Persistent Disadvantage

A research-informed approach to identifying persistently disadvantaged students within a school setting. It demonstrates how data and evidence can be used to target support for those most in need.

For some time, I have had an interest in identifying the most disadvantaged students within my school (Northampton School for Girls), to ensure that support is put in place for those who need it most. I became interested in this after attending the 2022 Challenge Partners National Conference, where David Laws of the Education Policy Institute (EPI) gave a presentation about levels of disadvantage that I found fascinating.

I am going to paraphrase slightly, but essentially he described a situation in which there could be two students with a very similar household income. Let’s call the first student “A”. “A” just meets the threshold for being in receipt of free school meals (FSM). The other student, “B”, just misses out on FSM due to their household income being slightly above the threshold. A third student was then introduced, whom I will call “C”. “C”’s household income is significantly lower than that of the other two students. Students “A” and “C” are both in receipt of FSM, but in reality their experiences are vastly different. The experiences of students “A” and “B” are likely to be more similar.

This fascinating presentation led me to explore some highly interesting research on the concept of persistent disadvantage. In a 2022 report to the Northern Powerhouse Partnership by the EPI and the Nuffield Foundation [1], persistent disadvantage was defined as pupils who are eligible for FSM for 80 per cent or more of their school lives, extending back to Year 2. The report found that the attainment gap for persistently disadvantaged pupils was more than twice the size of the gap for those who experience poverty more fleetingly. Comparing 2021 with 2011, there had been no progress in closing the gap for persistently disadvantaged pupils.

A study by the Nuffield Foundation and the EPI in 2022 [2] also demonstrated that students with a persistent level of disadvantage were around 10% more likely to have a GCSE point score in the bottom quintile than other disadvantaged students. A further study [3] showed that an increased percentage of school terms spent in receipt of FSM negatively impacts life chances. For example, students who spent longer in receipt of FSM had an increased likelihood of being in receipt of workless benefits at age 22 and a decreased likelihood of participating in degree-level study at age 21.

I wanted to find a way to use this research to identify a subgroup of disadvantaged students in my setting who may experience higher levels of disadvantage. Given the lack of information available to schools about students’ household incomes, I chose to use the EPI’s definition of “persistently disadvantaged”. These are students who have been in receipt of FSM for 80% or more of their time at school.

I spent some time exploring whether to weight the level of disadvantage based on when students had been eligible for FSM. For example, I considered whether a student who had spent the first 80% of their school years eligible for FSM was more or less disadvantaged than a student whose eligibility was more recent. I contacted Emily Hunt at the EPI, who had worked on persistent disadvantage, and she put me in contact with her colleagues Tammy Campbell and Kerris Cooper. They shared with me that, whilst the timing of a child’s FSM eligibility did seem to have an impact, the research was limited and something they would like to explore further. I therefore decided to retain the >80% FSM threshold and not weight it based on when students were eligible. I would like to thank Emily, Tammy and Kerris for taking the time to share their thoughts with me.

The most challenging part of the task was collating the start and end dates for time spent in receipt of FSM for every student and calculating the percentage of time they had spent on FSM. This was particularly tricky for students who had been in receipt of FSM on and off over the years, for whom we had to add each of these periods together. I am grateful to my very patient Data Manager, who painstakingly gathered this data for all of our disadvantaged students.

Using Sisra Analytics, I then assigned these students to a “focus group”. This handy feature allows you to create a filter group which is also highlighted, thereby making those students more visible. In my Sisra set-up, all “persistently disadvantaged” students have the disadvantaged tag, but they are also highlighted to indicate their higher level of disadvantage. This is a valuable feature that allows analysis of the progress of this key sub-group of students and keeps them on everyone’s radar.

I then delivered CPD on persistent disadvantage, and as a school we committed to ensuring that this group of students would be at the forefront of all intervention planning. For example, when a mentoring programme was launched for underperforming students, our underperforming persistently disadvantaged students were prioritised for places.

Since implementing this identification process, we have had two cohorts complete their GCSEs (2024 and 2025). Of course, we need to be cautious about stating with certainty that the identification and subsequent focus on the persistently disadvantaged students is having an impact on their outcomes. Firstly, the number of students is very small (e.g. in 2025, 10 of our 48 disadvantaged students were persistently disadvantaged, and in 2024 it was 14 out of 42). Such a small sample is not statistically significant. Secondly, in the cohorts prior to 2024, we had not identified persistent disadvantage, and so I do not have a baseline for comparison. We are, however, seeing some promising signs that this process is having a positive impact. The Attainment 8 results are summarised in Table 1.

Table 1: Summary of Attainment 8 outcomes for our 2023-2025 cohorts.

What we can see, is that the gap in Attainment 8 outcomes between our disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged students has reduced since we began identifying persistently disadvantaged students. This could suggest that focusing our resources on those students who need them most is having a positive impact. We can also see that the Attainment 8 outcomes for the students we identified as persistently disadvantaged are very close to those of all disadvantaged students. Based on the research by the EPI, I would have expected to see a much larger gap for this group. In fact, in 2024, our persistently disadvantaged students had a slightly higher Attainment 8 score than all disadvantaged students. When I reflect on the levels of support these students received as a result of their identification, I think it is fair to assume that this has had a positive impact.

This method of identifying persistently disadvantaged students is showing signs of being effective. However, going forward we may not be able to continue to use it. You may be aware that transitional protection was put in place to manage the roll-out of Universal Credit. This means that since April 2018, pupils cannot lose their FSM eligibility, even if their family income increases. The implication of this is that, with each passing year, there are potentially more students who appear to have been in receipt of FSM for 80% of their time at school but who, in reality, have a household income above the FSM threshold. For example, a current Year 11 student could have been in receipt of FSM since Reception. In Year 3, their family income may then have increased, but they would have continued to receive FSM due to the protection. Via the methodology that we are currently using, however, they would have been identified as persistently disadvantaged. With each passing year, it will become more difficult to identify the truly persistently disadvantaged students.

In December, a Treasury report outlined that a new method will be developed to assign disadvantage funding that will not rely on FSM eligibility [4]. The new method will instead use income data. My hope is that this will not only make the allocation of funds to schools more accurate, but also that the new methodology will consider the level of disadvantage of each pupil and that this information will be shared with schools. Individual schools should not have to go through such an onerous process as the one we have implemented in order to identify which of our students are most in need. I know that this is something the EPI has been calling for, and I hope that this is reflected in the new funding model.

I think that a new method for assigning disadvantage funding has the potential to be a game changer in the battle to close the gap for our disadvantaged students. I would welcome a solution where different household incomes result in different levels of funding, and where a clear indication of which students attract each level of funding is shared openly with schools.

If the positive signs from our very small sample are a result of our identification of, and subsequent support for, the most disadvantaged students, then imagine what could be achieved nationally if all schools were able to do this. Best practice in supporting students with different levels of disadvantage could be developed, and monitoring their outcomes at scale would allow us to assess impact in a more statistically significant way.

[1] “Covid-19 and Disadvantage Gaps in England 2021 - Report to the Northern Powerhouse Partnership” by Sam Tuckett, Emily Hunt, David Robinson & Robbie Cruikshanks, December 2022, Education Policy Institute and Nuffield Foundation https://epi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Covid19_2021_Disadvantage_Gaps_in_England.pdf

[2] “Inequalities in GCSE results across England and Wales” by Dr Joana Cardim-Dias and Dr Luke Sibieta, July 2022, Education Policy Institute and Nuffield Foundation https://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Inequalities-in-Wales-and-England.pdf

[3] “The long-term consequences of long-term disadvantage” Report to the Northern Powerhouse Partnership by Katie Beynon, Dave Thomson, October 2022 https://ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/final_report_inc_exec_summary.docx

[4] https://schoolsweek.co.uk/pupil-premium-income-data-to-replace-free-school-meals-as-trigger-for-disadvantage-funding/