6 Mind the Gap, again

A succinct article from The Times, reproduced below.

The headline says it all.

The Times
February 16, 2007

Gap between poor children and the better-off widens with age
Alexandra Frean, Education Editor

Poorer pupils are falling farther behind their classmates at school as they progress from primary up to GCSE level, new Department for Education figures indicate.

Education is assumed to be a great leveller, ironing out the difference in achievement between poor and middle-class children. But an analysis of state school test results by the Conservatives has indicated that it is having the opposite effect, with the attainment gap between the classes widening with age.

The findings are based on a comparison of the test results of children receiving free school meals (FSM) — a rule-of-thumb indicator of poverty — and better-off youngsters who are not eligible. Sixty-one per cent of FSM 11-year-olds-achieve the standard expected of their age in English compared with 83 per cent of nonFSM children.

By age 14, 50 per cent of FSM children achieve the standard expected compared with 77 per cent of nonFSM pupils. At age 16, 33 per cent of FSM pupils achieve the five good GCSEs expected, compared with 61 per cent of nonFSM children.

In maths the gap between FSM and nonFSM pupils widens from 21 percentage points at 11 to 25 at 14, while in science it rises from 16 to 29 percentage points.

David Willetts, the Shadow Education Secretary, said that the widening gap was caused by the failure of schools to give children a robust mastery of the basics at an early age and by a lack of streaming in schools. “If their literacy is weak, they have nothing to build on and it’s very hard to advance,” he said.