Introduction

The 2020–2021 COVID-19 lockdowns in England have revealed much about the disparities in wealth and the impact of poverty on children’s learning: ‘a mother wakes at dawn to copy out worksheets for her children onto pieces of paper. Secondary school pupils attempt to write essays on their mobile phones, while younger children queue to wait their turn on the one computer in the house’ (Wakefield 2021: NP).

While the UK government and charity have provided assistance through the distribution of hardware into homes, it has not eradicated structured resource deprivation:

Even in an affluent country it remains the case that gaps in educational achievement are still related to significant disparities in parental income and involvement: ‘children do better if their parents have higher incomes and more education themselves, and they do better if they come from homes where they have a place to study, where there are reference books and newspapers, and where education is valued’ (Wilkinson and Pickett 2009: 105). While much is claimed about social mobility, it remains the case that the ERC is based on eugenicist populism that constructs and legitimises poverty through superior–inferior calculations about the natural educability of children (as either aspirational winners or unambitious losers). Research shows this to be historically embedded (Chitty 2007), and the COVID-19 lockdowns have intensively exposed the visceral inequity of being a child and growing up in England (Longfield 2020).

This chapter examines evidence from the EPKP projects regarding how public education services have been modernised through and for the education reform claimocracy as a ‘new and improved brand’, but where the endurance of the ‘unmodern’ remains crucial to the purposes of education.