Slough outperforms neighbours on how well low-income children are doing in school

Slough has the smallest disadvantage gap in the country for early years pupils, jointly with one other local authority, data has shown.

The Education Policy Institute (EPI) Annual Report looks at the state of education in England, with a focus on the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers.

It considers the attainment of vulnerable groups of students at the ages of five, 11, 16 and by 18. The report analyses attainment gaps based on economic disadvantage, as well as other markers affecting attainment.

Nationally the disadvantage gap at the end of reception was 4.7 months in 2024.

The smallest gaps in the country are currently Newham and Slough, where disadvantaged pupils were just 1.9 months behind their peers.

Deprivation can be measured in part by monitoring children in receipt of free school meals.

Meanwhile, attainment can be measured in several ways. For one, there are 17 Early Learning Goals, and mapping these shows overall developmental strength for the cohort.

The average number of early learning goals ‘at expected level per child’ was 13.3 out of 17 in Slough, meaning most children are achieving roughly 13 of the 17 expected goals.

Meanwhile, the percentage of children at expected level across all early learning goals was 59.5 per cent.

This is notably higher than the neighbouring Windsor and Maidenhead, where this figure was 42.2 per cent for children receiving free school meals.

Another measure is how many children are working at the expected level in the Communication & Language and Literacy areas of learning.

This covers, broadly, listening and understanding, speaking and early vocabulary, and phonics.

This metric matters because children who meet expected levels in these areas at age five tend to do better in primary school across most subjects.

The percentage of children at expected level in Communication & Language and Literacy areas of learning in Slough was 64 per cent.

Again, this is significantly higher than in RBWM, and to a greater degree – the Royal Borough saw 45.9 per cent of children achieve as expected here.

Another measure is the ‘Good Level of Development’ benchmark.

A child is considered to have this if they meet the expected level in all three prime areas of communication & language, physical development, and personal, social & emotional development – as well as in literacy and maths.

The percentage of children with a good level of development in Slough within the free-school-meals block was 62.7 per cent, compared to 43.7 per cent for RBWM.

Figures also demonstrate a general trend of year-on-year improvement for the past four years, since 2021-22.

What makes Slough perform better than other areas?

Funding Futures is a research initiative aimed at helping local authorities and policy-makers target resources in early childhood so disadvantaged children have better life chances.

This summer, Funding Futures worked with Slough council and six other local authorities to research why some local authorities had smaller gaps compared to others.

Through this work it was identified that Slough council has:

• strong and diverse Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) provision with skilled staff who actively support/engage parents
• long-term, consistent, widely embedded speech communication and language approach
• active organised and organic community-led peer support for parents, reinforcing positive home learning norms.