The cumulative impact of socioeconomic disadvantage on educational attainment during austerity: a comparative cross-cohort approach

ABSTRACT

Despite much empirical evidence highlighting the harmful effect of socioeconomic disadvantage on educational outcomes, there is a relative lack of understanding of how different risk factors impact upon attainment. Importantly, it has yet to be established what effect, if any, austerity cuts have had on the most disadvantaged students. Using rich data from two British cohort studies (Next Steps and MCS), this cross-cohort study explores how educational inequalities impact on attainment in distinct cohorts of students at identical age-points, whilst also examining the role of wider political and socioeconomic circumstances. The analysis reconfirms the detrimental effect of exposure to socioeconomic risk factors on attainment, highlighting the relative importance of some (e.g. social housing) over others, and emphasising the disproportionate association of exposure to multiple risks with poorer outcomes. For both cohorts, the attainment gap is already clear at age 11, and widens at every level of risk across secondary education. Despite the implementation of austerity, no evidence is found for worsening inequalities at an individual level. However, the persistent link between disadvantage and attainment means that, on a cohort level, increasing levels of disadvantage during austerity will inevitably lead to greater proportions of young people facing an attainment ‘penalty’.

KEYWORDS:

• Socioeconomic disadvantage
• educational attainment
• austerity
• cohort studies
• attainment gap

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Data citation

University College London, UCL Institute of Education, Centre for Longitudinal Studies. (2021). Next Steps: Sweeps 1–8, 2004–2016. [data collection]. 15th Edition. UK Data Service. SN: 5545, http://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-5545-7

University College London, UCL Institute of Education, Centre for Longitudinal Studies. (2020). Next Steps: Linked Education Administrative Datasets (National Pupil Database), England, 2005–2009: Secure Access. [data collection]. 6th Edition. UK Data Service. SN: 7104, http://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-7104-6

University of London, Institute of Education, Centre for Longitudinal Studies. (2020). Millennium Cohort Study: Sixth Survey, 2015. [data collection]. 7th Edition. UK Data Service. SN: 8156, http://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-8156-8

University College London, UCL Institute of Education, Centre for Longitudinal Studies, Department for Education. (2019). Millennium Cohort Study: Linked Education Administrative Datasets (National Pupil Database), England: Secure Access. [data collection]. UK Data Service. SN: 8481, http://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-8481-1

Notes

1. Further information can be found online at: https://doc.ukdataservice.ac.uk/doc/5545/mrdoc/pdf/lsype_user_guide_wave_1_to_wave_7.pdf.

2. The LSYPE2 cohort was not selected due to issues with missing prior attainment data at KS2. The MCS cohort is also slightly younger, allowing for potentially greater impact of policies following the change of government in 2010.

3. Where the relevant wave data is missing, data on income from the following wave is used.

4. For both cohorts, a 1 SD decrease in GCSE score is approximately equivalent to a two grade-point decrease in each of a student’s eight best GCSEs – e.g. going from 8 ‘C’ grades to 8 ‘E’ grades in the pre-2017 letter-grading system.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Neil Kaye

Neil Kaye is a Research Fellow at IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society. He is an experienced researcher in the fields of social science, educational research and social policy evaluation and has worked on a wide range of local, national, European and international projects. His research interests include social inequalities, education policy, youth transitions, and the impact of multiple discrimination, with a focus on quantitative methodologies and social statistics.