Class divide hits learning by age of three
Disadvantaged children lagging a full year behind before they start school John Carvel, social affairs editor Monday June 11, 2007 The Guardian , London
By the age of three, children from disadvantaged families are already lagging a full year behind their middle-class contemporaries in social and educational development, pioneering research by a London university reveals today. A "generation Blair" project, tracking the progress of 15,500 boys and girls born between 2000 and 2002, found a divided nation in which a child's start in life was still determined by the class, education, marital status and ethnic background of the parents. The results are likely to disappoint ministers committed to improving the life chances of disadvantaged children, notably through the Sure Start programme to develop potential in pre-school years.
But the research could not establish how much more stark the divisions might have been without Sure Start's introduction in 1998. In a series of vocabulary tests, the three-year-old sons and daughters of graduate parents were found to be 10 months ahead of those from families with few educational qualifications; they were 12 months ahead in their understanding of colours, letters, numbers, sizes and shapes.
Researchers from the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at the Institute of Education in the University of London found girls were three months ahead of boys on both measures. Less predictably, Scottish children were three months ahead of the UK average in language development and two months ahead in "school readiness". Mothers in Scotland were more likely than those in the three other countries to have jobs and set clear rules governing the child's behaviour. Similarly, Scottish fathers were more likely to read to their children, perhaps assisting early years development.
The programme - called the millennium cohort study - began tracking the children soon after they were born, recording the circumstances of pregnancy and birth, parental background and progress in the early months of life. Professor Heather Joshi, director of the programme, said previous research had showed that children from deprived homes were less educationally advanced at five and seven years old. The millennium study was the first using a big national sample to measure the attainment gap at three.
The results will be used in the government's evaluation of the Sure Start programme to establish whether it is helping working class children narrow the gap. Prof Joshi said: "Children from poorer homes are less likely to have working mothers and so they do not get so much out-of-home childcare." She could not tell how much wider the attainment gap might have been without Sure Start. She added: "These children are on a marathon. They should not be written off if they come through their early years and are not ahead in the race. The families into which they were born did not provide a level starting point. They are not leaping out of their diverse backgrounds unmarked by their early experiences."
The survey found Bangladeshi children were about a year behind their white contemporaries in "school readiness" tests. Pakistani children did slightly better. A quarter of black children from African and Caribbean backgrounds were delayed in their development, compared with 4% of white children. These results may have been linked to family income. Two-thirds of the Bangladeshi and Pakistani three-year-olds were from families living below the poverty line, compared with 42% of black children and less than 25% of white and Indian children. Across all ethnic minority communities, 72% of children with single mothers were growing up in poverty. The study set the poverty threshold at 60% of national average family income.
A Department for Education spokesman said last night: "Closing attainment gaps between different groups of children is a massive priority for us. We are working hard to provide support such as catch-up lessons, one-to-one tuition and wraparound support for children and families - for example the Sure Start programme."