Poverty

To what extent can psychologists ameliorate the impact of poverty on children?

Do psychologists have to accept that there is a link between poverty and low
achievement in school?

How does poverty impact on school achievement? How does it impact on

childhood learning and development more generally?

To what extent are children and families living in poverty at risk of low
achievement? How can an educational psychologist help and intervene in this
area?

Aims
 Understand the links between poverty and low achievement in school
o What is the scale of the problem of low achievement in schools?
o Why is this of interest to psychologists?
o Evidence for the links between poverty and low achievement
 Consider what psychologists can contribute to breaking those links
o Policies and interventions

What is the scale of the problem of low achievement in schools?

Equity vs equality
 In order to have equal opportunity you have to treat people differently
Why should we care?
 Poverty and disadvantage are perennial and global problems
The psychological impact of austerity and poverty – more than just financial
difficulties
 Being affected by austerity policies generates fear and distrust, instability
and insecurity, humiliation and shame, isolation and loneliness
 People just give up – feel trapped and powerless
 Importance of belonging and community – factor in mental wellbeing
A psychologically healthy society would promote
 Security, connection, meaning, and trust
 Austerity and poverty undermines that and reduces these^

Why is this of interests to psychologists?

Poverty affects:
 Locus of control
 Motivation
 Pro-social attitudes
 Loneliness and meaning
Social inclusion
 Psychologists need to ensure that children being included – trying to
promote idea of social inclusion/cohesion/responsibility
  Educational psychologists take an interactionist, systemic view of
learning, development and behaviour: the child in multiple contexts
 Ofsted – 20% of children show SEN – but used as an excuse for low
achievement
o “What can we do” attitude
 School effects on learning and achievement

Evidence for the links between poverty and low achievement (Goodman &
Gregg, 2010)
Longitudinal study of young people in England (2004)

Layers of disadvantage
 Living in poverty, disadvantage, being a looked-after child, having SEN,
attending an underperforming school.
 Can have one, more, or all of these
Who is responsible?
 Politicians? Schools? Parents? Children? Or?
 How important is school? Between 10-20% of differences in achievement
can be attributed to the school
o Not particularly huge
 Hattie (2009) – 6 key factors
o The student, the home, the school, the curriculum, the teacher, and
teaching and learning approaches
o Biggest determinant is what the child brings
o The second biggest is quality of teaching
 How important is the home?
o Parenting style – single largest factor explaining lower cognitive
performance of low-income children relative to middle-income
children. (Sutton Trust, 2009, p1) Important – maternal sensitivity
and responsiveness
o Mothers in poverty have more external loci of control, less likely to
hope child will go to university, more likely to hope child will finish
GCSEs and leave school
o At least half the gaps in school achievement are already present at
school entry, with parenting consistently emerging as the single
most important factors in gaps in school readiness
o Waldfogel & Washbrook (Sutton Trust, 2009): Millenium Cohort
study in the UK and Early Childhood Longitudinal Study
 Parenting differences between low and higher income
families associated with sizable differences in cognitive
development
 Parenting style emerges as single largest domain explaining
lower cognitive performance of low-income children
relative to middle-income children
 Maternal sensitivity particularly important
 Home learning environment – HLE – second most important set of factors
o Includes parents’ teaching behaviours
 o Provision of learning materials and activities, including books and
CDs, computer access, TV watching, library visits and classes
o Together, these aspects of HLE account for 16-21% of the gap in
school readiness
Closing the early low achievement gap
 Three policy responses, especially for low-income children:
 Early childhood education policies to improve children’s school
readiness
 Policies to improve parenting – empowering parents
 Policies to ensure gaps do not widen during primary school years, by
promoting school achievement: the pupil premium, free school meals,
school inspection
 Interventions to promote HLE – giving books and reading help, computers
Policies to improve early childhood intervention
 Ruhm & Waldfogel (2011): expansions of early childhood education yield
benefits at school entry, in adolescence, and adulthood, with particularly
favourable results for disadvantaged children
 But requires an institutional structure where high quality non-parental
care is available and affordable
 In England, free early education for some two- and all three-year olds up
to a maximum of 15 hours per week, 38 weeks of the year
Policies to improve parenting (Goodman & Greg, 2010)
 Improving the home learning environment in poorer families (e.g. books
and reading pre-school, computers in teenage years)
 Helping parents from poorer families to believe that their own actions
and efforts can lead to higher educational outcomes
 Raising families’ aspirations and desire for advanced education – from
primary schooling onwards
What are educational psychologists doing to break the link?
 Role in influencing school culture and staff development
 Universal and targeted interventions with children
 Parenting interventions
Intervening with children (Goodman & Greg, 2010)
 Create prosocial attitudes towards learning
 Reducing behavioural problems through building coping and
management skills (e.g. role of self regulation)
 Helping children from poorer families believe that their own actions and
efforts can lead to higher educational outcomes
 Raising children’s aspiration for advanced education
 Improving literacy and numeracy
Looked after children (Cassen & Kingdon, 2007)
 An especially vulnerable group of low achievers
 Nearly 2000 LAC, less than 1% total (2006)
 Nearly 24% have no exam passes at school leaving, 5x the rate in the
population as a whole
 About 48% don’t have 5 passes of any grade including English and maths,
which is 4 times the average
 9x more likely than the average child to have SEN
 10x more likely to be excluded from school