ABSTRACT
Poverty deserves a chapter to itself simply because it’s a less visible cause of under-representation of able students than the groups discussed in the previous chapter, and yet a far more powerful one. The potential of many disadvantaged children is often hidden from view and this chapter discusses how teachers might come to see more clearly the exact nature of their hidden vulnerabilities. The importance of a child’s language environment is discussed alongside how schools and parents might promote a more ambitious culture of talking, thinking and reading. At the centre of all this is, in part, Annette Lareau’s concept of ‘concerted cultivation’ but also a discussion about how schools might work to counter the ‘toxic stress’ that poverty often engenders.
