Disadvantage Conference 2025: School: A Place Where I Belong

We know that economic disadvantage can have a huge impact on a child’s life chances. Education data shows that economically disadvantaged learners and those underserved in other ways often start school behind their more advantaged peers. They frequently make slower progress and have lower attainment outcomes at school and poorer opportunities for continued education once they have left school. Despite continuing efforts to close the disadvantage gap, a recent report from the EPI shows that the gap has widened over recent years.

We are committed to supporting schools across the county and beyond to close the attainment gap. This year’s disadvantage conference, with the title School: A place where I belong, aims to help you in creating a climate of inclusion where all students, and particularly disadvantaged and underserved learners, love and thrive at school.

We understand how little time you have to leave school to attend conferences and how tight your budgets are. With this in mind, our conference will be online to reduce the cost to you and recordings will be available for 30 days should you miss any of the sessions.

The themes of this conference are inclusion, belonging, better serving underserved learners, closing the Pupil Premium attainment gap and making school unmissable.

A full programme for the event will be available in September but we’d like to share a few details about some of our speakers with you, to show their calibre and the quality you can expect from our event.

Tickets are available to purchase via the HFL Education Hub at a cost of £154+VAT with discounts for additional delegates from your school.

Further information

Please contact the HFL Events team at events@hfleducation.org or call 01438 544477