Pupils attending the least deprived schools are offered a greater choice of enrichment activities than those at the most deprived, new research suggests. The Department for Education this week published new enrichment benchmarks for schools. Ministers’ aim is that “every child, regardless of where they grow up or which school they attend, will benefit from enriching activities that build the skills, confidence and relationships they need for life and work”. But new research demonstrate the challenge faced by the government in its aim to create an enrichment entitlement for all children. scraped 2.3 million pages and documents of school websites and fed the resulting 78,000 pages that contained information about school clubs or societies into a large language model, an advanced artificial intelligence system. The resulting lists for each school were then keyword-matched against a manually created list of 75 club types. Variation by school type The research found that on average, schools in England offer 13 different types of club or activity. The most popular were the Duke of Edinburgh award, offered by 57.9 per cent of schools, followed by聽football (53.2 per cent), reading (52.9 per cent), drama (52 per cent) and art (47 per cent). But SchoolDash founder Timo Hannay said drilling into the figures found numbers 鈥渧aried greatly by school type鈥�. Schools with low deprivation offered 17.6 activities on average, while those with high deprivation offered 13.9. On average, London schools offered 16.7 clubs, compared to just 13 in the north east. Settings with a small proportion of low prior attainers offered 19.5 clubs on average, compared to 14.2 in schools with a large proportion of low prior attainers. ‘Disparities’ in types of clubs On average, 18.6 activities were on offer in schools with high key stage 4 attainment, while the figure was 13 for those with low attainment. 鈥極utstanding鈥�-rated schools offered 18.8 clubs on average, whereas those rated 鈥榬equires improvement鈥� or 鈥榠nadequate鈥� offered 12.4. Schools with a high proportion of ethnic minority pupils offered 15.9 activities on average, compared to 13.2 in schools with a low proportion. The research also found 鈥渄isparities鈥� in the types of clubs provided, Hannay said. Specialist biology, chemistry or physics clubs were more common in less deprived schools, as well as those with higher attainment and better Ofsted ratings, he said. Maths, computing and STEM clubs 鈥渁lso shared some of these trends鈥�. 鈥淩egional preferences鈥� exist too, with cycling clubs more popular in the north east and rugby in the south west. 鈥淎mong schools with high deprivation, breakfast clubs were the most over-represented (while also being a rather different kind of ‘club’) and Duke of Edinburgh awards were the most under-represented,鈥� said Hannay. 鈥淢any other trends were apparent. For example, schools with high proportions of ethnic-minority or EAL pupils were more likely to provide debating and university-entrance clubs, but less likely to provide rugby or role-playing games.鈥� Different school structures and admissions models also had an impact. For example, converter academies offered more activities (15.9) than maintained schools (15.3), sponsored academies (14.4) and free schools (13.9). The average number of clubs on offer at grammar schools was 21.4, compared to 15 at non-selective schools. Hannay added that grammar schools 鈥渢ended to have better provision of subject-specific science, music, debating and drama, but were unlikely to have breakfast or homework clubs鈥�. Church of England schools offered more activities (17.3) than those of 鈥渙ther faiths鈥� (17) and Catholic schools (14). Just 2.2 per cent of Catholic schools ran an LGBTQ+ club, compared to 16.3 per cent of Church of England schools and 13.6 per cent of non-faith schools. The research was funded by The Gatsby Foundation. Its head of STEM in schools Jenni French said the analysis 鈥渟hows that enrichment opportunities are not evenly distributed across schools. 鈥淭he new enrichment framework is a useful step, but it will only make a difference if schools are supported to build provision where access is currently more limited.鈥�