The Knowledge: This week’s research highlights

A hidden gap?

Research institutions have been quick to analyse the DfE’s first detailed publication of Key Stage 2 attainment statistics since before the pandemic. The headline statistic was the revelation that the disadvantage gap is now back to around the same size as it was in 2012 – marking a lost decade of progress. The Education Policy Institute published a handy series of charts plotting other shocking statistics. But analysis from FFT Education Datalab revealed an equally worrying trend: an increase in the percentage of pupils not entered for the tests because they are working below the assessed standard. And this rise is far more pronounced for disadvantaged pupils than their better-off peers. According to FFT, “6.1per cent of disadvantaged pupils were not entered for the reading test in 2022 compared to 4.8 percent in 2019, an increase of 1.3 percentage points. The equivalent figures in maths were 5.8 per cent and 4.6 per cent, an increase of 1.2 percentage points”. All eyes will surely be on the new minister in charge of the SEND review for a strategy to ensure this group of pupils achieve their potential. Meanwhile, the EPI’s call for “a cross-government child poverty strategy” is unlikely to have made a mark on the new Prime Minister’s in-tray this week.

TAs: Training is retaining

Published Thursday, a paper by Sophie Hall and Rob Webster of the Education Research, Innovation and Consultancy unit at the University of Portsmouth finds that the Covid and cost-of-living crises are remaking the role of teaching assistants. Among the key findings from 22 interviews in five primary schools, the paper found “marked increases in TAs’ workload and their emotional load” since the pandemic, and struggling to make ends meet. But while the paper also notes that headteachers fear losing TAs to relatively better-paid jobs, the paper isn’t as ‘doom and gloom’ as some of the reporting in national dailies would suggest; Some retention strategies appear to be effective, with TAs appreciative of wellbeing days, but particularly incentivised by efforts to include them in the school community and processes such as lesson planning, and invest in and support their development as classroom professionals.

A breath of fresh air

Published Monday, research from the University of Surrey’s Global Centre for Clean Air Research looked into the most effective ways to protect children from air pollution. Citing that most primary schools in England “experience levels of pollution which exceed the safe levels set out by the World Health Organization”, the researchers measured the impact of three approaches and found that:

• Air purifiers in classrooms reduce indoor pollution concentrations by up to 57 per cent.
• Green screens at the school boundary reduced some of the most dangerous outdoor particle levels coming from roads by up to 44% (depending on wind conditions).
• The School Streets initiative, which stops motor vehicles driving past schools at the start and end of school days, reduced particle concentrations by up to 36%.

So the main solution advocated by Mums For Lungs in this week’s edition may have the lowest impact of the three, but they offer other clear benefits. First, rather than mitigate it, they reduce pollution at source. Second, they get families out together – walking and interacting. And of course, they are a low-cost option for schools at a time when air purifiers and green screens are surely luxuries – albeit highly desirable ones.

Project Truss

Lastly this week, research commissioned from Leeds Beckett University’s Carnegie School of Education by non-profit, Enactus UK (which works with secondary schools to engage young people in social action through extra-curricular activities) is a reminder that a wholly knowledge-rich curriculum could be depriving young people of important opportunities. The research is not developed to impact schools policy, nor even schools themselves directly, and its focus on project-based learning and 21^st-Century skills will feel quaintly anachronistic to many of our readers. But the wealth of studies among its references showing the positive impacts of such pedagogical approaches is nevertheless important. If Ed Schwitzer’s take on the new PM’s career-long ambition to increase and improve wraparound childcare is correct, there may yet be a place for pupils to experience these benefits in schools – without the workload implications for teachers often cited as their main downside.