Tackling poverty and disadvantage in schools: working with the community and other services

The link between disadvantage and educational underachievement is still strong. Most schools still fail to target support specifically at disadvantaged learners and only a few analyse data effectively enough to identify disadvantaged learners. Most schools do not use their assessment and tracking systems well enough to monitor the progress of disadvantaged learners. The few schools that support their disadvantaged learners well implement systematic, whole-school approaches for teaching and learning that benefit all learners and support individual disadvantaged learners by providing mentoring or help with basic skills and homework. Nearly all schools see themselves as community-focused and work with a range of agencies. However, school leaders do not usually co-ordinate multi-agency working systematically enough to ensure that disadvantaged learners are supported in the most effective and timely way. Only a few schools plan explicitly to raise disadvantaged learners’ aspirations. Although many schools offer a range of out-of-hours learning, only in a few are these extra activities carefully planned to increase disadvantaged learners’ confidence, motivation and self-esteem. Where schools have had the greatest impact on raising learners’ achievement, staff plan out-of-hours learning to match the needs of learners and to complement the curriculum. School leaders generally have not received enough training on working with the community or services, or on using data to evaluate initiatives to tackle disadvantage. Schools do not share best practice or collaborate effectively with each other in this area. Most local authorities do not do enough to offer schools practical guidance on how to work with local communities and services, or how best to analyse outcome data for disadvantaged learners. Local authorities that work systematically with schools to tackle poverty and disadvantage have the greatest impact on learner achievement