ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the achievement gap which exists between children from different socio-economic backgrounds. One of the general and easily available measures of economic deprivation in the UK is a child's eligibility for free school meals (FSM). The chapter focuses on the multiple levels, types and characteristics of disadvantage which are causal factors in the achievement gap. There are, of course, as with education, learning and schooling, altruistic reasons to be concerned about poverty, particularly child poverty – because it is surely not possible to argue that a child is in any way responsible for his/her own economic status. The chapter examines the parameters of the gap in terms of school readiness, ethnicity and school effects. Parental aspirations have been shown to be one of the factors in the explanation of rising educational attainment of students from various ethnic minorities. The value of parental expectations is fairly well established in the literature.
