Since 2011, schools have received extra funding for students from low-income families. The purpose has been to improve the attainment of 1.8 million disadvantaged students. It hasn’t truly done so yet.
In our schools today, disadvantaged students get more money spent on them than students from non-disadvantaged homes. The cash most usually funds music lessons, trips, revision guides and educational apps. It has been one of the most remarkable and changes in moral outlook in our educational system in the last fifty years. Teachers have come to understand, not only the impact of poverty upon a child’s aspirations and achievements, but that something can and should be done to close this attainment gap: we are to give these children at school what the others get at home.
