Ian Soars, chief executive of Spurgeons has called for churches to step in to help support schools and families after research on children’s attainment.

The research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies funded by the Nuffield Foundation showed 16 year-olds eligible for free school meals are still around 27 percentage points less likely to earn good GCSEs than their classmates.

It found the gap between disadvantaged children and their peers has seen no change in two decades.

Report author Imran Tahir said that failure is “baked in” from an early age with the disadvantage gap having a “lifelong impact” on people’s life chances.

Ian Soars explained, “The children and families that we’re working with feature heavily in this demographic. Actually what we’re seeing on the ground is an increased difficulty to cope with the facilities of mental health, cost of living crisis, not so much spacing, lockdown and so on. What is surprising is that the gap hasn’t widened. I think you’d have to commend a lot of these families who don’t have the privileges of others, they’ve managed to keep pace with that gap under such stress and pressure.”

He further said that many factors can make it difficult for poorer children to achieve the same results as more advantaged classmates.

“If you come from a disadvantaged background, often you just don’t have space to study, there isn’t somewhere where you can go, you’re trying to do it on a kitchen workspace.

“We’ve got to address access to support for emotional and mental well-being. If you’re poor, there are hardly any resources and yet, this is like an epidemic being played out in our children’s lives. The last two or three years have seen it played out in this particular demographic more than anywhere else. So if you consider those factors it’s a surprise that the gap hasn’t widened. These guys will have my full admiration for that.”

Ian Soars has urged the government to invest more into schools and for churches to create hubs to support parents and families.

“We work in about 150 schools, and none of them is saying that they’ve got budget excesses. Schools are under massive financial pressure at the moment. And that’s playing out in terms of the books that they can afford, the extra help that they can give to children. But secondly, the infrastructure around the school enables the school to be a place for well-being and creates a life expectancy that is an exciting place for kids where they can flourish.

“My heart cry as a Christian charity working in this space is to partner with the Christian church to say, what can you do in your community? You can create family hubs where your schools converge because they haven’t got the resources. It’s time for the church to be able to stand in the gap in their communities and support parents.

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