How are trusts doing at closing disadvantage gaps?

Drawing conclusions from school comparisons is always a treacherous game as pupils’ outcomes are shaped so much by their distinct circumstances, contexts and communities. Yet our analysis of how well secondary school pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds perform in major multi-academy trusts (MATs) suggests there is much room for improvement.

At the extremes, the disparities are striking. At one trust based in London, for example, 60 per cent of disadvantaged pupils achieved both English and maths GCSE at grade 5 or above in 2022/23. This compares to 34 per cent at the highest-performing trust in the south west and 5 per cent for another trust in the peninsula.

Whatever official measure is used to compare progress or achievement of disadvantaged pupils, significant differences are found for MATs, both within the same region and across the country.  Many disadvantaged pupils are not leaving school with the core skills they need to succeed in life.

The analysis was carried out by the South-West Social Mobility Commission, set up to boost prospects across the peninsula. Our aim is to highlight trusts within a similar part of the country that have been doing relatively well for disadvantaged pupils against currently recognised accountability measures.

The results suggest that there is much more to be done when it comes to learning between MATs: approaches in some trusts may be having some success, and they are worth investigating as possible approaches by others.

We examined data on the performance by pupils who had at some point qualified for free school meals in the previous six years, considering 216 eligible multi academy trusts across the country for which 2023 attainment data was recently released by the government. This accounts for approximately 16 per cent of MATs in England.

The top ten performing trusts for each major region are listed in the Commission’s annual report published this week.

The results also reveal stark regional divides. London was the only region where, among the MATs analysed, more than one-third of disadvantaged students (37.2 per cent) achieved both English and maths GCSE at grade 5 or above.

The south west was the lowest-performing region on this measure, with only 20.1 per cent of disadvantaged students from eligible MATs achieving this, closely followed by the south east, where the average was 21.8 per cent.

We consider a range of performance measures for disadvantaged pupils used by government, including how many achieved grade 5 and above in GCSE English and Maths; the proportion achieving the English Baccalaureate at grade 4 and above, and average attainment 8 point score. The measures were weighted based on the number of pupils in each school, as well as on the (capped) number of years for which they had been part of the trust.

Our hope is that the analysis will help lead to more cross-trust learning both within and across regions when it comes to helping pupils from under-resourced backgrounds.

Several best bets for improving outcomes feature in the book Equity in Education, ranging from addressing unconscious biases in the classroom and developing more inclusive language, to nurturing authentic relationships with parents through home visits and community hubs.

But as ever, what also matters is the consistent delivery of any approach across a group of schools or across classrooms within the school. Needless to say, most equity approaches take time to have full impact; they are long-wins.

These results are important as the sector moves increasingly to a trust-dominated system, amid worrying signs of widening academic divides and rising child poverty across the country in the post pandemic era.

One of the Commission’s key aims is to adopt a sharper spotlight on disadvantage to bring more focus on how well pupils from under-resourced backgrounds perform at school. We believe that the national accountability of schools should do far more to explicitly consider outcomes for disadvantaged pupils.

What is for sure is that all trusts will need to up their game when it comes to levelling the playing field of learning.

Read the full report from the South-West Social Mobility Commission, Turning the Tide here