Report Card 2018 published these concerns.

There are large gaps between the most advantaged and least advantaged students and some gaps are getting wider. Gaps that are small at primary school grow through to GCSE and university admission, leaving poorer students playing catch up for the rest of their lives.

• less than half as likely to achieve passes in GCSE English and maths than their peers
• a whole year behind their peers
• just over eight months behind their peers in reading, writing, and maths by age 11
• students on free school meals four times as likely to be excluded than their peers
• After GCSEs, disadvantaged children are six times more likely to be recorded as not going into a job or any other training/ education

Here’s what they suggest:

• The best ‘World-class teachers and leaders’ should be employed  in the most disadvantaged areas
• A system that  is interested in developing the whole child, promoting emotional and social competencies alongside academic attainment
• Joined up support for all post-16 destinations, giving every student a choice about their future

Here are some copied and pasted extracts from the report:

“In the short time that NewsWise has been in existence, a small team of Programme and Project Managers have created an exciting suite of resources to support children’s news literacy. These include a practical workshop and resources for children of upper primary
age, a teacher training session and 16 lesson plans and resources (the ‘unit of work’). The NewsWise programme launched digitally in June 2018, with an editorial in The Guardian, a Twitter account @GetNewsWise and website: https://www.theguardian.com/newswise.”

“547 pupils in schools across England and Wales have now benefitted from taking part in a NewsWise workshop, learning about news literacy while preparing their own news reports.
As this report shows, along with having fun (the most common word children used to describe their experience of NewsWise), children developed a deeper understanding of why and how news stories are created, and became much more confident about reading,
talking about and sharing news. 76 teachers received face-to-face training from an expert member of the NewsWise team, helping schools to support news literacy across the curriculum and ensuring a more sustainable impact. 10 out of 10 said they would recommend NewsWise training to other schools, with 9 in 10 rating it ‘excellent’.”

We never endorse or otherwise here, but it does look like something worth having a look at.

Page 6 of the report outlines the model and makes note of

• Time
• Training
• Resources
• Experience

There is a clear recognition of teacher workload and how this is addressed.

There are some interesting discoveries

• 2% were able to identify fake and real news stories presented as part of a quiz correctly.
• a gap in performance of almost 10 percentage points between girls and boys (with girls performing better)
• those not eligible for free school meals performed better than their peers who were eligible.

This could well be something for teachers who want to do something different.