What are our key concepts?

The concepts we believe might be very important in levelling the playing field include:

• Cultural legacies are powerful forces[1] – work with parents is key to success with children
• Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning[2] – find what you love and get paid for doing it
• Just 14% of variation in individuals’ performance is accounted for by school quality[3] – so the rest needs immense focus if we’re ever going to level up
• Less advantaged children are more likely to feel a lack of control over their learning… this influences the development of different attitudes to education … that help shape their future – we need to find a way to overcome this
• What we do and how well we control our attention in the service of our goals, becomes part of the environment that we help create and that in turn influences us[4] – grit isn’t just a political soundbite, we have to find a way to help all learners use it positively – persistence, doggedness and the willingness to work harder…
• Environments can be as deterministic as we once believed only genes could be and… the genome can be as malleable as we once believed only environments could be[5] – everyone can be helped, no-one should be overlooked.