It is well established that economic disadvantage can negatively influence children’s learning in a variety of ways and cause disadvantaged children to fall behind their peers as they progress through education. In this section we consider attainment gaps between disadvantaged pupils and their non-disadvantaged peers, using eligibility for free school meals as a proxy for economic disadvantage. More details can be found in the box below.
Early years foundation stage
Disadvantaged pupils tend to have lower attainment than other pupils even on starting school and this gap widens as pupils progress through their education. Just under one-fifth (18 per cent) of pupils in reception year were eligible for free school meals in 2024 – unchanged from a decade earlier but higher than (the 14 per cent recorded) in recent years prior to the pandemic.
In 2024, the disadvantage gap among pupils aged 5 was 4.7 months, up slightly from 4.6 months in 2023 and considerably wider than in the five years prior to the pandemic.
Figure D1: The disadvantage gap for pupils in reception year widened in 2024 and remains well above levels in recent years prior to the pandemic
How do we measure the disadvantage gap?
For pupils in reception year, we define disadvantage as being currently recorded as eligible for free school meals (FSM) in the National Pupil Database (NPD), and for older pupils, being FSM registered at any point in the previous six years.
At each key stage, we order pupils by their attainment results and use this to assign them a rank. We then calculate the average rank of non-disadvantaged and disadvantaged pupil groups and convert the difference between the two (known as the ‘mean rank difference’) into a months of learning gap, using a scalar. This months gap measure is not precise but gives an indication of how far disadvantaged pupils lag behind their peers.
The free school meal data available in the 16-19 phase is not reliable, so we define disadvantage status based on whether students had been eligible for free school meals at any point in the last 6 years, as recorded at the end of key stage 4. Rather than a mean rank approach, we instead calculate a total point score across students best three qualifications taken in the 16-19 phase. Our disadvantage gap (expressed in A level grades to aid interpretation, but all qualifications are included) is defined as the mean of this total point score amongst disadvantaged students, subtracted from the mean for non-disadvantaged students.
Primary school
By the end of primary school, 30 per cent of pupils are identified as being disadvantaged. In 2024, the attainment gap in year 6 between disadvantaged pupils and their more affluent peers narrowed to 10 months. This is a reduction of 0.3 months since 2023, the first drop in the gap since 2018. However, this remains substantially larger than pre-pandemic levels, when it was just 9.2 months at its smallest, in 2018.
Figure D2: The disadvantage gap at the end of primary school narrowed in 2024 but remains substantially wider than before the pandemic
Secondary school
By the time pupils finish secondary school, one in four are classified as disadvantaged, a lower percentage than at the end of primary school. This decline occurs because, as children grow older, their parents are more likely to find employment and surpass the income limit required for free school meal eligibility.
For the secondary phase, the disadvantage gap narrowed by 0.2 months since 2023, to 19.1 months in 2024. However, it remains a full month wider than pre-pandemic levels. Our recent research on the drivers of the gap show that the increase since 2019 can be entirely explained by the higher levels of absence among disadvantaged pupils.
Figure D3: The disadvantage gap in GCSE English and maths narrowed in 2024 but, as at key stage 2, remains substantially wider than before the pandemic[1]
16-19 education
In the 16-19 phase, around a fifth of students are defined as disadvantaged based on their free school meal status at the end of key stage 4. This proportion is slightly lower than in earlier phases mainly because, although participation in education or training is compulsory until age 18, around 10 per cent of 16 and 17 year olds do not participate (see note on participation below).
Prior to the pandemic, the 16-19 disadvantage gap was relatively stable and closed slightly in 2019. However, the gap was still over three grades across students’ best three qualifications. The wider gap seen in 2022 was likely to have been driven by differences in grading between qualification types, so the narrowing observed in 2023 will be partly explained by the return to usual grading.[1] However, the 16-19 disadvantage gap widened again in 2024 and now stands at 3.3 grades – the widest seen in a year with normal grading arrangements since 2018.
Figure D4: The 16-19 disadvantage gap across students’ best three qualifications widened between 2023 and 2024, and remains at pre-pandemic levels[2]
What is happening to the post-16 participation gap?
The proportion of students that were not studying towards any substantial qualifications or an apprenticeship at the beginning of year 12 has been consistently higher for disadvantaged students than it has for non-disadvantaged students. Furthermore, this participation gap has widened in recent years such that for those finishing their GCSEs in 2022 (finishing a two year post 16 study programme in 2024), 21.9 per cent of disadvantaged students had no substantial education activity at the beginning of year 12, compared to 9.3 per cent of non-disadvantaged students.
The widening disadvantage participation gap in recent years, from 10.6 percentage points in 2020 to 12.5 percentage points in 2022, is concerning. Furthermore, an increasing number of disadvantaged students missing from education, and therefore our attainment measures, means we may be understating the true size of the post 16 disadvantage attainment gap.
Figure D5: The year 12 participation gap between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged students has widened in recent years
When considering gaps within level 3 qualification types we find that disadvantage gaps have narrowed slightly since 2022 for A levels, applied general and other level 3 qualifications, but gaps remain higher than pre-pandemic levels. This longer-term increase was most significant in applied general qualifications, which saw an increase in the disadvantage gap of 0.11 grades since 2019.
Notably, level 3 qualification type gaps have narrowed in the last year while the overall disadvantage gap has widened. This is explained by changes in who is entering these qualifications. Specifically, disadvantaged students are under-represented amongst those taking A levels, and over-represented amongst those studying at level 2 or below post 16. Entry patterns between qualification types by disadvantage status also change year on year. Qualification type disadvantage gaps therefore provide insight into how far disadvantaged students were behind others that entered the same qualifications as them – but does not reflect the overall trend in disadvantage gaps for all students.
Figure D6: Disadvantage gaps by 16-19 qualification have narrowed slightly since 2023 but remain wider than they were prior to the pandemic[1]
Adjusting our headline measures for the impact of Universal Credit
For the first time, our headline measure of the disadvantage gap at key stage 2 and key stage 4 is directly affected by Universal Credit (UC) protections. This changes the composition of students we identify as disadvantaged – see our Methodology section for further details. We know that some of the pupils identified as disadvantaged in 2024 are only eligible due to these protections and would have been classified as non-disadvantaged in previous years.[2] But how many are there of these ‘protected’ pupils and what are the implications for the size of gap?
Whilst we can’t calculate this directly, we can infer from earlier years. Specifically, we can estimate the size of the group that would have been protected at the end of key stage 2 and key stage 4 in the earlier years of 2019, 2022 and 2023, had the UC protections been in place at the time.
To calculate the number of additionally protected pupils, we create a new ‘FSM7’ definition of disadvantage and compare this to our headline measure in each of these years based on ‘FSM6’. We use FSM7 because this roughly simulates the extra year when some of the 2024 cohort was protected from losing free school meals.[3]
We find that in each of the earlier years, fewer than are additionally identified as disadvantaged due to simulated UC protections, in both key stage 2 and in key stage 4. As a result, the gap increased by no more than by 0.03 months in any year for KS2 and changed by no more than 0.02 months for any year in KS4.
This gives us confidence that our 2024 gap analysis is also likely to be minimally affected by UC protections. In the coming year, we plan to devise a new gap measure that addresses this issue on a more ongoing basis, and to consider the implications of the government’s recent announcements on broadening the population of pupils entitled to free school meals.
In our previous reports we have shown not only that disadvantaged pupils tend to do worse than their peers but that those who are disadvantaged for the longest duration do worst of all.
Our research has also shown that pupils have been increasingly experiencing long-term (or persistent) disadvantage and this trend emerged even prior to the pandemic and cost of living crisis. This is concerning and consistent with wider evidence of rising child poverty.
Here we consider attainment gaps for persistently disadvantaged pupils, which we define as pupils who are eligible for free school meals (FSM) for 80 per cent or more of their school lives (see methodology page for details). As there have been significant changes to the composition of this group, due to the UC protections mentioned previously, we no longer show a time series for this group. We do show the results for 2024, as at this stage, the figure for a single year is still able to give a sense of the overall scale of the gap for persistently disadvantaged pupils.
Primary and secondary school
By the end of primary school, 19 per cent of pupils are identified as persistently disadvantaged. These pupils represent 62 per cent of all disadvantaged pupils. The persistent disadvantage gap at the end of KS2 in 2024 was 11 months. Pupils who are persistently disadvantaged were one month further behind other disadvantaged pupils. By the end of secondary school, 13 per cent of students are persistently disadvantaged—51 per cent of all disadvantaged students. The persistent disadvantage gap at the end of KS4 was 22.4 months, and these students were over three months further behind other disadvantaged students.
Figure D7: Persistently disadvantaged pupils are almost one year behind by the end of primary school and almost two years behind by the end of secondary school
16-19 education
The 16-19 persistent disadvantage gap is also affected by UC protections. However, the effect will be less pronounced than in pre-16 measures, as the free school meal data we use post-16 is on a two or three year lag, meaning a smaller proportion of years are affected.
In 2024, around 9 per cent of students at the end of 16-19 study were flagged as persistently disadvantaged. This percentage is much smaller than in earlier phases, demonstrating that it is the most disadvantaged students who are more likely to drop out of education at the crucial transition point between key stage 4 and key stage 5.
Figure D8: The persistent disadvantage gap in 16-19 education narrowed in 2023 and is now the smallest recorded gap since the start of our time series in 2017
[1] Disadvantage gaps by qualification type are based on average points per qualification rather than total points over students’ best three qualifications.
[2] The January census is the record we use for determining a pupil’s disadvantage status based on having ever been recorded as eligible for FSM in the previous 6 years, known as ‘FSM6’.
[3] Strictly the period of protections began in April 2018 and given that we use the following January census to determine a pupil’s recorded FSM eligibility, the actual period affected by UC protections for the 2024 cohort is just under one year. This means our estimates of the effects of the protections are an upper bound.
[4] CAGs and TAGs refer to alternative grading approaches used during the COVID-19 pandemic years of 2019/20 and 2020/21 (respectively) when exams were cancelled and grades were based on centre and teacher assessments.
[5] During the pandemic grades increased across all subjects under centre and teacher assessed grades, but in the 16-19 phase, A level grades increased at a greater rate than other level 3 qualifications. As disadvantaged students were less likely to enter A levels, this was one of the reasons the gap widened. In 2022, grade boundaries were set at a midpoint between 2021 and 2019 levels, so some of the differences in results between qualification types were preserved.
[6] Due to change in definitions by the Department for Education, the cohorts of students finishing 16-19 study in 2020 and 2021 were not directly comparable, so we have not shown the disadvantage gap for these years on our chart.
Foreword & EXECUTIVE SUMMARYDisadvantage
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