Last Updated on October 31, 2026 by Karl Thompson
TThe official statistics show a large and persistent gap in educational achievement between poorer pupils and everyone else, at every stage of education. The headline figures are:
- At GCSE in 2025/26, 27.5% of disadvantaged pupils got grade 5 or above in both English and maths, against 54.3% of other pupils.
- The gap is wider than it was before the pandemic, though it narrowed slightly in 2026.
- The gap carries on after 16: disadvantaged students end their 16–19 education more than three grades behind across their best three qualifications.
- Pupils who were on free school meals are much less likely to go to university, and far less likely to go to the most selective universities.
- At the top, private school students get about twice the share of top A-level grades that students in state academies get.
These statistics are the starting point for the topic of social class differences in educational achievement within the sociology of education, examined on AQA Paper 1 (7192/1). The explanations are covered in my posts on material deprivation, cultural deprivation, cultural capital and in-school factors.
How the government measures social class in education
The UK government does not routinely collect statistics on the relationship between social class and educational achievement! Schools don’t record parents’ occupations, which is how sociologists normally define class. Instead, the Department for Education (DfE) uses proxy indicators based on household income. There are two main ones:
- Free school meals (FSM). A pupil is eligible if their family receives certain means-tested benefits, which in practice means a low income.
- Disadvantaged pupils. This is the DfE’s headline measure. A pupil counts as disadvantaged if they have been eligible for free school meals at any point in the last six years, or have been looked after by a local authority, or adopted from care.
A third source sociologists use is the comparison between independent (private) schools and state schools, because only better-off families can afford the fees.
Problems with relying on income as a proxy for social class
All of these measures are about income (or the ability to pay fees), rather than the broader concept of social class.
Household income is related to social class, but income alone does not tell us exactly which social class someone is from. Some parents might work in traditionally ‘working-class’ jobs which could be very well paid, such as the building trades, while other parents might be earning a limited amount of money working part-time in traditionally middle-class jobs, as private music teachers for example.
Also, income does not tell us about the cultural aspects of class: how well educated parents are, or how much social and cultural capital they have.
Thus you must remember that household income indicators are only proxies for social class. They may not show us precisely what a child’s social class background is.come indicators are only proxies for social class, they may not show us precisely what a child’s social class background is.
Education Race – TEST YOURSELF…
GCSE results: disadvantaged pupils and other pupils
| Measure (2025/26) | Disadvantaged pupils | All other pupils | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 5 or above in both English and maths | 27.5% | 54.3% | 26.8 percentage points |
| Average Attainment 8 score | Disadvantaged pupils scored 15.1 points lower | 15.1 points | |
England, state-funded schools. Source: DfE, Key stage 4 performance, academic year 2025/26 (provisional, published 15 October 2026). Attainment 8 is a pupil’s average grade across eight GCSE-level subjects, with English and maths counting double; the maximum is 90.
So disadvantaged pupils are about half as likely as other pupils to get a strong pass in both English and maths. These are the two subjects most sixth forms, colleges and employers ask for.
Is the gap closing?
| Gap between disadvantaged and other pupils | 2018/19 | 2024/25 | 2025/26 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 5+ in English and maths (percentage points) | 25.2 | 27.3 | 26.8 |
| Average Attainment 8 (points) | 13.6 | 15.5 | 15.1 |
England. Source: DfE, Key stage 4 performance, academic year 2025/26 (provisional, 15 October 2026). 2018/19 is the last year before the pandemic.
The gap narrowed a little in 2026, but it is still wider than it was before the pandemic.
The disadvantage gap index
The DfE also publishes a single summary figure, the disadvantage gap index. It compares how disadvantaged pupils rank against all other pupils in GCSE English and maths. A score of zero would mean no gap at all, and the higher the number, the bigger the gap.
| Year | Disadvantage gap index |
|---|---|
| 2011 | 4.07 |
| 2014 | 3.74 |
| 2017 | 3.66 (joint lowest) |
| 2019 | 3.70 |
| 2020 | 3.66 |
| 2023 | 3.94 |
| 2024 | 3.93 |
| 2025 | 3.92 |
| 2026 | 3.82 |
England, key stage 4. Source: DfE, Key stage 4 performance, academic year 2025/26 (provisional, 15 October 2026). 2026 is provisional.
The gap narrowed in the early 2010s, stalled before the pandemic, widened sharply afterwards and has only started to come down again since 2024. The 2026 figure is still wider than before the pandemic (3.70 in 2019).
One reason to be careful with 2020 and 2021: GCSEs weren’t sat in those years and grades were awarded by teachers, so they aren’t a fair comparison with exam years.
How many pupils are disadvantaged?
In January 2026, 26.5% of pupils in England’s state schools were eligible for free school meals (DfE, Schools, pupils and their characteristics 2025/26). By the end of key stage 4, 29.8% of pupils counted as disadvantaged in 2025/26, up from 28.2% the year before. The DfE says the rise is likely to be the result of transitional protections during the roll-out of Universal Credit, which let pupils keep their free school meals even if their family’s income rose.
A change to watch: free school meals from September 2026
Until August 2026, a family claiming Universal Credit in England could only get free school meals if its net earnings were £7,400 a year or less. From September 2026, every child in a household receiving Universal Credit is entitled to free school meals, whatever the household earns, and the old transitional protections end.
This matters for the statistics. Councils’ guidance describes two groups from September 2026: “targeted” free school meals for families under the old £7,400 earnings limit, which still bring Pupil Premium funding to the school, and “expanded” free school meals for everyone else on Universal Credit, which are meals only. If the share of pupils “eligible for free school meals” jumps in future releases, that will be partly because the rules changed, not because more families became poor. Check which definition a figure uses before comparing it with earlier years.
The gap starts before secondary school
The gap doesn’t open at GCSE. The DfE publishes the same disadvantage gap index for the end of primary school (key stage 2), where it was 3.22 in 2026, up from 3.16 in 2025 (DfE, Key stage 2 attainment 2025/26, provisional). Research using longitudinal studies finds gaps by family background in children’s development well before they start school. See explaining class differences in education using longitudinal studies.
After 16: A-levels and other qualifications
The gap carries on into sixth forms and colleges.
| Measure | Gap | Source |
|---|---|---|
| A-level students: average point score per A-level, disadvantaged v other students | 4.6 points (about half a grade per A-level), down from 4.9 the year before | DfE, A level and other 16 to 18 results, 2024/25 (revised, 23 April 2026) |
| All 16–19 students: best three qualifications, disadvantaged v other students | 3.4 grades in 2025, slightly wider than in 2019 | Education Policy Institute, Annual Report 2026 |
England. In the DfE’s point scores, one A-level grade is worth 10 points (an A is 50, a B is 40), so 4.6 points is just under half a grade per A-level.
Why do poorer students fall further behind after 16?
The fullest study of this is by Sam Tuckett and colleagues at the Education Policy Institute (EPI), published in 2021. They looked at almost every student finishing 16–19 education at a state school or college in England (everyone except apprentices), using data up to 2019. They measured disadvantage as having been eligible for free school meals at any point in the six years before the end of key stage 4, and measured attainment as each student’s best three qualifications.
They found that disadvantaged students were almost three A-level grades behind their better-off peers, and around four grades behind if they had been persistently disadvantaged (on free school meals for more than 80% of their time at school). Using statistical modelling, they worked out how much of the gap different factors explained:
- Prior attainment (GCSE results) explained 39% of the gap. Much of the 16–19 gap is simply the GCSE gap carried forward.
- The type of qualification explained 33%. Disadvantaged students were more likely to take vocational and technical qualifications, and to take fewer and lower-level qualifications.
Even after taking account of prior attainment and qualification type, disadvantaged students were still around half an A-level grade behind. The researchers suggested that disadvantage itself may still be holding students back during their 16–19 years, on top of the effects it had already had at school.
The study is a good example of quantitative research in sociology: a near-total sample, a clear operational definition of disadvantage, and more than one measure of attainment (one treating all level 3 qualifications as equal, another weighting them by their value in the labour market).
One policy the EPI has called for since 2019 is a student premium: extra funding for colleges for each disadvantaged student, like the Pupil Premium that schools receive up to age 16.
Going to university
| Went into higher education by age 19 | Pupils on free school meals at 15 | Other pupils | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Any higher education | 28.6% | 48.4% | 19.8 percentage points |
| High-tariff (most selective) universities | 4.6% | 13.9% | 9.3 percentage points |
Pupils in state-funded schools in England who were 15 in 2020/21, tracked to age 19 (2024/25). Source: DfE, Widening participation in higher education 2024/25 (published 9 July 2026).
Pupils who had been on free school meals were not much more than half as likely to go to university as other pupils, and only about a third as likely to go to one of the most selective universities. My post on material deprivation looks at research on why working-class students decide against university.
Private schools and state schools
About 6% of pupils in England go to independent (private) schools (6.3% in 2025/26, DfE). Because the fees are high, comparing their results with state schools tells us something about the link between family income and achievement at the top of the income scale.
| Type of school or college (2026) | Share of A-level grades at A or A* |
|---|---|
| Independent (private) schools | almost 49% |
| Grammar (selective state) schools | around 43% |
| Free schools | 27.0% |
| Sixth form colleges | 25.6% |
| Academies | 23.5% |
| Council-maintained schools | 23.0% |
| Secondary modern schools | 22.0% |
| All centres | 28.3% |
England, A-level results 2026. Source: Ofqual data, as reported by Schools Week (13 August 2026). The independent and grammar school figures were reported as approximate.
Students at private schools get about twice the share of top A-level grades that students at academies and council-maintained schools get. Grammar schools also do much better than non-selective state schools, but they select their pupils by ability, so this is not a like-for-like comparison either.
HOWEVER, these figures can’t tell us why private school students do better. Private schools have smaller classes and more resources, but their pupils also come from families with more income, more educated parents and more cultural capital. The statistics can’t separate the effect of the school from the effect of the family, or the effect of money from the effect of culture.
The gap between private and state schools matters beyond school, because privately educated people are heavily over-represented in elite jobs. See the Marxist perspective on education for the Sutton Trust’s figures.
Limitations of these statistics
Like all official statistics, these need to be used carefully. The main problems:
- They measure income, not class. As explained above, free school meals and private school fees are proxies for social class, not measures of it.
- They are a crude split. Disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged is a two-way comparison, roughly the poorest quarter or so of pupils against everyone else. It tells us nothing about differences among the other three quarters, such as between middle-income and high-income families. A more detailed comparison would probably show a wider gap between the poorest and richest pupils.
- They depend on benefit rules. Eligibility for free school meals is set by the benefits system, and the rules change (most recently in September 2026). A change in the rules can change the figures without any change in how poor families are.
- They only count families who claim. Schools record pupils whose families have claimed free school meals. Families who are eligible but don’t claim aren’t counted.
- Correlation is not cause. The figures show that the gap exists, not why it exists. Material deprivation, cultural deprivation, cultural capital and in-school theorists can all read the same figures as support for their own explanation.
- Years can’t always be compared. 2020 and 2021 grades were awarded by teachers, and the measures themselves have changed over time (from 5 A*–C grades to Attainment 8 and grade 5+).
For more on using statistics like these as a research method, see official statistics on educational achievement. For the same statistics broken down by ethnicity, including free school meals by ethnic group, see ethnicity and education statistics.
What the statistics tell us
If we accept household income as a reasonable indicator of social class, the statistics show large social class differences in achievement at every stage, from primary school to university, and the gap has not narrowed much in fifteen years. HOWEVER, because the government doesn’t collect data on parents’ occupations, we don’t have systematic annual figures on social class in the sociological sense, and in particular not on the large group of middle-income families in between.
Why doesn’t the government collect class data? The practical answer is that schools have never been required to record parents’ occupations, whereas eligibility for free school meals comes straight from the benefits system. You could also argue that measuring “disadvantage” rather than “class” shapes how the problem is understood: it frames the issue as a minority of poor pupils falling behind, rather than as inequality running across the whole class structure. That makes a useful evaluation point in an essay.
Using these statistics in the exam
You don’t need many numbers in an essay. One or two well-chosen figures are enough to show the examiner that you know the pattern you’re explaining. Questions where these statistics are directly useful include:
- AQA June 2018, Q04: “Applying material from Item B and your knowledge, evaluate sociological explanations of social class differences in educational achievement.” [30 marks] See my social class and educational achievement essay.
- AQA June 2020, Q01: “Outline two factors external to schools that may affect social class differences in educational achievement.” [4 marks]
- AQA June 2025, Q02: “Outline three reasons for social class differences in who goes to university.” [6 marks] The higher education table above is the pattern this question asks you to explain.
In an essay, use the statistics in the introduction to set out the pattern, and in the evaluation to point out what they can’t tell you, such as the difference between income and class.
Sociology of Education Revision Bundle
If you like this sort of thing, then you might like my sociology of education revision notes bundle, written by Karl Thompson, who taught A-level sociology for eighteen years and spent twelve as an AQA examiner, marking all three papers on the current specification. It contains the following:
- 34 pages of revision notes
- mind maps in pdf and png format – 9 in total, covering various topics within the sociology of education
- short answer exam practice questions and exemplar answers
- how to write sociology essays, including 7 specific templates and model answers on the sociology of education
Signposting and Related Posts
This post has been written primarily for students studying the education topic, as part of the AQA’s A-Level Sociology course.
The relationship between social class and educational achievement is one of the main topics within the sociology of education. After the statistics, students usually study the home-based explanations, material deprivation, cultural deprivation and cultural capital, and then the in-school factors.
Please click here to return to the homepage – ReviseSociology.com
Sources
Department for Education (2026) Key stage 4 performance, academic year 2025/26 (provisional, 15 October 2026).
Department for Education (2026) Key stage 2 attainment, academic year 2025/26 (provisional).
Department for Education (2026) Schools, pupils and their characteristics, academic year 2025/26.
Department for Education (2026) A level and other 16 to 18 results, academic year 2024/25 (revised, 23 April 2026).
Department for Education (2026) Widening participation in higher education, 2024/25 (9 July 2026).
Education Policy Institute (2026) Annual Report 2026.
Tuckett, S. et al. (2021) Measuring the disadvantage gap in 16–19 education. Education Policy Institute / Nuffield Foundation.
Schools Week (2026) A-level results 2026: 6 key trends in this year’s data.
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