Poor children a year behind in language skills
Reading to children and taking them
to libraries can limit effects of disadvantage, Sutton Trust study shows
The vocabulary of
children from the poorest backgrounds lags more than a year behind that of
their classmates from richer homes by the time they start school, a major new
study showed today.
The Sutton Trust,
the charity which sponsored the research, said the divide was a "tragic
indictment of modern society", showing how educational inequality starts
young and leaves children from the most disadvantaged homes struggling to keep
up throughout their school years.
The poorest children
face multiple challenges, being less likely to be born to well-educated
parents, have a regular bedtime or live with both their biological father and
mother, the study found. However, it also concluded that "good parenting
can triumph", with families able to limit the effects of poverty by, for
example, reading to their children daily.
Researchers from
Bristol and Columbia universities analysed the performance of a representative
sample of 12,644 British five-year-olds in a "naming vocabulary test"
during 2006 and 2007. They then produced a "developmental age" score
for each child, comparing their test results to the average achieved in the
study.
The gap between
rich and poor children, and even between middle-income and poor, was striking.
Those from the poorest 20% of homes, where household annual incomes averaged
£10,300 before tax, had an average developmental age of 53.6 months. The
comparable figure for those from middle-income families, on around £30,000 a
year, was 64.6 months, or 11 months ahead. Children from
families in the richest 20% , on around £80,000, reached a development age of
69.8, a further five months ahead. Income itself accounted for only around a
third of the differences in test scores, with some 48% caused by differences in
parenting between the income groups.
Reading to a child
every day was found to improve performance in the test – among children in the
same income group, it raised scores by around two months – while regular
library visits improved performance by 2.5 months. But only 45% of children
from the poorest fifth of families were read to daily at the age of three, the
study found, compared to 78% among the richest fifth.
More than a third
of children from the poorest fifth of families were born to parents without a
single GCSE A-C grade, while four in five of the richest families had at least
one parent educated to degree level.
Some two thirds of
children in the poorest income group did not live with both biological parents,
compared to only one in 10 in middle-income families. Sir Peter Lampl, chairman
of the Sutton Trust, said: "These findings are at once both shocking and
encouraging, revealing the stark educational disadvantage experienced by
children from poorer homes before they have even stepped into the school
classroom, but also the potential for good parenting to overcome some of the
negative impacts that poverty can have on children's early development."
The trust is now
urging the government to abandon its plans to increase the amount of free
nursery education it offers to all three-and-four-year-olds from 12.5 hours to
15 hours a week this year. Instead, it should provide 25 hours a week of
education to the 15% most disadvantaged families. The trust also wants
improvements in parenting classes for poorer families.
The children's
minister, Delyth Morgan, said: "A huge amount has happened in recent years
and it's a shame the Sutton Trust fails to reflect much of this. Many of its
key recommendations have already been addressed. While there is much more to
do, the gap between rich and poor in early years is closing, with the
lowest-achieving children not only keeping pace but improving faster than the
rest."
