Race, Class and Attainment
“It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.” – Martin Luther King Jr. The educational attainment gap is one that represents and is entirely intertwined with social factors such as class, wealth, living circumstances and race. It’s not that kids from a ‘certain background’ are idiots or that they lack potential, despite the stereotypes that burden them. Let’s talk about classism, racism and how various –isms come to play in the gap that separates equally bright or capable children from achieving the same academic and accordingly, career success. The EEF’s most recent report outlines how the attainment gap is prevalent from early years consistently to secondary school and beyond. It also emphasises that the gap is a historical trend in the data, which means that the process in closing it will also take time. However, the gap is currently narrowing at