, 2013)

9. Why gap matters:Access to HE and future destinations • 664 • LD=554 • 316 • 431 • MD=277 • 262 • 171 • 171 • 170 • 148 • 80

10. Key Points • Micro level data based on SSLN • gap persists and widens over time • some narrowing of gap in P4 ‘writing’ in 2014 • Macro level data suggest narrowing of gap particularly with reference to S4 tariff scores • Attainment is a key determinant of entry to higher education

11. With a partner: • Identify factors that might account for this gap in attainment

12. Enriched vs disadvantaged home environment • Family stressors associated with poverty • Social exclusion and bullying • Hidden cost of education – school trips and resources • Teaching and learning practices – ability grouping • Teacher prejudice

13. ‘Myth’ of low parental educational aspirations • Aspiration guided by ‘rational decision’ • Tend to have high aspirations • Issue is how best to support them to turn aspirations to reality • (Sosu, 2014)

14. Closing the Gap

15. Political and Policy Instruments • Proposed Education (Scotland) Bill and funding • SFC’s Widening Access initiatives • Widening Access Commission – ‘Vision 20/20’ • Early Years Collaborative (but not an inoculation) • Need for intervention at every tier of the education system

16. 1. Early Years: What works • Extending EY provision if high quality: • Positive learning experiences; clear learning objectives; explicit focus on language, early-reading & number concepts, non-verbal reasoning. • Well qualified staff • Children from mixed socio-economic backgrounds. • EPPE project found that disadvantaged children who attended quality preschool performed better 5 years later (Higgins et al., 2013; Sammons et al., 2007; Sylva et al., 2004)

17. 2. School-wide: Parental Involvement • Supporting parents to work with their children to improve their learning. • e.g. SPOKES project – • training parents to use Pause, Prompt & Praise strategy • Combined with intervention to reduce behaviour problems • Showed increased attainment by 6 months (Scott et al., 2010)

18. Parental Involvement: What probably does not work alone: • Expectation and parenting styles • More homework tasks • Sending letters • Parental volunteering in class • School meetings

19. 3. Effective Pedagogies • Group working • Peer Tutoring • Assessment and Feedback • Meta-cognitive and self-regulation strategies • Mentoring

20. 4. Funding • Necessary but not sufficient condition for improving attainment • Various models exist –Title I (USA), London & City Challenge, Pupil Premium (England), ‘Scottish Model?’ • So far, only London Challenge shown to make some impact on attainment and narrowed the gap (some doubt on level of effect - Greaves et al., 2014)

21. Funding – what works • Clear focus on improving attainment • Strong emphasis on use of data to monitor impact of interventions • Supporting strong collaboration between schools • Strong element of parental involvement • School interventions guided by strong evidence of what works

22. Funding – what does not work • Reduced budget and support in other areas • Separate provisions that result in stigmatising • Broad goals without specific guidance to schools • Short term external support for tuition • Interventions that rely on anecdotal evidence • No consistent monitoring of impact on attainment

23. 5. Knowledge Generation • Systematically documenting evidence within a Scottish context • Space for ‘plausible’ experimentation as part of funding – removing fear of failure • Capturing process and outcome data to inform future interventions

24. 6. What will help? Smarter Data • A new, Scottish, approach to data • achievement & attainment data, engagement, data & demographic data - to directly feed curriculum and teaching decisions • Requires new understandings, uses, organisational systems and interrogation of data • High-stakes testing is NOT helpful

25. What data can help us see poor able students are falling behind whilst richer low ability students gain more. • Courtesy of Prof Anna Vignoles (University of Cambridge)

26. Important elements for success of interventions • Evidence-based ‘basket of’ intervention • Data - monitoring of impact on student attainment • Adapting intervention to specific context • Beyond education – Tackling inequality in Society • Being Inspirational and believing in the students!

27. Dr Edward Sosu • edward.sosu@strath.ac.uk • Credit to: Prof Sue Ellis, Dr Jim McCormick (JRF) • Full Report freely available on JRF website • Closing the attainment gap in Scottish education (Sosu & Ellis, 2014)

28. Selected References and further reading • Bradshaw, P. (2011) Growing Up in Scotland (2011) Changes in child cognitive ability in the pre-school years Edinburgh; Scottish Government • Gorard, S., See, B. H. and Davies. P. (2012) The impact of attitudes and aspirations on educational attainment and participation. York: The Joseph Rowntree Foundation. • Higgins, S. et al., (2013). The Sutton Trust-Education Endowment Foundation Teaching and Learning Toolkit. London. EEF. • Jerrim, J. (2013) The Reading Gap: The socio-economic gap in children’s reading skills: A cross-national comparison using PISA 2009. [Online]. Available from http://www.suttontrust.com/public/documents/readinggap.pdf [Accessed 15th July 2013]. • OECD (2007) Quality and Equity of Schooling in Scotland. [Online]. Available from http://browse.oecdbookshop.org/oecd/pdfs/product/9107211e.pdf [Accessed 12th March 2013]. • Sharples, J. et al., (2011).Effective classroom strategies for closing the gap in educational achievement for children and young people living in poverty, including white working-class boys. Schools and Communities Research Review 4. C4EO. • Sosu, E. and Ellis, S. (2014); Closing the attainment gap in Scottish education; York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. • Sosu, Edward (2014) Predicting maternal aspirations for their children's education : the role of parental and child characteristics. International Journal of Educational Research, 67. pp. 67-79. • Topping, K. J., Miller, D., Murray, P., Henderson, S., Fortuna, C., & Conlin, N. (2011). Outcomes in a randomised controlled trial of mathematics tutoring. Educational Research, 53(1), 51-63. • Wilkinson, R. and Pickett, K. (2009) The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, Penguin Books.