Educational attainment inequalities receive continuous policy attention across the UK with certain social groups consistently underachieving. Our study (Early et al., 2022) used the first record linkage dataset for education in Northern Ireland to examine pupil differences in GCSE attainment outcomes. The dataset linked three administrative data sources for the first time: the 2011 Census, the School Leavers Survey and the School Census. The data linkage was conducted by the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, and the data were anonymised and held in a secure data environment. A pupil’s gender, socio-economic background, religious affiliation and attended school were the key factors considered in the study.
The centrality of socio-economic background is evidenced in previous research on educational attainment (Ilie et al., 2017; Siddiqui & Gorard, 2022; Taylor, 2018). This theme is reiterated in our study which found socio-economic background is of key importance to understanding educational attainment disparities. Parental qualifications were the greatest socio-economic predictors of attainment in this study. The higher a mother’s/father’s qualifications, the higher a pupil’s GCSE outcomes. More specifically, mothers’ qualifications had a greater influence on their child’s GCSE outcomes compared to fathers. This study also found Free School Meal Eligibility – which is a common indicator of socio-economic background in policy and research – was a sufficient measure of socio-economic disadvantage to examine disparities in educational attainment. However, other indicators such as parental qualifications had a greater impact on attainment.
