ABSTRACT
This chapter explores: the families living on low income in the UK today and the impact of low income and poverty on children's well-being, development and learning, and supporting children from low income families. Improving the outcome of educational attainment for children from low income families has been on the political agenda of all mainstream parties for decades. Successive educational policies and changes in curriculum provision have not changed the status quo: children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are still lagging behind their peers. The National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) was commissioned by the Department for Education to investigate what schools across the country were doing to improve the performance of disadvantaged pupils and, when successful in this task, what set of common features could be drawn from this. The study found that no single intervention led to success.
