Report Overview
This report draws on the 2015 OECD PISA scores to analyse the gaps in attainment between the top performers in the poorest and best off groups of UK children. Focusing on highly able 16 year olds across the four nations of the UK, it looks at overall performance and socio-economic gaps over time in reading, mathematics and science, in an international context of 38 OECD countries. The report reveals that while England’s highest achievers consistently score above the OECD average across the three subjects, bright but poor pupils lag behind their better-off classmates by around two years and eight months of schooling.
Written by John Jerrim, this report shows that such substantial gaps are in fact typical throughout the developed world, with England and Scotland about average in this respect. While Wales and Northern have substantially lower socio-economic gaps, this reflects the overall worse performance of their brightest students, in particular those from better-off backgrounds. The report also shows that, in England, the socio-economic attainment gap in science and reading performance is greater for girls than it is for boys, standing at around three years of schooling, eight months greater than the gap for boys. The report concludes with calls for the government to establish a ‘highly able’ fund to support the prospects of high attainers in comprehensive schools.