A quick trawl of the political archives shows that tackling the impact of poverty on educational outcomes has been among Wales’ chief education concerns in every year since devolution in 1999.
Yet the link between high levels of deprivation and low educational attainment remains as big a challenge today as it was 25 years ago.
According to UK government statistics, more than one third of pupils in Wales live in poverty (the highest proportion in the UK) and the number is rising.
The disadvantage gap in education
The impact is stark, with pupils eligible for free school meals (a recognised measure for deprivation) displaying poorer performance at every stage of compulsory education.
Research into inequalities in GCSE results, published by the Education Policy Institute in 2022, found that the achievement gap between children from poorer and more prosperous backgrounds in Wales was equivalent to around 22-23 months of educational progress.
This is both sobering and totally unacceptable, not least because the seminal “Learning Country”, programme launched in 2001 made clear that “inequalities in achievement...must be narrowed” and that “children facing special disadvantage and poverty of opportunity must be better provided for”.
Almost a quarter of a century on, the Welsh government, through new education secretary Lynne Neagle, has again renewed its commitment to “raising levels of attainment” and “closing the gap for the poorest children”.
Ms Neagle wants “to be ambitious for every single learner” and would “never accept that children from poorer backgrounds should settle for worse outcomes than their peers”.
Welcome words, but we have heard them all too often before.
Myriad schemes to bridge the divide
Since devolution, a range of interventions has attempted to break the cycle.
The Pupil Development Grant (PDG) was introduced in 2012 and provides extra money to schools (more than £130 million in 2022-23) based on number of pupils eligible for free school meals (FSM).
Initiatives such as Schools Challenge Cymru took a more holistic approach: it was designed to make better use of the professional expertise already in Welsh classrooms but was scrapped in 2017 three years after its launch.
Then there is the provision from September of FSM for all primary-aged children.
And, of course, the monolithic Curriculum for Wales ranks tackling the attainment gap and raising standards for all among its headline benefits (although without substantive evidence that it will achieve this, many have argued it will likely do the opposite).
The Welsh government cannot, therefore, stand accused of not investing in the poverty agenda. And I take the point that all-important tax and welfare levers are controlled by Westminster; it will be interesting to see what difference two Labour governments make in this regard, particularly as new Westminster education secretary Bridget Phillipson has made similar noises about “breaking down barriers to opportunity”.
There is, nevertheless still plenty we in Wales could do.
‘No tangible measures’ for judging success
The publication of a new national child poverty strategy in January should have been an opportunity to make clear the Welsh government’s long-term plan for boosting the life chances of those in most need. What we got instead were “objectives” and “priorities” and no tangible measures for judging relative success.
The strategy’s failure to set out measurable outcomes, over and above those attached to the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act (which promises at least 90 per cent of 16- to 24-year-olds in education, employment or training by 2050) was seized upon by Wales’ children’s commissioner, among others.
It is somewhat ironic that just months earlier, in November 2023, the Senedd’s cross-party Equality and Social Justice Committee had called on the government “to overcome its aversion to setting targets”. This apparent aversion to target setting - and arguably, data more generally - was evident in the government’s recent promotion of its “Attainment Champions” project, designed to encourage peer-to-peer support and inform policy around educational attainment.
The project is to be extended from September 2024 following a successful pilot that, according to the government, “was helping improve educational attainment” and having “a positive impact on improving the educational experiences for learners facing disadvantage”.
This is, of course, extremely welcome, but with no clear deliverables and scant data for gauging efficacy, we have no real way of knowing what difference it is making.
Lack of resources for teachers and school leaders
A more pressing but related concern is the scarcity of resource available to teachers and leaders to effect change.
A 2020 report for the Welsh government found a reduction in real-terms spend per learner of 6 per cent over a decade, with extra funding for schools serving deprived communities significantly lower in Wales than in England.
And in October 2023 Welsh ministers announced a £74.7 million reduction in total education spending for 2023-24. Whichever way you look at it, education cuts run contrary to the anti-poverty agenda.
We need to do things differently, starting with cross-party commitment to long-term funding, a panoptic approach to strategic decision-making, measurable targets and a willingness to bring siloed government departments together.
Actions really will speak louder than words.
Dr Gareth Evans is director of education policy at University of Wales Trinity Saint David. He writes in a personal capacity and tweets @garethdjevans
