Fixing a broken tongue

Why is the language we use in education important? By Professor Lee Elliot Major

In my latest book Equity in Education, written with teacher Emily Briant, we argue for a new language to replace words that I’ve been using all my professional life. The book summarises my thoughts after decades of work dedicated to challenging the stark divides that scar our education system. I now believe the terms that have come to define these efforts label and harm the very children we hope to help.

Our use of the word ‘equity’ signals the need to provide extra support for pupils who need it most, amid increasing societal divides outside the school gates. Our book focuses on the many cultural and material barriers children face inside and outside the classroom. It complements other important work on race, ethnicity, gender, and other characteristics which can lead to discrimination. Pupils are a combination of characteristics which intersect to shape their life prospects. What we advocate for in this book could apply to children who are stereotyped in different ways.

Our decision to replace the term ‘disadvantaged pupils’ with ‘children from under-resourced backgrounds’ has attracted a lot of attention. One reason for doing so was to avoid the trap of deficit thinking. The deficit approach frames children as inferior beings who need to be converted to fit in with the middle-class norms of the classroom. It’s implicit message is that certain roles and classes in society are not as good as others. My own life story is an example of this narrative: I once served as a bin-man and lived on my own as a teenager and have subsequently become the country’s first professor of social mobility. I may have become a middle-class clone and lost my original accent. But my story should not be used to denigrate the important job that bin-men do!

The term ‘disadvantaged pupil’ also focuses our minds on individuals, when facing hardship is about the circumstances individuals find themselves in. In the world of deficit thinking, education efforts feel like a very one-sided negotiation – we want you to come into our world, change who you are, fit into our culture, and play by our (unwritten) rules. We can of course use clearly defined words to describe disadvantage when reporting differences across pupil populations. These might include ‘low income’ or 'non-privileged' or 'eligible for free school meals' (FSM) or ‘working-class’. The problem comes when these slip into generalisations applied to individual pupils in the classroom.

This brings us to another problem with terming a child as ‘disadvantaged’: it suggests a binary classification between who is or who is not ‘advantaged’. In schools it’s easy to slip into superficial two-dimensional thinking. Funds allocated to schools through the Pupil Premium (PP) in England are based on whether children qualify for free school meals (FSM). Internal reviews of progress in schools by teacher leaders constantly reinforce the split between ‘DS’ (disadvantaged students) and the rest. Studies find that teachers are prone to unconscious biases that limit pupils labelled in this way.

For similar reasons the term ‘BAME' (Black, Asian and minority ethnic) is problematic: it imposes a false homogeneity on a vast group of people blessed with a rich diversity. The reality is that every learner is a product of many influences and histories, encompassing economic, cultural, educational, biological, psychological and parental background factors intersecting with other characteristics including ethnicity and gender, as well as place and timing of birth.

‘Under-resourced’ highlights the range of assets that some children may miss out on, not just wealth and money, but the cultural and educational resources provided by parents and their social networks, as well as basic health entitlements from food, basic healthcare and clothing. The term resonates with the important concept of cultural capital developed by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. This describes the cultural resources that put middle-class pupils at a distinct advantage in the classroom. They share similar middle class traits with their teachers and are comfortable with the accepted modes of conduct. Children from working-class backgrounds bring with them different types of cultural capital; they can feel ill at ease, anxious and unsure of how to behave. Bourdieu used the term ‘capital’ to give as much weight to cultural divides as material divides.

But what finally convinced me of the need for a new language was the views of the young people themselves: students don’t want to be defined as ‘disadvantaged’. We heard this loud and clear when three inspiring young people took to the stage during the south-west social mobility commission’s summer conference. There are parallels here with the language of neurodiversity promoted by those who have suffered the stigma and prejudice of being labelled ‘special needs’ or facing ‘learning difficulties’. Calling someone ‘neurodivergent’ rather than ‘autistic’ transforms our mindset from a negative perception to a positive one.

Not everyone is convinced. Some have suggested that our argument is a ‘middle class sidestep’ rather than ‘working class straight talking’ or that ‘softening’ the way we describe disadvantage ‘stops people feeling uncomfortable with the reality’. All I can say is that I see things differently now. I think we need new approaches to level the education playing field and the words we use are an important part of this. I urge people to read our book to consider our arguments in detail.

In Equity in Education, we cut out hackneyed phrases such as ‘realising children’s potential’; this assumes we know what the future fixed capabilities of someone else might be. We talk about parent partnerships rather than parent engagement; this is about doing it with them not to them. Families meanwhile are not ‘hard to reach’; we are the ones who are hard to reach!

In her article How to Fix a Broken Tongue Natalie S. Burke challenged the deficit language spoken in the United States. Speak of inequities, avoidable and unjust differences, rather than disparities. Enable people to use their power, rather than presuming you can ‘empower’ them. Avoid using words such ‘underserved’ suggesting someone is waiting to be handed something on a silver platter, or ‘vulnerable’ that creates a perception of weakness.

I’m sure this will not be the last word on this topic. We thought long and hard about the terms used in our book. But I worry that many of the terms currently spoken by well-meaning professionals like me aiming to make the world a fairer place are damaging the very the cause we are fighting for.

Equity in education: Levelling the playing field of learning - a practical guide for teachers is published by John Catt