Children Should Find School Hard That Do Not Qualify For Pupil Premium
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Children living in low-income families are not all alike, and many are very successful in school. It is well documented that children growing up in poorer families tend to have lower levels of educational attainment and participation in post-compulsory education than their more privileged peers. It is the children from some of the low-income families that will qualify for pupil premium money which, if used effectively, is a key part of schools strategies for closing he gaps. However what about those children who find school hard that do not qualify for pupil premium?
Previous work undertaken for JRF by the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the University of Bristol
(Goodman and Gregg, 2010) aimed to clarify the nature of the existing…show more content… • The school’s approach: Allocation of funding towards pupils from the poorest backgrounds and direct teaching support to children falling behind.
However, although these factors may play an important part towards understanding why we have a gap in attainment the conclusions did not pinpoint the exact factor causing the gap.
Another piece of research for JRF (Kintrea et al., 2011) challenged the idea that poorer children and their parents have low aspirations. It actually found that poorer children and families often have high aspirations and that many want to go to university or get professional, managerial and skilled jobs.
It indicated that poorer young people thought school was very important and that their parents tried to support them in any way they could.
The study found that for a lot of these children the problem was actually how to reach their goals.
It also found that there was much more need for parents and children to be offered support with their educational and reaching their future goals.
Currently, one in four children in the UK is growing up in poverty (DWP 2009). For these children, the impact of poverty on their chances of educational and life success can be great. Even though the average overall test scores have improved, there still remains large differences in educational achievement according to socio-economic status, with family income and status by far the most