Research School Network: What you need to know about the Education Policy Institute’s 2025 Report A busy school leader’s guide to the EPI report.
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What you need to know about the Education Policy Institute’s 2025 Report
A busy school leader’s guide to the EPI report.
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by East London Research School
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Helen Ralston
Helen is an Assistant Director at the East London Research School with extensive secondary and all-through leadership experience. A former English teacher and headteacher in both specialist and mainstream settings, she now works as a trust leader for teaching and learning in Surrey.
The Education Policy Institute’s (EPI) Annual Report 2025 paints a stark picture of the disadvantage gap. Half a decade on from the pandemic, many educational inequalities persist, and in some cases have deepened.
Disrupting the stubborn relationship between economic disadvantage and educational attainment is a core – indeed moral – purpose of education leadership; the importance of which has been underscored in Ofsted’s new inspection framework.
Therefore, this report – exploring the effect of economic disadvantage (using eligibility for free school meals as proxy) on educational outcomes – makes important reading.
For over-stretched school leaders, the pertinent questions are:
what are the key shifts in the data?
what does this mean for the actions we take in our schools?
Read on for a brief summary of the report along with reflective questions for school leadership teams.
What is the disadvantage gap at each Key Stage?
The overall trajectory remains depressingly clear: the disadvantage gap starts young and increases with every key stage.
The picture at KS5 is no more encouraging. In addition to the above attainment gap, there is a participation gap: the number of students at the start of Year 12 working towards ‘any substantial qualifications or an apprenticeship.’ In 2024, this widened to 12.5 percentage points.
Questions for education leaders:
Bearing in mind that the attainment gap is clear by age 5, do you allocate enough teacher expertise and other resources into your EYFS?
How could you do more at this critical stage of education and development?
What difference does it make where you live?
It is important to note that these statistics do not account for significant geographical variations in the disadvantage gap. For example, at the end of KS2 there is “just” a 5.7 month gap in London whereas the gap in the South West is 12.5 months. Similarly, by Key Stage 4, London again has the narrowest gap of 10.2 months compared with 22.1 months in the South East.
The EPI report is published as an interactive format that enables you to zoom in on your area – this is certainly worth doing.
Question for education leaders:
How can you collaborate with schools in other regions to focus on reducing the gap? MATs that span across regions could be well placed to do this.
How are students with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) performing?
The attainment gap between SEND students and their peers is greater – at all key stages – than the disadvantage gap. However, unlike other cohorts it has improved at KS2 and KS4.
Students with SEND have significantly worse outcomes – at all key stages – than their peers who do not have SEND. This difference is greater than the gap between disadvantaged and other students. In other words, SEND status has a bigger impact on attainment than economic disadvantage does.
However, this report shows that this attainment gap has improved at KS2 and KS4.
Nevertheless, the EPI report warns that there has been a substantial change to those identified as having SEND. Fewer children are now identified as having moderate or specific learning difficulties, and more with autism or speech, language and communication needs. Because of this shift in who is counted as having SEND, we need to be careful not to assume that the improvements in outcomes are simply due to children progressing more – it could partly reflect the makeup of the group itself.
Furthermore, the EYFS shows a worrying exception to this trend. The gap has increased from 11.9 months in 2013 to 12.6 months in 2024. Given that the gaps only widen as children move through school, we must note that this is an acutely vulnerable group.
Question for education leaders:
How can you target this especially vulnerable cohort for early intervention at the start of their school career?
What do the statistics look like for children from different ethnic groups?
Across the ethnic groups studied, there is a consistent gap between non-disadvantaged and disadvantaged peers.
Looking at KS4, it is lowest within the Chinese ethnic group where it stands at 6 months. It is greatest for White Irish students at 32 months.
It is interesting to note that the ‘within ethnic group’ performance disparity between advantaged and disadvantaged peers is particularly large for White-Irish students at 32 months, then White-Asian students at 24 months and White-British students at 23 months.
Furthermore, all ethnic groups have improved their KS4 attainment relative to White British students between 2019 and 2024 – e.g. they have reduced the internal KS4 gap. By GCSEs, most ethnic groups outperform White British disadvantaged students.
Questions for education leaders:
Why does ‘the same’ economic disadvantage seem to impact students to a greater or lesser extent based on their ethnic group?
What can we learn from the communities where the gap is the smallest – e.g Chinese, Bangladeshi or Black African ethnic groups?
What do the statistics tell us about gender?
A surprising revelation shows up in the gender data. As you might expect, the attainment of boys is lower than girls at all stages: 3.3 months at EYFS, 1 month at KS2 and 4.5 months at KS4.
However, this attainment gap of 4.5 months is the lowest since 2011. Unfortunately, rather than this being a reason to celebrate, the decrease is because girls’ attainment is falling rather than boys’ attainment improving. In fact, if the current trajectory continues girls’ attainment will be below that of boys by 2029.
The EPI published a related, and highly relevant blog: ‘No room for battle of sexes’ that begins to explore some of the social and wellbeing factors that could be a factor in this educational decline.
Question for education leaders:
There seems to be a correlation between the mental health, wellbeing and happiness of girls and their educational attainment. How may focusing on these areas influence your school improvement priorities?
In all, the EPI report makes it clear that inequalities are not going to go away. Continuing to challenge ourselves, our schools and the wider educational system to better meet the needs of those who need us most continues to be vitally important work for all education leaders.
References
Education Policy Institute (2025) Annual Report 2025. Available at: /epi.org.uk/annual-report-2025 (Accessed: 25 November 2025).
