Education has been warped by false divides, but schools that use vulnerability indices to identify need have found a promising middle ground, says Lee Elliot Major
Those who have heard me speak will know the Daily Mail headline I share that charts my life journey from (student) bin man to Britain’s first professor of social mobility.
It’s a back story that keeps on giving, though not always in the way you may first think. My point is that success comes in many forms. We should avoid devaluing the jobs that keep our society running.
I may have had working-class origins and been the first in my family to study beyond 16.
But my teachers were concerned less with labels and more with the specific barriers that might impede my learning, from the teenage trauma and instability of having to leave home and find a place to live, to the lack of cultural capital needed to navigate an alien university system.
I often wonder whether I would have been given that same lifeline in today’s education system in which teachers have so little time to nurture relationships and understand the specific contextual factors limiting the progress of their pupils.
Their challenge is even greater today, as precarity has spread further up the class system, sparing only a small, detached elite at the very top amid widening wealth divides and uncertain job opportunities.
Context-free craft
Our school system has been warped by false divides. Standards versus wellbeing. Knowledge versus skills. Results versus relationships.
None has been more influential than the “no excuses” doctrine – the argument that acknowledging pupils are disadvantaged inevitably leads to the “soft bigotry of low expectations”.
This has drifted into a wider belief, that teachers are responsible for solving all society’s ills.
Recent policy reforms may have begun to acknowledge structural inequalities more openly, but the long shadow of the Gove era looms large.
England’s training framework continues to treat teaching as a largely context-free craft, with little explicit guidance on how growing socio-economic disadvantage can shape learning in and beyond the classroom.
This context is important for all educators to understand. For all the gains in standards over the past decade, attainment gaps remain stubbornly wide.
The latest report published by the South-West Social Mobility Commission reveals schools are using tools such as vulnerability indices not to label or stereotype children, but to identify what hurdles or hardships may have hindered their learning.
A stall in progress may reflect low reading age, poor attendance or limited support at home.
A home visit might reveal frequent moves, overcrowded housing or parents with little time or capacity to support their children’s education.
These insights enable targeted support, from intensive reading help and attendance plans to homework clubs, extended study time and more regular contact with families.
This is not lowering expectations. It is removing the barriers to meet them. Used well, knowledge can guide scaffolding and support rather than reinforce stereotypes.
Equity scorecard
The piloting of our equity scorecard by schools shows how this toolkit is helping to shift practice, challenging assumptions about disadvantage and reshaping curriculum, pastoral systems and family partnerships.
A growing community of practitioners are embracing evidence-informed “good bets” for improving outcomes for pupils from under-resourced backgrounds.
A consistent message from the school case studies we are publishing is that effective, equitable practice lies in finding a middle path that avoids unhelpful extremes.
Curriculum equity is not about abandoning “powerful knowledge”, but ensuring that the cultural framing through which it is taught makes it accessible to all pupils.
Guided by clear aims and evidence, nurturing deeper relationships with families and communities can create the conditions in which pupil learning takes hold.
The tired debate between “no excuses” and “understanding disadvantage” was always a false divide.
The teachers who transformed my life did both. They held the highest expectations while relentlessly removing the barriers in my way.
If you get it right for those facing the greatest obstacles, you will get it right for everyone. At its heart, equity is about creating the conditions in which all pupils can flourish, whatever future path they pursue.
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