Educational Disadvantage In Education

Educational disadvantage is defined by the Combat Poverty Agency as “a situation whereby individuals in society derive less benefit from the education system than their peers” and by the Education Act (DES, 1998b: 32) and the White Paper on Early Childhood Education, Ready to Learn (DES, 1999a:97) as “the impediments to education arising from social or economic disadvantage which prevent students from deriving appropriate benefit from education in schools.” In other words educational disadvantage is the poor social or economic situation which prevents a child from getting the same value from education in their school in comparison to their peers. In this essay, I am going to explain all the key terms and link them back to the statement in question.

The Early Start Programme is a focussed programme and was developed in 1994. It is a one year early intervention programme to meet the needs of children who were at risk of not meeting their potential in schools in disadvantaged areas. This programme improves overall development, encourages positive educational outcomes and balance the effects of social disadvantage. Children who participate in the Early Start Programme are interacting with a qualified primary school teacher as well as a childcare practitioner in comparison to children in an early years setting who are interacting with a Level 7 childcare practitioner. The average completion rate of children who attend the Early Start Programme is between 75%-80% (study carried out between 2008 and 2013). Because parental involvement is an important aspect of this programme, there is a specific grant awarded to allow parents to work on materials with their child that has been sent home from teachers. The desired outcomes of the Early Start Programme are that: the child will develop confidence in their ability to leanr, the child involved in the programme will develop learning styles motivated. Although, the Early Start Programme was set up to combat educational disadvantage in schools, according to this article, some early start units do not prioritise children from disadvantaged

It was designed because of a review carried out on the Disadvantaged Areas Scheme. This scheme provided extra funding to primary schools who were disadvantaged. The HSCL Scheme was further prolonged in 2005 under DEIS (Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools), which is the Action Plan for educational inclusion. The aim of the scheme is to promote partnership between teachers and parents. By promoting a partnership with the parents and teachers, this increases the child’s learning opportunities and encourages their retaining of information in the education system. HSCL coordinators support individual parents with their child’s learning and also aid parents in courses and classes to support their child’s