Sean Harris is Director of People, Learning and Community Engagement at Tees Valley Education, a multi-academy trust, and serves as a doctoral researcher with Teesside University. Sean’s research focuses on enhancing schools’ comprehension of poverty through collaborative efforts. He is a Fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching. He has recently written Tackling Poverty and Disadvantage in Schools with Katrina Morley.
Katrina Morley OBE is CEO of Tees Valley Education Trust, following a career as a teacher, senior leader and headteacher. She holds a variety of regional and national roles with organisations to support leaders and schools to better tackle educational inequality. Katrina is a Fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching, and was recently awarded an OBE for services to education and the Tees Valley in the King’s New Year Honours.
In what ways does poverty and disadvantage challenge schools?
We know that educational inequality has a profound impact on families and children in the UK and impacts children in different ways. Poverty doesn’t impact all children in the same ways; there are nuances of place and individual classrooms, and we want to help teachers and school leaders to navigate this situation.
If you haven’t lived in real poverty and don’t have that lived reality it is difficult to understand the children’s lives. They have that lived reality. It is interesting what we hear from policy thinkers how low income has an impact on aspirations. Now it can for some people, but [there are] families in the Tees Valley that we know are very aspirant but if the young people can’t see it it’s very hard for them to know it. Poverty has an impact on what they think is possible and so it’s not just about aspirations; low income cuts opportunities.
Why do teachers and school leaders need more support in this area?
In all fairness, teachers have had to go through so much change, and they’ve had so much to cope with, it’s been difficult because unless you are walking the community regularly, you can’t see what’s happening and the world has changed so quickly.
When do teachers have an opportunity to really review what they do? Lots of things are out there and we want to help schools with their strategic thinking. How often are teachers able to ask questions about the children and the families and support thought processes and accessibility for their children?
We know we know inequality is deepening. It is a changed world. However, schools are now the fourth emergency service and this requires a level of expertise and empathetic understanding. But we need understanding. We are aware of the rhetoric about teaching the child out of poverty, but teaching must can only be one part of the solution. We have to have schools working alongside charities and other similar groups to provide a holistic approach.
in some areas there are many problems like entrenched cultural values, and we have found that if you have entrenched disadvantages, there are complex variables, and you cannot simply teach your way out of it. That is a fact, not an excuse. It is incumbent on the real experience of the children, and you have to start with where the children are.
There are nuances to inequalities in communities. The book is not a panacea because there isn’t one. The book is written for all educators and aims to support them in understanding some of the nuances of their own contexts.
The research in the book is drawn from both national and international communities.
What are the crises facing young people and children today?
We want to have a positive impact on children and we’re thinking about the art of what is possible, but there are challenges for children; how do they gain access to the world if they have uniform poverty or period poverty or any kind of poverty. How do they get access to the world fairly?
The key challenge is inequality in communities, and this was a problem long before Covid -19, but Covid did exacerpate the problem. Educational inequality cannot be addressed by education alone. Charity experience and expertise is needed, and we have a saying at work; no egos, no silos. People have to work together.
How and why should the curriculum be changed in the North?
In the book we didn’t touch on all of the issues around the curriculum. In the book it was useful to concentrate on children with specific life cases. However, there is a chapter about reading for pleasure and there is a chapter about employability, knowing where to go to learn. It is important that learning happens with pride and dignity, and we are very aware that there needs to be a more place-based curriculum. We can consider the positive impacts of socially economically disadvantaged children.
But we’re looking at a disadvantage with doing a piece of work with Shine in Sunderland. If you have hardship in life, what additional barriers are there for the children? If they have hardship, for example we might expect everyone in the North East to know that about Hadrian’s Wall but children on Teesside are not necessarily aware of it and we found that children on Teesside when asked about a beach have a mental model which is somewhere with palm trees. These are children who live only two miles away from Redcar beach and we need to design a curriculum to help link work opportunities and accessibility to education should be at the core of it.
We are concerned that at Key Stage 3, the breadth of the curriculum has been cut due to overexposure to English and Maths. However, it is great to see that we are beginning to see more work on how to develop a poverty related curriculum.
We believe in the value of assessment not assumption when working with children from low-income backgrounds.
What are the effects of current government policies?
Children’s lived reality is something that we need to be mindful of whatever policy is. Whatever policy there is there will be an impact and our role is to advocate on the behalf of low-income children and families and in the belief that education links to lived reality. We need to ensure that we offer as many opportunities for them and their families as possible. Civic architecture is importantand we will need to be civic architects and be collaborative in raising children across a community. Things were never easy but communities can work together and school leaders need to navigate this.
In terms of policy keeping the two-child benefit cap, is having an impact on many families in the North East. We have worked with Child Poverty Action Group and the North East Child Family Commission helping schools to navigate the effects of the two-child benefit cap. We would like to see auto enrolment with free school meals and the scrapping of the two-child benefit cap; these two policies would make a difference although we don’t talk about it in the book.
What are the solutions to some of these problems?
We knew a significant amount of work has been done in secondary schools, but it is important as earliest as possible to link children with employment but this needs to be started as early as possible. Young people need to have meaningful engagement with employment from an early age. For example, we have six children on Teesside working with A V Dawson in Middlesbrough. They presented ideas to the managing directors about how the company could be made more sustainable and this was written up as a project and sent to UNESCO. We need to be working together to create a kind of village system where everybody can help the young people generally. Again, this is not about raising aspirations but about providing equal opportunities.
We are all aware that in the education sector a lot of weight is put on free school meals as a measure of disadvantage or as a disadvantage marker, but when we talk about inequality what does that really look like? Free school meals data alone does not give the full picture. Schools need help in navigating this that towards solution read to really and to have a deep understanding of disadvantages they have to go we have to go beyond just data.
In terms of the book, we were conscious of the fact that solutions are not always applicable, and they have to be owned by communities. There are a plethora of opportunities to ask questions and to think about what it might mean for a community. We have case studies of what’s happened in other places, but solutions have to be sought by those who own them.
We need to gang up on problems and not on each other. We would rather sit in a room and say here was an issue what are collaborative solutions at scale here and what connections can we have with those for whom it is a lived reality? We want individuals and students and families to be curious.
