Disadvantage in early secondary school

Cook, Will, Shaw, Bart and Morris, Stephen ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6869-8933 (2020) Disadvantage in early secondary school. Project Report. Nuffield Foundation.

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Abstract

This report details the findings from the Nuffield Foundation funded project ‘The academic trajectory of disadvantaged pupils during Key Stage 3’. This project aimed to assess the latest evidence on the academic trajectory of disadvantaged1 pupils during early secondary (ages 11-14) using literature reviews and data analysis. The project was split into four main parts. 1) A review of the academic and policy literature, assessing the evidence relating to patterns of academic achievement/progress for disadvantaged pupils in the early secondary years. 2) Analysis to explore how outcomes at the end of Key Stage 3 (age 14) are associated with family income, and whether any income gradients/gaps widen from the end of primary school (age 11) using data from the Millennium Cohort Study. 3) Analysis of school absence data to test whether economic disadvantage is associated with absence during early secondary school, and whether early secondary absence could predict attainment gaps at age 16 (GCSE). 4) Evaluation of three policies (described in the box below) targeted at the early secondary phase to test their impact on age 16 attainment.