Think of a pupil. A girl, say, who’s not making the progress you know she’s capable of. She has moved twice in the past eighteen months. Her attendance at her previous school was inconsistent, and her prior attainment data is thin. Before you’ve even spoken to her or her family, before you’ve looked closely at what she actually knows and can do, assumptions are forming. Low engagement risk, limited parental support and unlikely to access enrichment.
Marc Rowland, one of the UK’s most respected Pupil Premium specialists, has spent years making the case against exactly this pattern. The most effective approach to narrowing the disadvantage gap, he argues, is learning-led: grounded in what students know and can do, informed by accurate ongoing assessment of the individual.
For learners from a disadvantaged backgrounds, the gap between that approach and an assumption-led one has real consequences.
The problem with assumptions
Assumptions about students from disadvantaged backgrounds are rarely callous. They’re usually the product of incomplete information combined with real care for the student. But they produce real consequences regardless of the care behind them.
When assumptions drive provision, interventions become poorly targeted. Research points consistently to this: when provision is driven by assumption, it tends to land in the low to moderate impact range. Schools invest significant time and resource working against the wrong diagnosis.
What assumptions do to expectations matters just as much. When a school assumes low engagement, poor attendance, or limited readiness to access enrichment, it begins to misattribute gaps in knowledge to gaps in ability. The student in the example above, the one with patchy attendance and thin data, might have strong analytical thinking, a sophisticated understanding of cause and effect, and a real appetite for challenge. The assumptions forming around her would keep all of that hidden.
What careful, ongoing assessment does
Precise, ongoing assessment changes the starting point. It asks what this student knows and where specifically the gaps are, giving school leaders something specific to act on.
This requires the discipline to resist quick categorisation and the processes that draw out detailed information about individual learners. It also demands something from school leaders: a readiness to examine the assumptions they bring to every conversation about their most disadvantaged pupils.
Assessment takes time and discipline, and it asks more of school leaders. But schools that commit to it are working from an accurate picture of what each learner knows and where they need to go next.
Assessment, relationships, and belonging
When assessment drives the conversation, something changes in the relationship between school and family too.
Research from the Belonging in Education Research Network at Oxford’s Rees Centre
confirms that 1 in 4 students in the UK don’t feel they belong in school. Among those from more disadvantaged communities, that number is increasing. For many of those pupils, what they experience is an institution that has formed views about them before it has understood them.
This points to Bent Flyvbjerg’s maxim: think slow, act fast. The school leaders doing the most effective work with students from disadvantaged backgrounds and their families tend to prioritise understanding before they commit to action. They ask questions of students, families, and community members, resisting the urge to offer solutions before they’ve listened.
Evidence from assessment makes those conversations more grounded. It gives school leaders something specific to bring to a family: accurate information about what this student knows and what the school is planning to do about it. For many disadvantaged students, that kind of specific, evidence-led conversation is what shifts the relationship between school and family.
A starting point
If you’re working with disadvantaged learners who aren’t making the progress you know they’re capable of, look closely at what’s driving the provision around them. Has it been built on accurate assessment, or on assumption?
The student who’s moved twice in eighteen months, whose data is thin and whose attendance has been inconsistent, has missed learning. She may also have strengths, attributes, and capabilities that have had no opportunity to show up in her data. Ongoing assessment is what surfaces those things and gives the school something specific to build on.
PiXL Waves, powered by Pupil Progress, supports schools with laser-sharp diagnostic insights on student progress, giving school leaders the evidence they need to respond to each learner with accuracy.
PiXL supports school leaders in developing the tools, insight, and professional confidence to narrow the disadvantage gap. Find out more about PiXL Wave and Pupil Progress at pixl.org.uk.
