With the Schools White Paper approaching, the Government wants to retain focus on high standards while building a more inclusive system. Many in the education sector remain unconvinced: they view attainment and inclusion as inherently contradictory approaches.

But this relies on a false dichotomy – in reality, inclusion and attainment are two sides of the same coin.

Both our organisations – Impetus and Mission 44 – are, at our core, focused on attainment. We work to ensure that young people, particularly those from disadvantaged and underrepresented backgrounds, get the qualifications and opportunities they need to thrive.

Impetus invests in non-profits that provide evidence-backed attainment and engagement interventions for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, who are 40% less likely to get good GCSEs – an unacceptable gap which has widened since the pandemic.

Mission 44 creates pathways into STEM careers for young people currently missing from industries like Motorsport, ensuring this global business builds the diverse teams it needs for the future.

Attainment opens doors that would otherwise be shut: strong GCSEs are the single greatest protective factor against becoming NEET (not in education, employment, or training). The consequences of being NEET in early adulthood can be lifelong, linking to higher unemployment and lower wages even decades later.

In part because of evidence like this, rising attainment has been central to the story of English education over the past fifteen years. More primary children have met expected standards in reading, writing and maths, and England has climbed international rankings as literacy and numeracy skills improved significantly. This achievement is remarkable, and truly worth celebrating.

But to raise attainment further, we must reckon with the fact that this success hasn’t been equal.

In 2024, fewer than half of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds met the Key Stage 2 standard, compared with 69% of their peers. Disparities widen along racial lines and persist into secondary school. Attainment was just over 50% for Black Caribbean and Mixed White-Black Caribbean pupils, and fell to 20% for Gypsy, Roma, and Irish Traveller children. Data from 2023 show that disadvantaged young people of every ethnicity are less likely to pass GCSE English and maths than their non-disadvantaged peers: a staggering 40-percentage-point attainment gap.

A crisis of lost learning is threatening to worsen this gap, as young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are disproportionally affected. 34 million days of learning were lost to unauthorised absence and suspension last year, up from 19 million before the pandemic. Young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are twice as likely to be persistently absent, four times more likely to be suspended, and five times more likely to be permanently excluded.

Young people cannot learn if they are not in school and not engaged. This means attainment cannot be raised further and employment outcomes cannot be improved – but this is not inevitable.

The only way to solve industrial-scale disengagement is through meaningful, systemic inclusion. Not as a siloed offer available only to young people with special educational needs, or as a support system locked behind hard-to-reach thresholds, but as a core tenet of the school system. True inclusion – where all staff support the learning, wellbeing and safety needs of all children, so that they belong, achieve and thrive – is the route to higher school standards for all, even already high attainers.

Young people may experience disruptions or challenges at any point in their school careers, whether inside or outside the school gates. To overcome unexpected challenges, particularly during adolescence, young people need to know school is a place where they can access support before challenges become barriers.

But recent Impetus research with Public First found that young people across the socioeconomic and attendance spectrum report school as a key driver of stress, with support hard to access. For them, disengagement can function as self-protection for their mental health.

This level of disengagement is unsustainable, and the consequences for attainment will be profound.

Some schools across the country are already beating the odds to deliver inclusion for their pupils, despite limited resources. But these schools are often inclusive in spite of the system, not because of it.

The Schools White Paper presents an opportunity to change that. We need a universal offer, so predictable needs are identified, support is provided early, and all young people can attain. For too long, policy has treated inclusion as an add-on rather than a prerequisite for learning and attaining. Now, inclusion must be baked into the school fabric, with comprehensive teacher training on inclusive practice and systematic tracking of all forms of lost learning and pupil experience to guide improvement and identify at-risk pupils or groups.

The evidence is clear: when young people feel safe, supported, and seen, they attend, engage, and achieve. The inverse is also true – when inclusion is neglected, absence rises, attainment stalls, and futures narrow.

Now is the time for a step change. The debate is not inclusion versus attainment. You cannot have one without the other.

Jason Arthur, CEO, Mission 44
Susannah Hardyman MBE, CEO, Impetus