Research School Network: Identifying deprivation in small schools – the struggle to be counted! Blog 1 of her small rural school series Written by Mari Palmer, the Director of North Yorkshire Coast Research School and also a headteacher in a small rural school

Identifying deprivation in small schools – the struggle to be counted!

Deprivation = the damaging lack of material benefits considered to be basic necessities in a society

Children who are classed as disadvantaged or experiencing deprivation could have less chance of achieving their educational aims and therefore their full potential.

But identifying deprivation in small schools, particularly in rural areas can be difficult.

The conventional ways of identifying deprivation may be grouped into two categories: those that look at the area the school is in, and those that look at the children in the school.

In the first category you could include measures such as:

Multiple Deprivation Index
Educational outcomes across a borough
Number of children in an Ofsted category school in a LA

This can be particularly difficult for small schools in rural areas. People in small communities such as villages will have residents with vastly different incomes living side by side, therefore, any measure that uses an average, even over a very small area, become non-sensical. In our village, social housing and a multi-million-pound country house are in the exact same postcode and within a few hundred yards of each other. To take an average of the incomes in our area does not give you any information that may be helpful. A good source for more information about this is the ​‘Official Statistics – Rural Deprivation Statistics’ (2019) which details the issues concerning statistics and rural areas.

​‘This could be particularly the case in rural areas where the underlying area used to determine the index will be much more geographically spread out than in urban areas. This means that that small areas of deprivation are less likely to be identifiable amid a relatively affluent area. In urban areas deprivation is more likely to be concentrated in an area and hence more easily reflected in the index.’ (Index of Multiple Deprivation 2019)

In the second category you could include measures such as:
Number of children eligible for free-school meals at a particular school
Number of children on the SEND register in the school

It is very unlikely that the number of children eligible for free-school meals will reach a critical mass that would mean that a school is going to be identified as having a large number of children from deprived backgrounds.

In addition to this, the wages are on average lower in rural communities and some costs of living are higher (See Kovia Consulting Rural Cost of Living report for the Rural Services Network, 2022) which may imply that there are families that may fall into ​‘in-work poverty’, as defined by the CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel Development) and The Joseph Rowntree Foundation – see CIPD link in bibliography.

Consider these pupils in your small schools – I am sure that all staff members of small schools will be aware that there are pupils that are at risk, due to deprivation, of not attaining the educational outcomes they may be capable of? And do fewer pupils from your rural school attend universities? (see Challenges facing rural 16 – 18 year report in bibliography). As rural pupils frequently attend schools that are not categorised as being from ​‘deprived areas’ they miss out on help and consideration of how best to support these pupils.

We would urge you to consider reading the new EEF Pupil Premium resources, available for free to all schools and short enough that even a leader of a small school might have time to read them! The best place to start might be: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/guidance-for-teachers/using-pupil-premium

Bibliography

Official Statistics – Rural Deprivation Statistics’ (2019) https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5dfce0d2ed915d1f2c718355/Deprivation_2019.pdf
https://rsnonline.org.uk/images/publications/rural-cost-of-living.pdf
https://www.cipd.org/uk/knowledge/guides/in-work-poverty/
https://ruralengland.org/wp-co…