A 2010 study (DCSF RB 217) combined data collected in the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (LSYPE) and matched data from the National Pupil Database (NPD) to investigate what contributed to gaps in Key Stage 4 attainment between pupils with different characteristics. In particular, it looks at gaps between attainment of pupils known to be eligible for Free School Meals (FSM pupils) and those not known to be eligible, and also the gaps relating to pupils from underperforming ethnic minority groups. The report also presented findings relating to pupils with different aspirations with respect to whether they wanted to stay in full time education once they had reached age16.
Key findings from the report:
Gaps in performance did not arise as a result of just one factor; there were a number of characteristics that all had separate effects on KS4 attainment, and since these occurred at different rates in different groups of pupils they also made separate contributions to gaps in performance between those groups.
While most pupils have high aspirations, the likelihood of this varies with the individual’s characteristics. Boys, White British pupils, those with lower levels of KS2 attainment, those whose parents have lower levels of education and those who think that their friends wanted to leave full time education are all less likely to want to stay in full time education post 16 than their peers. However, once other factors have been controlled for, FSM eligibility is not a significant predictor of aspirations, and pupils from deprived areas actually have higher aspirations than others when controlling for their other characteristics.
Although FSM status itself only has a relatively small impact on attainment, FSM pupils have very different characteristics to non-FSM pupils. In particular, they are more likely to have characteristics which have separate, negative, impacts on progress during secondary schooling, and also on overall attainment at KS4.
Among White British pupils, those on FSM are substantially more likely than those not eligible to live with a single parent, have parents with no qualifications, have low aspirations, attend schools with lower prior attainment and be from families with at least three children. Other negative factors are also disproportionately likely to affect them, and it is these factors that contribute to the FSM gap among White British pupils.
Prior attainment is the biggest contributor to White British FSM gaps, followed by income and material deprivation and then pupil factors and parental engagement. Much less important are pupil aspirations and school effectiveness, which contribute only very small parts to the gap. So, White British FSM pupils’ outcomes are not much worse than those of White British non-FSM pupils as a result of their aspirations or th effectiveness of their schools.
The FSM gap is smaller for pupils from underperforming ethnic minority groups than for White British pupils. This is largely because there is less difference between the characteristics of FSM and non-FSM pupils in these groups than among White British pupils. Pupils from underperforming ethnic minority groups have very similar aspirations regardless of their FSM eligibility, and FSM pupils from these groups are more likely to be EAL and, on average, attend schools with higher CVA scores. However, while only very small portions of the gap is attributed to pupil factors and aspirations, and school effectiveness is actually shown to help keep the FSM gap narrower in these groups, the other factors have a similar order of importance when predicting these FSM gaps as they do when predicting White British FSM gaps.
Gaps between the underperforming ethnic minority groups and White British pupils were much smaller than FSM gaps. This is because while the underperforming ethnic minority groups were more likely than White British pupils to have some of the characteristics associated with lower KS4 outcomes, they were also more likely to have some of the characteristics associated with higher outcomes. For example, while they lived in households with lower incomes, they had higher aspirations.
