Professor Lee Elliot Major says reducing divides inside and outside the school gates is crucial for all children to prosper. Here he provides practical strategies leaders can take to achieve an education system that values both equity and excellence.

The equity approach

Debates over education’s equalising power have long been dogged by damaging false dichotomies. In 1970, the sociologist Basil Bernstein published a paper entitled ‘Education Cannot Compensate for Society’. It became the go-to reference for those painting an overly pessimistic picture of education’s ability to level life’s unequal playing field. Three decades later, the then Education Secretary Michael Gove delivered a direct riposte to the perceived ‘pessimists and fatalists’ still (mis)quoting Bernstein. Michael Gove championed a ‘no-excuses’ approach to challenge the ‘enemies of progress’. These enemies, according to him, believed “that we can’t expect children to succeed if they have been born into poverty, disability or disadvantage”.

As much as this makes for good adversarial debate, the reality, as ever, is somewhere in the messier in-between. Both schools and society matter. The evidence is incontrovertible: reducing divides inside and outside the school gates is required to lift the prospects of all children.

Yet education policy has lurched to ever greater extremes. In England, disadvantage hardly garners a mention in the training guidance for new teachers or in the Ofsted inspection framework. The assumption is that explicit mention of poverty will lead to lower expectations of pupils from poorer backgrounds. At the same time children’s outcomes are measured solely by end-of-year academic assessments – tests eminently gameable by parents with the economic and cultural capital to ensure their offspring stay ahead in the academic race. No wonder we face a recruitment and retention crisis: teachers are being sent over the trenches, blindfolded, to fight a battle they can never win.

Anyone who suggests this singular vision might need tweaking is attacked as a heretical enemy. I’ve argued that we should re-balance the curriculum to celebrate working-class achievements and incorporate contemporary culture alongside more traditional texts – to reflect all the children we serve. My views have been widely misrepresented in the media, prompting a torrent of personal abuse. In the post-truth world, it doesn’t matter what you’ve actually said; any dissenting voices are condemned as dumbing down ‘standards’ (defined by narrow academic assessments).

This approach hasn’t worked for all pupils: stark achievement gaps continue to scar the education system. My research for the Nuffield Foundation (tinyurl.com/2nxftp3a) found that, in 2022, 15 year-olds from the top 25% socioeconomic backgrounds were about two to three years ahead of their peers from the bottom 25% of backgrounds in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD's) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) maths assessments. These divides were similar in magnitude to those recorded a decade previously. Amid unprecedented levels of school absenteeism, we predict that socio-economic gaps will persist for years to come.

A fresh approach

We need a fresh approach – one that explicitly addresses disadvantage. I call this the equity approach. This recognises the extra barriers to learning faced by many pupils outside schools. It rejects the deficit mindsets that position children from poorer backgrounds as inferior beings who need mending, focusing instead on their strengths. It moves beyond academic assessments to recognise all human talents. It urges teachers to reflect on their own biases when creating inclusive school and college cultures, and to forge mutually respectful relationships with parents. It combines insights from leading researchers and practitioners. More than anything else, it navigates a middle path between polarised views in the battle over what is taught and assessed in schools and colleges.

In my sessions with teachers, we co-create practical strategies grouped under the following four areas of language, pedagogy, curriculum, and partnerships of equity:

1. LANGUAGE

In my book, Equity in Education: Levelling the playing field of learning – a practical guide for teachers (tinyurl.com/2j9s3cwd), co-authored with teacher Emily Briant, we urge schools to reflect on the language used for disadvantage. The problem with terms such as ‘disadvantaged student’ is that it is a binary classification, leading to a crude demarcation between who is or who is not ‘advantaged’. It labels individuals, when facing hardship is about the circumstances students find themselves in. Schools can agree a strengths-based language, setting out respectful terminology for speaking with children and families, replacing ‘disadvantaged students’ with ‘children from under-resourced backgrounds’, for example.

2. PEDAGOGY

Effective feedback in the classroom can be a powerful equalising strategy. The problem is that teachers like all of us suffer from unconscious bias (tinyurl.com/y2kbm3ce). On average, they judge students from lower socio-economic backgrounds as lower academic achievers than their test marks would suggest.

Teachers are found to act differently towards some children, exuding less warmth, giving less eye contact and providing lower-quality feedback. They may inadvertently slip into stereotypes. Generic attempts to improve teaching overall are unlikely to work; there must be an explicit focus on inclusion.

3. CURRICULUM

Teachers can also do more to celebrate the non-academic achievements of their pupils. Of course, academic progress is critical; but we shouldn’t devalue other laudable human traits, from generosity to creativity to practical skills or activities like art and sport. It’s quite right that all children should be introduced to ‘high art’ forms, but equally we should value other contemporary cultural activities as well.

4. PARTNERSHIPS

School and college leaders meanwhile can act as ‘community connectors’, complementing their core role of ensuring the best teaching across their institutions. One in five schools in England now run food banks (tinyurl.com/3a9ut58v) – but these banks can provide much more than just food. They can act as community bridges – warm neutral spaces to build stronger relationships with parents.

Working with parents should be valued above pure academic gains. Teachers can shift the power balance of parent–teacher meetings and consider home visits to gain invaluable information.

Equity scorecard

It’s been inspiring that so many school leaders have signed up to our equity scorecard (tinyurl.com/mr42eutj). This practical toolkit for secondary schools enables teachers to reflect on their equitable practice. They can consider what can be improved and what might be piloted. Versions for primary schools and colleges are in the pipeline.

This groundswell of support speaks to the enduring passion of all educators, who are driven to nurture all children, irrespective of where they happen to come from, or what they want to go on to do. National debates may be stuck in false polarised choices: pessimism versus progress, knowledge versus skills, relationships versus results. But in truth, it’s not either/or, it’s both. We need an education system that values equity and excellence.

Lee Elliot Major
OBE FAcSS Professor of Social Mobility at the University of Exeter
@Lem_Exeter

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