Whichever way you look at it (and a lot of research has looked at it in the past year), it appears the blunt instrument of improved evidence-based teaching has somehow not fulfilled its promise to close the disadvantage gap.

Are we surprised? We shouldn’t be. It has long been theorised that the development of a child is built on far more than just lessons in the classroom.

Developmental psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner’s bio-ecological model is a useful filter for our thinking on this issue. It suggests that a child has multiple spheres of influence that affect them. Of course, the closer, more direct circles are their home environment, family and the direct contact they have with their teachers in school.

The next sphere involves the wider system surrounding the child but not directly in contact with them - eg, their community and local authority. More distant are the wider social, political and cultural influences that might affect how the child is perceived - eg, their ethnicity or vulnerable status.

We must use this model to think carefully about our actions. We learn about ourselves and how the world perceives and categorises us from the actions and responses of others. In schools, this process of perception and categorisation can be extremely influential.

For example, schools provide additional support for some groups of students, such as those eligible for free school meals. On the one hand, this can be beneficial for those students, but, on the other, it may signal to them that their group has historically underperformed and, therefore, result in lower performance.

Perhaps, then, in the challenge of closing the “gap”, we, as teachers (and the culture we work within), are part of the problem and not the solution? What if the answers lie more directly and painfully within our own behaviours and expectations?

A new paper by social psychologists Matthew Easterbrook and Ian Hadden explores this idea. They suggest that attempts to close the attainment gap have principally focused on what they call structural barriers: access to effective schools and adequate housing, for example.

However, there is another set of barriers that exists in our schools - psychological ones. These are cues (prompts we might say) that signal to some students that they are of no value, not wanted or are likely to fail. The cues might include the use of language such as “bottom set” or “low ability”.

These barriers are nuanced and slippery to grasp, but we should be acutely aware of the need to create warm, inclusive schools, where students’ perspectives and experiences are valued and where we are aware of what we celebrate and encourage.

Perhaps, by tuning into how we present ourselves, the attitudes we convey and the language we use, we can begin to turn the tide on the attainment gap for our students.

Megan Dixon is director of research and development at the Aspire Educational Trust

This article originally appeared in the 4 December 2020 issue under the headline “Why we need to watch our language”