💡 Underlined passages are direct quotes from the report - click any one to see the surrounding paragraph from the original document.
Why Reading is at the Heart of Closing the Disadvantage Gap
A major new report from the Education Policy Institute and Education Endowment Foundation has mapped the disadvantage gap across every phase of education in England. The findings are striking - and for anyone working in reading and literacy, they deserve close attention.
The gap starts before secondary school - and keeps growing
According to the report, by the end of reception year disadvantaged pupils are already 4.6 months behind. By the end of primary school, that has grown to 10.1 months. By the time they sit their GCSEs, they are 17.9 months behind their peers. The report states: "the story is one of disadvantage accumulating as children and young people progress through education" - and the foundations for later inequality are laid in the earliest years of school.
Literacy is one of the biggest early warning signs
The report breaks down the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) profile into its seven areas of learning and asks which most strongly predicts the size of the gap at age 11. Literacy comes out on top - contributing 1.9 months to the explained KS2 disadvantage gap, more than any other individual area of learning.
Mathematics (1.3 months) and communication and language (1.0 month) also feature strongly. The report is direct: "the largest EYFS gaps emerge in literacy, mathematics, and communication and language".
Falling behind in reception year shapes outcomes all the way to KS2
The report draws a direct line between early literacy gaps and the primary school disadvantage gap. One of its clearest findings is that "The size of the KS2 gap is strongly associated with disadvantaged pupils having already fallen behind in reception year in literacy, mathematics, and communication and language."
This is a crucial finding. It means that what happens in reception year - in early literacy, language and communication - is not just about school readiness. It sets a trajectory that plays out across the entirety of primary school.
Reading matters all the way through to GCSE
The picture doesn't change as pupils get older. At KS4, KS2 reading adds 1.8 months to the explained GCSE gap - and when combined with grammar, punctuation and spelling (1.5 months), the combined contribution of English-related subjects at KS2 is comparable to that of mathematics alone. The report's conclusion across every phase is consistent: "attainment in both mathematics and English-related subjects is strongly associated with the gap across phases".
Early progress in literacy has a protective effect
One of the most significant findings in the report is the protective role of early attainment. Not only does doing well in primary school boost a pupil's starting point at secondary - it also appears to reduce how much ground they lose during secondary school itself. The report finds that "attaining well during primary school seems to provide a protective factor against later gap-widening during secondary school".
For schools focused on reading intervention, this is a compelling argument for sustained, structured literacy support throughout primary school - not just in the early years.
Absence makes the gap worse - and disadvantaged pupils are most at risk
The report also identifies pupil absence as a major driver of the disadvantage gap - the second biggest factor at secondary school, accounting for around one-third of the KS4 gap. This matters directly for reading progress, since pupils who are absent miss the sustained, repeated exposure to texts and language that builds reading confidence over time.
The situation is made worse by the fact that "disadvantaged pupils are much more likely to be absent and, as we saw at KS2, increased pupil absence is associated with lower attainment". Not just more absence - but a greater attainment penalty for each day missed.
The report also flags the wider context here: "disrupted schooling is not just a challenge for families and schools, but integral to addressing educational inequalities and narrowing the disadvantage gap".
The gap is not inevitable
The report also carries an important message of optimism. "When children with SEND have timely identification and sustained support, their attainment outcomes can be at least as good as their peers with similar prior attainment and other characteristics."
And there is a striking finding about school context: "disadvantaged pupils attain better at ages 5 and 11 when they are in disadvantaged settings and this helps to slightly narrow the gap". Schools with deep expertise around vulnerable learners - often those in more disadvantaged areas - appear to create conditions in which those children do better. Strong support systems and targeted reading provision can and do make a measurable difference.
Not all disadvantage is the same - and place matters
The EPI and EEF report measures disadvantage primarily through free school meal eligibility - a useful but blunt instrument. Complementary research by Timo Hannay of SchoolDash, funded by the Gatsby Foundation and also covered by Schools Week, suggests we need a more textured picture.
Using a clustering algorithm applied to Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) data and higher education participation rates (POLAR4), SchoolDash identified six distinct types of school community. The key insight is that educational outcomes track the type of place a school is in - urban versus suburban or rural - as much as income deprivation alone.
The most striking finding involves two clusters with similarly high deprivation but very different outcomes. "Poor urban" schools - particularly in the north and Midlands, but also east London - have adverse socioeconomic indicators and weak outcomes, but not as weak as income deprivation alone would predict (Progress 8 of -0.15). "Poor suburban" schools - again mainly in the north and Midlands - have similarly high deprivation but significantly worse outcomes (Progress 8 of -0.26) and have, in Hannay's words, "fallen furthest behind." By contrast, "affluent urban" schools - particularly in London - achieve strong outcomes (Progress 8 of +0.38) despite moderately high pupil premium rates of 27%.
Hannay suggests that "the educational impact of the cultural and social capital often associated with more densely populated places" may be part of the explanation - factors that don't show up in income data but that shape children's language environments and reading habits from the earliest years. It is worth noting that the EPI report also found that disadvantaged pupils at ages 5 and 11 tend to do better in more disadvantaged school settings - a finding that may partly reflect this same urban concentration effect.
For those working in reading and literacy, this is a practical challenge. A pupil premium pupil in a "poor suburban" school in the north of England is in a materially different situation from one in an "affluent urban" school in London - even if the income threshold that labels them both "disadvantaged" is identical. Targeted reading support needs to be sensitive to the specific character of the community a school serves.
What this means for schools
The EPI and EEF report points clearly to where attention - and resource - should be focused:
- Start early - gaps in literacy and language are visible by the end of reception year; the earlier they are identified, the earlier they can be addressed
- Sustain support through primary - attaining well in primary school provides a protective effect against gap-widening in secondary; reading support shouldn't stop once phonics is secure
- Attend to attendance - keeping disadvantaged pupils in school and engaged is inseparable from supporting their reading progress; absence compounds literacy gaps over time
- Identify and support SEND early - when needs are identified and supported in a timely way, attainment outcomes can be as good as peers; early reading assessment is a key part of this
- Don't wait for secondary - by the time pupils reach GCSE, much of the gap has already been shaped by what happened in primary; the window for the greatest impact is in the early years
The disadvantage gap is real, it is large, and it starts early - but it is not fixed. Targeted, evidence-based support in reading and language, beginning in the earliest years of school, is one of the most powerful levers available to schools working to close it.
You can read the full report, Growing Apart: The Evolution of the Disadvantage Gap, on the Education Policy Institute website or the Education Endowment Foundation website.
