Equity in education: Levelling the playing field of learning - a practical guide for teachers

'Comprehensive and groundbreaking.' Dylan Wiliam

Equity in Education sets out a new equity-based approach in education to help teachers improve the prospects of under-resourced and working-class pupils.

The equity approach recognises that we must address our own cultural biases and barriers within the classroom, while helping to remove extra barriers to learning experienced by children outside schools. Based on thousands of research studies and years of working with expert teachers, the book sets out the principles and practical strategies for trainee teachers, teachers and teacher leaders.

Adopting an equity mindset involves four key principles:
· equity not equality - doing more to overcome the extra barriers some learners experience
· capacity not deficit thinking - recognising the talents in all pupils
· deep not shallow relationships - developing authentic individual relationships with pupils
· multiple not singular talents - acknowledging that human talents come in many forms.

Equity in Education also advocates the national policies that would enable teachers to prioritise an equitable approach and reduce divides between the education haves and have-nots.

Lee Elliot Major is Britain's first professor of social mobility and is based at the University of Exeter. He was previously chief executive of the Sutton Trust. His work is dedicated to improving the education and life prospects of under-resourced children and young people. He is an award-winning author and was awarded an OBE in the 2019 Queen's Honours for services to social mobility. He is the first in his family to go to university.

Emily Briant is an experienced teacher of human sciences in the South West of England and leader on sociocultural and economic disadvantage in school. She is a current doctoral student at the University of Exeter with a focus on exploring the causes and consequences of longstanding educational inequalities.