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This article, co-authored by two research-active teachers with the support of their academic partner, reports on the resistance of an urban primary school in a northern city of England to the label 'disadvantaged school' and various judgements that refuse to take into account its holistic work with students and families from different and diverse minority ethnic backgrounds. The article will argue that there are flaws in the ways the school's story is officially told where it does not acknowledge what is being done to address students' experiences of immigration, poverty and deprivation, and the cultural barriers they often negotiate in coming to school. As a driver for change, practitioner research foregrounds the authenticity of school and classroom contexts and puts them under scrutiny as a means of informing strategic decisions. Utilising a case study design, this paper pulls together a range of data evidence to construct its narrative and tell the school's story, working in collaboration with its university academic partner. In doing so, it contributes to our understanding of practitioner research within challenging urban school settings, under pressure from centralised conceptualisations of achievement gaps and school performance. It puts many of these ideas under scrutiny and asks fundamental questions about curriculum, pedagogy and accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, written by three research-active teachers and their academic partner, registers concerns with the ways the so-called 'achievement gap' is portrayed in policy announcements in England. It charts a challenge to the current view that it is the task of urban nursery and primary schools to train children to be school-ready. It portrays a collective professional judgement that some young children from less affluent backgrounds face a range of barriers to their learning on entry, which hampers their success at primary school. Further, it argues these barriers arise from children's multiple vulnerabilities which cannot be encapsulated by a single category of need such as eligibility for Free School Meals or a Special Educational Need represented in official national-school quantitative data. This article proceeds to report on three inter-linked teacher inquiry projects, which seek to define and identify the range of vulnerabilities faced by some young children and consider intervention measures that will address their academic and social learning needs. The intention is to show that a more refined view of identifying these needs based on a research-informed reading of young children's multiple vulnerabilities, framed by their social context, will lead to more equitable provision of primary schooling experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]