Is 'levelling up' the answer to 'closing the gap'?

Earlier this year Justine Greening, a former Secretary of State for Education, participated in an interview for InTuition’s quarterly journal (Martindale, 2021). The featured article is littered with phrases of social mobility, levelling up and closing the gap. Whilst opportunity through access to employment is the theme of the interview, it can be claimed that the underpinning causes of lack of employment opportunities for students from a disadvantaged background remained untouched.

Greening provides a positive and up lifting outlook on the changes that will occur in the post-16 sector of education. The transcribed interview acknowledges that Greening believes that there needs to be a stronger focus on connections between the education sector and employers to provide more or even better opportunities for students when they enter the workforce (Martindale, 2021). The article labels this as levelling up, as Greening states employment opportunities will improve social mobility.

Within the interview Greening touches upon the educational gap between students of disadvantaged and more affluent backgrounds. She contextualises this through highlighting that students that are disadvantaged encounter less opportunities than their peers and have greater difficulty in securing employment that enables them to have social mobility within society. Her argument is that the education sector needs greater links between them and employers to increase opportunity. Whilst Greening acknowledged that focusing on schools is ‘not enough’ to enable students from disadvantaged and less affluent areas to have career opportunities, it can be argued that she does not concede the picture holistically.

An increased holistic perspective on the educational gap and career opportunities can be attained through considering social learning theory. Whilst many perspectives can be achieved through considering multiple theorists, for the purposes of this article Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological theory has been selected. This theorist has been carefully chosen other others, as he ‘provides a theoretical and research framework through which the influence of environment as a whole (holistic) can be factored into human development’ (Taylor, 2016).

Bronfenbrenner can provide valuable insight into how a student’s background can impact their educational attainment or employment opportunities. Figure 1, below, demonstrates Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological theory. Bronfenbrenner places the student at the centre of their own environment. He then goes on to claim that the environment is made up of systems.

The microsystem is the smallest and most immediate environment in which a child lives. For instance, this can include immediate family members that live in the child’s home, their peer group, their class at school and daily home life. Bronfenbrenner (Psychology Notes, 2021) claims that ‘how these groups interact with the child will affect how the child grows and develops’. The mesosystem takes an outward step and consists of interactions with different microsystems. For example, connections between home and school. The next system Bronfenbrenner describes is the ecosystem, also referred to as the indirect environment. This can be described as the linkages that exist between two or more settings, one of which may not contain the developing child but still impact upon them. For instance, the parent’s workplace or extended family members. The macrosystem contains the largest and most distant collection of people and places to the child, but ones that still have significant impact on them. This consists of a child’s cultural patterns, values and beliefs. Finally, the last ecological system know as chronosystem represents the change and consistency in a child’s life. For instance, change or consistency in the parents’ employment, address and family structure (Psychology Notes, 2021).

Applying Bronfenbrenner’s theory in this context can highlight that increasing opportunities for employment is just a practical component of the impacting factors on a student’s development and achievement. It can demonstrate that there is a diversity of ‘interrelated influence on students’ development’ (Phychology Notes, 2021). In other words, whilst Greening could provide students with better opportunities for employment, it does not mean that a student from a disadvantaged background can succeed in them. It can be argued here that Greening’s approach mystifies the actual problem: students from disadvantages backgrounds can be impaired by their access to education, resources and experiences that later in life prevent these students from securing stable and successful careers.

Studies carried out by the Department for Education (DfE, 2019) and educational researchers (Weale, 2010; Save the Children, 2012; Wood 2019) have acknowledged that in the last two years the ‘educational gap’ between students from a disadvantaged background compared to peers of a more affluent background to be increasing. Wood (2019) who draws upon the Education Policy Institute’s research found that some students are as far behind as 18.1 months compared to their more affluent peers by the age of 16.

Interestingly, it is important to note that prior to the last couple of years the educational gap had been ‘stable’ in the words of the DfE (DfE, 2019). This coincides with wider statistics that also state the gap between the rich and poor had narrowed prior to 2019. For example, the Office for National Statistics (ONS, 2020) claims that during the financial year 2018/19 ‘the gap between the richest people and the rest of the population has narrowed’. However, during the financial year 2019/20 the ONS (2020) have concluded that the gap has widened. This is replicated in national educational studies that recognise in the same year the educational gap had started to increase (Woods, 2019; EPI, 2020). Whilst naturally there has been arguments that the current pandemic has led to this increased gap, EPI (2020) uses statistics that came before the pandemic. The question this poses is, is it a coincidence that the educational and financial gap between families of disadvantaged and more affluent parties has increased simultaneously? If not, why are we focusing on job opportunities at 16 rather than access to resources?

It is important to acknowledge that most of the articles utilized here (Wood, 2019; Weale, 2020) have measured students from a disadvantaged background as pupils who receive either Pupil Premium (PP) or Free School Meals (FSM). The articles consider data on a large quantitative scale, rather than focusing a contextual and holistic approach, meaning some children that fall into the FSM or PP category may also have a disability or learning difficulty, which could be impacting on the data.

Conclusion

Whilst not in disagreement with Greening, that there does need to be opportunities for disadvantaged students to access better employment, the question this article concerns itself with is can the educational gap be narrowed or solved through improved opportunities of employment. Is it taking the focus off the increasing gap between families incomes, which could be contributing to the widening of the attainment gap?

Bibliography

DfE (2019) Key stage 4 performance, 2019 (revised). Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/863815/2019_KS4_revised_text.pdf (Accessed: Sunday 18th July 2021).

EIP (Education Policy Institute) (2020) Proposals from the Education Policy Institute. Available at: https://epi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/EPI-Policy-paper-Impact-of-Covid-19_docx.pdf (Accessed: Sunday 18th July 2021)

Martindale, N. (2021) Social Mobility: Levelling Up (Interview with Justine Greening). InTuition: England.

Office of national Statistics (2020) Household income inequality, UK: Financial year ending 2020. Available at: ,https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/bulletins/householdincomeinequalityfinancial/financialyearending2020 (Accessed: Monday 19th July 2021).

Psychology Notes (2021) What is Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory. Available at: https://www.psychologynoteshq.com/bronfenbrenner-ecological-theory/ (Accessed: Monday 19th July 2021).

Save the Children (2012) Closing the Attainment Gap in England’s secondary school’s. Available at: https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/content/dam/global/reports/closing-the-achievement-gap.pdf (Accessed: Sunday 18th July 2021).

Taylor, N (2016) A critique of Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory. Available at: https://prezi.com/it9llmljba1d/a-critique-of-bronfenbrenners-ecological-systems-theory/ (Accessed: Monday 19th July 2021).

Weale, S. (2020) Attainment gap between poor pupils and their peers in England is widening. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/aug/26/attainment-gap-between-poor-pupils-and-their-peers-widening (Accessed: 18th July 2021).

Wood, V. (2019) Education gap between rich and poor pupils stopped narrowing before the pandemic hit. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/uk-education-attainment-gap-poverty-gcse-coronavirus-a9688681.html (Accessed: Monday 19th July 2021).