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?

Schools in London have historically received more than twice the funding per pupil than schools in other parts of England.

^ this is possibly why other poor students don’t get in other cities.

Great link @grasspigeons

This thread has turned out to be quite a sobering read. The consensus seems that there is no escape and that children will be trapped forever...
I wonder, how do you solve this problem? I don't know... Throwing money at it has not worked, so what now? The only course of action is to try to understand what it is that makes children underperform. In case of abject poverty or dire family situations might be easy, but are all situations so clear cut? Saying that income is the problem is too generic a statement. A bit like saying that black people do go to Oxbridge because... they are black, like there is a natural barrier in the pigmentation of their skin.
Interesting to see that the JAM parents seem to be doing OK, also interesting how the gap gets bigger and bigger as time goes by. A much more in depth study is needed if the government is serious about solving this problem (and I am sure ANY government is).
While I have no idea what to do for small kids, I still think that a new wave of grammar schools, with revised access criteria, is the easiest and quickest solution for older kids. After all what is good to you and your children if nothing is going to change for the next 25 years? Something needs to happen yesterday.

“ still think that a new wave of grammar schools, with revised access criteria, is the easiest and quickest solution for older kids”

And the 75/80/85% who don’t get in? How will this be a solution for them?

And why will these grammar schools differ from the current ones, who tend to have vanishingly small numbers of children from disadvantaged backgrounds?

Also found links between book ownership and attainment literacytrust.org.uk/news/1-8-disadvantaged-children-uk-dont-own-single-book/

It is the old ‘nature vs nuture’ Conundrum. People who are clever generally hold down well paid professional jobs and also tend to give birth, on the whole, to clever children.

i'd be investing at the other end, eyfs and ks1

Tbh we are stuck in the middle between poor and rich. We are just a touch over the tax credit threshold for one child but live in a very poor neighbourhood. If they revise to get a different balance in GS it elimates a lot of working poor or families that are just managing.

@bertandRussel, because at least the 15-20-25% of kids currently in primary school and at risk of ending up in the red bar (see grasspigeon's graph) will have a better outcome. To me that is preferable to the alternative, which is to write them off and write off their children and possibly their grandchildren (as nothing can change in the short and medium term, only in the long term - but who cares about medium and long term if I have kids now?)
@grasspegeon, indeed, but that has been done too, especially in England where in theory you should get LOADS of free preschool hours now. However we have seen that as yet not much has filtered through and the government needs to understand why.

So, once again, it’s the high achievers that matter. Sod the rest.

The reason Grammars fell out of favour in the first place was because it was recognised that the middle classes were using their advantages to gain access leaving the children they were originally designed for behind.

As we live in an even more stratified society now, I fail to see how they might be an answer.

How is it that countries like Germany and the Netherlands made the Gymnasiam system work but we screwed it up so badly here in the UK. Maybe the problem is less to do with the schools and more to do with the culture - both the snobbery and the inverse snobbery - that is rampant in the UK?

So, once again, it’s the high achievers that matter. Sod the rest.

Small correction: it's the high achievers that matter most. It's tragic to crush their potential in a forlorn attempt to boost the outcomes of the irremediables by a point or two.

Common, so there is nothing between those two? Nobody potentially on the 50th or 65th or 75th centile worth really focusing on?

The children are not trapped forever and some pp money does work. Schools don’t always target it wisely. It needs to be targeted much earlier and to accurately meet needs with a real understanding of what works.

Grammar schools are, generally, not where pp children are going to go. There are just not thousands of bright pp children out there getting As instead of A*s. Look at the gcse results. The majority are not GS children. What you need are higher levels of attainment for the majority. We have many great schools in London who have aspirational parents. Less so in some seaside towns and the north. London has more money per child.

I tend to think children receiving benefits may be from homes where Work doesn’t feature much. That’s why the children of the working poor do better. It’s about who is going to see value in the qualifications. Working parents are more likely to. They want it more.

Quite a few PP children also have special needs. These children might not be able to make good progress and I know from our school that’s it’s a big struggle to get good progress from our SEN pp children.

All grammar school tests have to tell parents how to appeal. Head teachers of primary schools can talk through appeals. It’s wrong to say a parent didn’t know about appeals being available. However, confidence to appeal is wholly another matter! Parents should be supported to do this.

“Small correction: it's the high achievers that matter most.”

Why?

@bubblesbuddy, read the link posted a few replies ago by grasspigeon. Clearly the selection criteria needs to be fit for purpose, and that's where the difficulty lies. I was wondering perhaps one could do away with selection altogether, but let the kids selfselect, like it happens in Europe.(@dieantword how does it work in Germany?)

@bertandrussel, to me it is better than
saying "sod them all", which is what you seem to be advocating. I insist, we need something yesterday, not perhaps a few good years down the line to help at least SOME of the kids who are at school now. To give you an example, in Glasgow there are areas where the secondary school score SO poorly that can't even get ranked. What are your chances if you live in an estate served by that school? Remember that we are talking about the "now" and the kids who are at primary school now won't get another go if whatever policy doesn't work.

In Germany there’s basically 3-4 tiers of school, all the way to university level. First a vocational tier, then a tier that leads to doing sort of management-y stuff, then a technical tier and finally the academic tier. You can (if you achieve the grades) move between tiers for most of your education and at the university level a degree in a technical or managerial tier is qualification to then attend an academic tier university if you never moved previously. For the most part qualifications from all tiers are respected and lead to well paid unionised jobs with benefits.

Germany does have increasing problems with casualisation of the labour force but that is new and more down to political and economic forces effecting the whole continent.

Why?

Gosh, you really are an unreconstructed socialist, aren't you? The more talented ones are the reservoir from which future leaders, educators, scientists, creatives, and business innovators will be drawn. Since our society depends on that relatively small segment of high potential, it makes sense to nurture them rather than those whose skills can never be raised beyond a low or moderate level.

I disagree that more grammar schools is the answer. There's lots of data to support comprehensive schools but very little to support grammar schools as effective.

I think part of the problem is that we don't treat the whole. We see educational attainment as a stand alone but it's not. It starts as a public health problem and in fetal development. For my money I'd target educating and supporting first time mothers. They are the most receptive and haven't already fallen into any destructive patterns.

Actually, I take that back - most socialist or communist societies enforced strict academic elitism precisely so that the elite it produced could employ their skills to benefit the whole country. But I guess that's too ... pragmatic unkind for impractical idealists to accept.

@DieAntword

Many parents in Germany are increasingly unhappy at their children being tiered so early in life and their social mobility is static. A Doctor's child gets into Tier 1 as a matter of course whilst a road sweeper's child is filtered into a lower tier. It's not the solution to our problems here.

Actually no, i’m not. Apart from the unfairness of focusing on high achievers at the expense of everyone else, I absolutely do not want a growing disaffected underclass in our society, out of pure unenlightened self interest. In a time of limited resources, educational resources should be prioritized towards the people who are least likely to succeed without support. For their good and the good of everyone else. Supported high achievers can do well anywhere. This does not apply to other groups.

And yes, our society needs movers, shakers and surgeons. It also needs nurses, agricultural workers and cleaners. I expect we will be crying out for them over the next few years......

It's not necessarily about the amount of time parents spend with their children, it's about what actually goes on during that time. I'm a teacher, and the vocabulary gap and cultural capital gap are very apparent, as are the differences in expectations and aspirations.