Income and attainment are linked, why?

[Arkadia]

This article is just out:

I saw this on the BBC and thought you should see it:

Closing disadvantage gap will take 'over a century' - www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-44927942

Nothing new really, but I often wonder, why is attainment linked to income and not to parental involvement or school choice? I remember seeing a documentary on the BBC where it was stated, but not explained, that parental involvement does not matter, only income is a good predictor of how well you will fare at school. There was also a ted talk on the matter I seem to remember...
Anyway, my question is, why is income deemed SO key? Why are kids from rich but totally uninvolved parents in theory more likely to do well than kids from poor, but involved parents? One could say that it is the school because the rich parent tend to send their offspring to schools where parents are generally involved and in so doing they benefit from some kind of herd effect. But if that is the case, what matters is still the parent, and the school while the money is simply a side issue.
I am not talking about children from addicts parents or in the foster system and such like, but normal NOT well off families. Why should they be at such a disadvantage?

Having moved from poor to fairly affluent as a family these are the opportunities I am grateful I can give my child and I subsequently realise that I could not if our situation had stayed as previous (and we were not so poor as to need fsm but I grew up in that kind of environment)

Choice of school ...being able to throw money into renting after we realised the little house we moved to was in perfect catchment for best schools in area. Being able to not have to choose the nearest secondary school and paying train/bus fares to ensure Dd could attend school right for her

Paying for school trips (I remember as a child we only took up one offer from the school for monetary assistance for the end of year residential..DM pawned a gold necklace to buy toiletries/clothes etc for it)

Music lessons ...Dd suffers terribly with her mental health if she didnt have this extracurricular outlet ive no doubt her attainment in school would be affected.

Holidays and experiences..just because a museum is free doesnt mean the whole day out doesnt come at a cost, experiences such as these are a didactic enrichment activity for kids (e.g Dd learning loads of Spanish at 4 years old one holiday)

Helping with homework / reading etc. (My mum had loads of kids , always trying to make ends meet, running the house or finding a new man ...can not recall a time she read me a story ..ever or helped with homework)

Caring responsibilities with money comes choice for afterschool care etc ..also,in the past there have been family members who have needed help getting to hospital appointments etc a decent working car helps ! Dd doesnt have any caring responsibilities herself - I did ..bit hard to do your homework whilst also looking after your little sisters or a parent who is ill.

Advice guidance etc. Im pretty clued up about education choices ..next steps after secondary, the requirement for financing etc my mother wasn't ..sometimes encouraged us to go to uni sometimes encouraged us to be beauty therapists...no -one told me that it may be a bad idea to undertake an a level in two subjects disregarded by russell group unis which werent very academic...ended up at the only uni that would accept me doing a course I didnt really like , not being able to afford to live as my maintenance grant didnt even cover my rent ..ended up dropping out.. affected my income level for many many years

I could go on...the fact of the matter is my life is so much easier with money than without. Some of the factors I describe could just be down to a rubbish parent but that parent couldnt make good the potential gaps in attainment due to lack of funds.

In addition there is a whole lot more to being poor than just lack of money .

There are some rather sneery attitudes on this thread have a bit of empathy and insight why dont you ?

@Norestformrz, can you explain that graph in a little more detail? ;)

It basically shows that the difference in scaled scores between a child considered disadvantaged (PP) and their peers is less than one mark. The same report shows the gap between disadvantaged and their peers has fallen year on year.
If as some have claimed it's purely down to intelligence this wouldn't happen.

@Norestformrz, but what I the starting base line, the same for everyone, or are they showing that the gap is getting slightly bigger over time (which is what a link upthread was saying)?
But you said in another comment that PP was a red herring, what did you mean, then?

I wonder also that if PP comprise such a huge range of pupils (some of which could be disadvantaged in name only, like the example posted earlier), that could skew the results.

The graph says pupils with similar prior attainment. It doesn't indicate how many pupils are in each category. For a fuller picture you would need to know where the base line is for the pupils by income. It's good to see that the difference in progress isn't huge and if it's dropping as well then that's also good. I think that there is also a difference between being intelligent and being suited to an academic environment. Not all intelligent people do well in school.

I've got really confused reading this thread - can I check i'm understanding what going on

The premises is 'disadvantaged children' which is a specific term have lower attainment than other groups and it could take 50 years to sort this out.

People are trying to work out why - and its varied from you're more likely to have a difficult life caused by the stress of no money, more likely to have an SEN and less likely to lots of extra curricular stuff enrichment. Or that they are just less intelligent as their parents are too stupid to earn enough money and no one has any aspiration.

I'm not sure I quite get norestformrz - you suggested pp is a red herring and the chart shows that disadvantaged children make nearly the same progress as other children who had similar prior attainment and the gap is closing. Is the idea that we don't need pp? you don't think that schools have got better at using pp and that's whats closing the gap for instance. And are you not concerned about the similar prior attainment bit as well.

That's what I was saying. I'm a class of 30. The lowest achieving could be a group of 10. 8 of those could be disadvantaged and making nearly the same progress as the other 2 but it still means a larger proportion of disadvantaged children are doing less well than the crest of the class.

OP I would dosagree that income matters least at pre-school. It’s at that age the gap definitelys starts to widen as another poster said - 3 months old starting swimming lessons (well, bobbing around in water), toddler going skiing with families in holidays, baby ballet, baby gym - whatever. Do the childron “need” those things to be happy - no. But they give them confidence without a doubt of being able to try different different things/ participate. My DD is now in Y2 and you can see the dofference between the kids that have been doing all those activities and the other ones who haven’t.

@DrinkFeckArseGirls, my kids didn't do any of that. ;)

@grasspigeons, I think the problem is that the definitions are either very broad or too vague or both (meaning that they vary from person to person, on this thread at least), making it difficult to understand what is going on.

I agree that taking up opportunities is partly to do with income and partly to do with confidence and the 2 are related. I agree that the many free activities put on by various organisations to broaden access are not often accessed by those with the lowest incomes, but those who are more affluent, if not that's really affluent. Sure Start centres spring to mind - all those lovely free baby classes and parenting classes, targeted at the disadvantaged, but accessed by the middle class who valued the idea of them and their children learning and dint find the idea of going to such classes alien.

Why don't people go to events even when they are free, so seemingly unrelated to income - because first of all they often do t know about them - they are advertised in magazines about children's activities which are not read by those who naturally aren't always looking for something else for their little ones to do, and the disadvantaged might worry there will be related charges even if the event itself is free, or equipment might be needed that they don't have, or getti three will be difficult, or it will be full of people who aren't like them or is a do-gooder event. They aren't confident to go somewhere that they do t know people or to enquire and ask questions about the event and their children aren't confident to try new things or spend time with people they don't know - it's already started in them, the lack of confidence. The people who ring up and quiz the providers of the activity about the timing, what's needed, what exactly is involved etc etc are not the disadvantaged who might struggle to think of exactly what to say or to feel confident asking it, but the more confident who are not disadvantaged.

I can think of numerous times I have seen disadvantaged children pull out of opportunities, when there wouldn't have been a financial cost - because they felt nervous - school trips, activities with Scouts or Guides - they felt a bit nervous and often rather than their parents encouraging them to go for it, the parents fed the fear and gave them lots of opportunities to pull out. So often there just isn't a culture of trying something new or broadening horizons to different groups of people. I have known parents who could have got their children into the local Outstanding school, but instead chose the one which Required Improvement because they themselves went there and their relatives went there - so very much a sense of sticking to what you know and looking inwards, because it's safer and more comfortable and feels like failure in the short term is less likely.

However, I've also spoken to people from disadvantaged backgrounds who went on a residential trip organised by their school for people from a number of schools, who nervously went, but came back changed because they saw that there was a different world out there - that some people like reading and like trying new sports and that there are people who go to uni and have a career plan in their head....and actually those people were pretty nice. 'Breaking out' even if you're clever is very difficult though, on lots of oractical levels but also socially too within the group you've been in. It is very hard and plarlty explains why not many people do it even if they have the raw ability to do so.

Op, I do agree with DrinkFeck. My ds is one of very confident child now, but as you might remember, he was a selective mute. It could have been totally different if we couldn't afford for me to give up my job, and send him to numerous courses recommended by nursery, send him to nursery 5 days a week 6 hours a day for exposure to other children, when I was a sahp(which was very expensive) when nursery manager suggested it, and let him participate in lots of extra curricular clubs.

OP I would dosagree that income matters least at pre-school. It’s at that age the gap definitelys starts to widen as another poster said - 3 months old starting swimming lessons (well, bobbing around in water), toddler going skiing with families in holidays, baby ballet, baby gym - whatever. Do the childron “need” those things to be happy - no. But they give them confidence without a doubt of being able to try different different things/ participate.

I agree that the income gap has a pronounced effect per-school, but it isn't about the lack of baby ballet or holidays abroad (and I find the idea that people think this is what we mean when we talk about disadvantage deeply depressing- clearly lots of posters have no idea what poverty looks like).

Children are disadvantaged pre-school by lack of range of sensory experience: by not seeing/hearing/experiencing open space/buses/trees/ whatever isn't in their immediate environment. They are disadvantaged, as a PP points out, by primary carers who are exhausted trying to juggle childcare between them around shift work and multiple part time jobs to make ends meet; or alongside other caring responsibilities. They're disadvantaged if their parents' mental health suffers from trying to juggle the above. They're disadvantaged if parents lack the literacy skills to read them stories, or the confidence to go to the library. They may be disadvantaged by the lack of early intervention where there are additional needs, because poorer/less educated/less confident parents will struggle more to battle the system and get their children he help they need. They're disadvantaged by poorer health as a result of poor housing.

The disadvantage starts preschool and it comes from the causes and consequences of living on the breadline, not because they don't get to go skiing.

OP - what do you mean by the fact your children didn’t do such activities. I don’t know how your children are so not sure what point you are making.
Are they as confident and as likely to succeed as the ones who did?
One of the parents in my child’s class doesn’t see the need for those activities, they can’t afford them and thinks they’re child is doing as well as other kids when they truth is different.

I think there are lots of things here. The research mentioned above states that the most expensive education systems are not the best. The US and Germany spend pretty much the most and are not high performing.

Having high expectations and standards does, however, and this is linked to income. In extreme examples, Korea- which 2nd highest performing in the world by PISA score- children often attend tutoring every night after school, and were being flogged so much the government had to introduce a curfew of 10pm for colleges to close and started raiding them, like pubs.

This tutoring cost parents huge amounts of money and is done from the time they start school until the time they leave. This works. Would we want it? Well no, probably not. Not even Koreans do. This model is similar across Asia, probably simplest referred to as the tiger mom model.

Baby ballet and holidays in Italy really aren’t in the same league as that.

Then there is rich vs poverty. Don’t forget, most of us sit in the middle of these extremes. Many working/ middle class families will take their children to ballet, gymnastics, skiing, school trips, museums, theatre, National trust sites. We will STILL be disadvantaged against rich parents, from
What I can tell. Not as disadvantaged as the very poorest, but still disadvantaged. And that is what is really challenging because it indicates you can’t just throw money at the problem to improve it. It needs a much more sophisticated solution.

Incidentally, Poland went from something like 30th to 3rd in world rankings in 7 years so it can be done. And they have enormous levels of child poverty compared to the U.K.

you can see the dofference between the kids that have been doing all those activities and the other ones who haven’t.

What do you mean you can see the difference?

I don't think that extracurricular activities/foreign holidays/baby swimming classes make much, if any, difference to academic outcomes which is what this thread is actually about.

really, I think it does make difference to the child's mentality. They often has positive effect. And positive personality leads to positive attitude at school, thus it may have effect on academic abilities too.

Completely agree Chocolatewombat
People will generally prefer an environment where they feel they belong and where aren't being looked down on. If you've always felt looked down on, you'll be more sensitive than most.
Where I live people will generally avoid environments that feel too middle class but also environments that feel too stigmatised. As you say: "Do gooderey".
So they might not go to the nearby children's wood or the puppet theatre but will also be wary of free cooking classes at the community centre (people might think you can't feed your kids adequately).
People will happily travel a further distance and pay out money to take the kids to soft play. The classless commercialism of the environment is part of the appeal.
There's been some pretty good, well attended youth activities at the community centre over the summer holidays that both my kids have taken part in. This is because the community centre has been a consistent positive presence for a number of years and is trusted. It takes ages to build up that level of trust and they've had to do it with fluctuating grant income and the constant threat of closure. It makes me angry that the things my community rely on are always just on the edge of being taken away, because the next thing (if there is one) will have to start from scratch to build up that presence and level of trust and it will take years.

Poverty is exhausting for everyone concerned. Parents are exhausted mentally from working out if their meter will run out of money before they can afford to feed it coins again, going round the supermarket is exhausting when you have to check the price of every item and keep putting things back because you can only spend the £10 in your purse and need to get 5 days meals out of it, and it's exhausting knowing your children will keep asking for a lolly or bring home a letter about a trip, or a party invitation or a request for cakes for a charity's event or £1 for mufti day - every single day there are demands and requests for money which are often unpredictable and exhausting and terrifying for parents who just don't have the money and hiding and disengaging is a way to respond to that and to protect yourself. And children are also exhausted by it because they know that they will have to turn down a party invitation because they won't be able to take a gift, or pretend to be ill on the night at Scouts when there is a trip out which cost £3 or claim they never got the letter asking if they wanted to see the school play, and make excuses when their friends go to town for a coke, because they haven't got the bus fare, never mind the coke money. And they certainly haven't got the revision books for GCSE or possibly a scientific calculator and when their ruler snaps or their pencil is lost, it might be a good while before there will be another and they don't even bother asking because they know there wont be a new one, when other families have 3 or 4 spares in the cupboard. And it might be that the heating can only be on for an hour a day to save money and so everyone goes to bed early when homework needs to be done, or there isn't reliable internet access for doing research and probably no printer or ink for printing out the project, and when an opportunity to attend an activity at a school 15 miles away on a Saturday morning is offered,nits turned down because there's no way to get there or the parents can't take them because they are looking after siblings or working or have so much going on they can't get their head around the practicalities of making the trip. Just living is exhausting in poverty and is also something which excludes parents and children's from all kinds of social activities and norms, from inviting someone round to play, to going for a coffee, to accepting. Party invitation, to staying after school to a free club, to feeling like you are part of or different to everyone else who seems to be living. Different life, or the same as a large group who are living a similar life, but very different to another's group who seem miles away in terms if everything. Poverty is draining in all kinds of ways.

Irvine yes I can see that in the longer term being involved in extracurricular activities is good for a sense of well-being which helps make children resilient etc. However this was a post talking about children 7 years old and younger. I doubt very much that they make any significant difference to a child's academic attainment at that age. They're a pretty new phenomenon really, there have been big differences between children from low and high income families for a good deal longer.

reallybadidea - but the early years learning goals include things that are developed more by doing stuff like baby ballet and children secure in these goals do better at KS1 so I think it does help

@DrinkFeckArseGirls
My kids, now almost 7 and 9, are fine. Academically are way ahead of most people in the school who are their age (although the bar, to me, IS set low) and socially are fine. My eldest did no activities until she started school, and even then it was a soft start (now she is doing a total of 5 sessions over a 7 day period).

@irvineoneohone, SM is a complicated matter. Without going even further OT, my youngest was not able to cope AT ALL with the pressure. Now she has loosened up a lot, though.

In general, I didn't do anything particular when my kids were preschoolers nor would I know what I could have done more or less. To do less could have ended up into neglect because it was all pretty basic stuff. To do more it looked to me like a waste of everybody's time. So... I don't know, but all the parents I know, I don't think did anything particularly different.
The only thing is that my kids went both to nursery for a few hours a week from when they turned 1.

In the book Fraeakonomics where they track correlations between success in terms of grades at school and possible causes/correlations, they concluded that it isn't so much WHAT you do as parents which makes the difference but WHO you are. Of course there is a link between the 2. I think it was mentioned upthread, but having lots of books in the home and mothers having a certain educational level seemed to make more impact than people visiting the library seemed to make more difference than whether parents stayed at home or worked when children were pre schoolers.

I guess in the end, who you are determines what you do. It did make me wonder about the schemes to get disadvantaged children into nurseries earlier, so they could be exposed to stories, talking, activities and engaged with lots, how much impact these schemes would have. One hopes an awful lot...but then the Freakonomics also made me wonder if it would have a significant impact, given that ones parents are the most significant impact .....and we are who we are......or are we?? How far is the die already cast at birth and our futures determined and how flexible and malleable is that future? Just wonderings.

Arkadia - perhaos it is part of the advantaged psyche to analyse what we are providing our kids with or not providing our kids with and to increase/reduce activity in relation to our thoughts - it is part of who we are. This could be a psyche which is attached to having high income or low income, but high aspirations, which are not so usual within white British low income groups, especially those of several generations (so not the person finishing their PhD so qualifying for pupil premium due to current low income). Perhaps the less advantaged simply don't analyse this stuff so much - partly because as I said before, poverty is exhausting and can take up all your energy and thoughts in just the basic process of living,leaving no time for analysis about whether the children have enough activities in their timetable or not, but also because often there isn't this sense of jostling and needing to press for an advantage all the time which advantaged parents seem to have from the minute their babies are born - so wanting them to speak first, swim earliest, read first, be picked to be Mary in the nativity.....

I think the causes of different levels of attainment are many and complex. I think low attainment is down to lots of different things and whilst income is just one and often a direct connection between income and attainment is hard to find, income affects so many other aspects of a child's life, both directly and indirectly, that in the end, speaking on a macro level, rather than about individual families (where exceptions will always be found) then income is the biggest single determinant of attainment.

Arkadia I agree all the baby ballet etc isn't necessary to achieve the PD ELG. Foreign holidays while nice don't make a child more intelligent. The most important thing parents can do for their children. Is talk to them about anything and everything.

You can take a very narrow view of attainment - just measured in ELG and then in KS1 SATs and KS2 SATs and GCSEs and A Levels and you can just target efforts towards those things and decide other 'enrichment' activities are frivolous, unnecessary or a distraction. These dancing and music and sporting things might or might not have a direct link to academic success and often those who value them highly, also value academic attainment highly too, but just have a broader sense of attainment and education. I have heard people talk about the difference between being well qualified and well educated. Attainment in grade terms is perhaps the qualifications part which some people fixate on to the exclusion of all else. Perhaps those with higher incomes have the luxury of valuing and being prepared to spend lots of time and money on seemingly frivolous things like expensive theatre tickets, individual private swimming lessons, tutoring, learning several musical instruments, niche sports which require lots of equipment and travelling around the country to sports events, language lessons, foreign cookery courses, Italian art appreciation, paying for internships and work experience, paying for foreign volunteering experiences....all things which might not directly boost grades but broaden someone's experience of life and perhaps their aspirations and horizons.