Study: Class matters in United Kingdom

Children's progress in their first two years at school is still largely driven by their parents' social class, a United Kingdom-wide study has concluded. Researchers analyzed more than 11,000 seven-year-olds and found a strikingly large gap between children of parents in professional and managerial jobs and those with parents who were long-term unemployed.

Even after allowing for other factors such as ethnicity and family size, the children of professionals and managers were, on average, at least eight months ahead of pupils from the most socially disadvantaged backgrounds at age 7. Furthermore, this gap was about four months wider at 7 than it had been at age 5. The new report by researchers at the Institute of Education, University of London, also reveals that parents' social class, recorded when their child was aged 3, has a bigger influence on progress between 5 and 7 than a range of parenting practices, such as daily reading with a child. Read more about the study at the Institute's website.