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While a substantial increase in funding for state schools would be welcome (Poorest pupils twice as likely to fail GCSEs as richest peers, 21 August), the schools alone cannot improve the educational outcomes for children from deprived backgrounds. Anyone under stress loses the capacity to concentrate to some degree, and if a child lives in a household beset by anxieties – money, job security, health, housing, etc – the likelihood of achieving their best is limited. From my own experience, any slight distraction greatly impairs my ability to perform a mathematical task.
Politicians of all persuasions need to understand the inherent disadvantage of low income and insecurity on large sections of our population.
Cathy Williams
Kingsclere, Hampshire
• The exam achievement disparity between the richest and poorest pupils reflects a simple fact of life in 21st-century Britain – income equates to postcode which equates to quality of schooling which equates to quality of teaching which equates to exam success. It was ever thus and will continue to be so. What is more surprising than stating the obvious is that Russell Hobby, the chief executive of Teach First, finds that at all noteworthy, and that Angela Rayner, the shadow education secretary, believes that the government is responsible.
Those responsible for postcode-related exam achievement are the army of parents who choose to invest their income in housing in postcodes that will provide the best education for their children. Who can blame them?
Professor Noël Cameron
Loughborough, Leicestershire
• While I am sure poorer pupils struggle to do as well as their richer peers, Teach First has, in the absence of proper data from the Department for Education about individual GCSE attainment, used seriously flawed data in its analysis. The problem with using the government’s underlying key stage 4 results for 2018 is that they only tell you about attainment in schools and whether they are based in poorer or richer districts, and nothing about the postcodes and census areas where their pupils live.
An extreme example is Knowsley, Merseyside, where 43% of secondary school children are educated outside the borough, pushing their GCSE results to the bottom of the national tables. If the Ucas system can access university applicants’ full postcodes, then why can’t GCSE exam boards and the DfE get their act together?
David Nowell
New Barnet, London
• Michael Segalov claims that Teach First’s recent report throws “the entire validity of our exam system in the air” (Meritocracy is a myth – so don’t judge people on their GCSE grades, 21 August). To draw such a conclusion is facile: the solution to stymie the decline of social mobility is not overlooking exam results but ensuring that all have an equal opportunity to succeed in them.
The reason for the attainment gap is multifaceted. Some inequalities, such as the differing home environments in wealthy and poor households, are intractable and will exist in perpetuity. The shortfall of quality teachers and schools in low-income communities, however, does not have to continue.
Reversing cuts to school budgets is a necessary but not sufficient action. Driven young teachers need to be given incentives to practise in low-income communities. Furthermore, schools – particularly in northern urban areas – need to be provided with appropriate resources to train and invest in new staff. Likewise, co-curricular activities need to be encouraged, so pupils can acquire the “soft skills” that the children of wealthy parents have. Universities, too, can play a role by collaborating with secondaries to inspire and assist teenagers to go into higher education.
Government funding is not, in isolation, a panacea; it is imperative that collaboration and targeted investment by school leaders accompanies it.
James Smith
Liverpool
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