Introduction

Poverty and place matter to children's education (Lupton, 2006; Kerr et al, 2014). There is consistent international evidence that socioeconomic status is the most important factor that influences educational outcomes (Van der Berg, 2008). Both absolute poverty that results in adequate resources and relative poverty lead to both educational and social inequality. Ridge (2009) has shown that key areas of concern identified by children living in poverty included: economic deprivation; material deprivation; and social deprivation. The cumulative effect of these levels of deprivation leads to what Ridge describes as school deprivation including restricted opportunities at school because of a lack of money to pay for resources and restricted social opportunities because of the expense of school trips and other social activities. The lack of the correct school uniform because of poverty can be a source of conflict for pupils living in poverty. If we agree with the view that the ways that schools address issues of poverty and inequality is the ultimate test of an education system (Connell, 1994) then the United Kingdom (UK) can be seen to fail its most disadvantaged children and young people (Dorling, 2011; 2015; Smyth and Wrigley, 2013; Thompson, 2017).

The link between poverty and poor educational outcomes in the UK has remained stubbornly and depressingly high despite longstanding policy concern at national, local and jurisdictional levels of government (Raffo et al, 2007; Hills et al, 2010; McKinney, 2014; Ivinson et al, 2017; Ivinson et al, 2018). Wilkinson and Pickett (2010) and Dorling (2019) have shown that the UK has lower levels of social mobility than most other comparable countries. Income persistence between parents and that of their children as adults in the UK is among the strongest of all the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. In other words, the UK is a country where the class and income of children when they grow up is more related to the class and income of their parents than almost anywhere else in the developed world. Yet the picture across the UK is uneven, both in terms of the distribution of poverty and the responses and practices of policymakers, schools and teachers.