One influential study has found that in the first three years of a child's life, those from wealthy family backgrounds will have heard 30m more words than those from poorer backgrounds. This gap can set them back years
PARENTS in England are faced with a choice when their children are old enough to attend secondary school. They can pay to send their offspring to a private school, which usually involves sitting an entrance exam. Alternatively, in some parts of the country, the child can sit an eleven-plus exam and, provided they pass, attend a grammar school. Grammar schools are publicly funded and tend to excel in league tables of academic performance.
At first the researchers calculated a genetic score taken for each child by adding up contributions from thousands of minor variations in their DNA that past studies have linked to educational attainment. Pupils attending grammar and private schools had significantly higher genetic scores than those in comprehensives. But when those scores were adjusted to reflect each child’s test results at 11, as well as the education and occupations of their parents, the differences vanished.
But was this due to better teaching at these schools or an outcome of the selection procedure? To see, the team adjusted the grades based on the results of each child’s test scores, family circumstances and genes. Once they did this, the gap between the schools narrowed dramatically, with school type explaining just 0.5% of the difference in average GCSE grades.
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