The following is an archive of news stories. More recent news can be found on the poverty update.

"Four factors are key to this depressing pattern. First the simple fact of growing up in poverty, with the restrictions it places on housing, diet and lifestyle. Second, family factors - critically parental interest and support, which itself is driven by parental experience of education. Third, neighbourhood factors. The fourth is the quality of schooling.

"The first three require long-term change in social and economic life. But the great power of schooling is that it is in our power to change it now and change it for the better."

- David Miliband, from a speech in Newcastle by the schools minister to an IPPR conference on social mobility

(Independent, 8 September 2003)

Poor neighbourhoods should receive extra investment in education to break the cycle of deprivation and welfare dependency, new academic research concludes. 

The research, undertaken at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, found that public spending on schools per pupil did not allow for the higher cost of preparing those from poor areas for training and employment. The researchers pointed to the success of the New Deal welfare to work programme, which has seen higher levels of investment in poorer areas. Boosting education spending in these areas would also be cost effective as it would reduce spending on benefit payments, the study claimed. 

Glen Bramley, director of the university's centre for socially inclusive services, said: "We spend a lot on benefits in out poorest areas. It would be good to see more invested in schools, training, further and higher education."

Researchers called for better schools in deprived areas, more use of special classes, nursery provision and intervention in failing schools. 

Neighbourhood spending and the outcomes: a study of education, training and employment outcomes in three English cities. Bramley, G. and M. Evans (2002)

The debate over social class in Britain has been extended with an admission by Government that class attributes can be seen in children as young as 22 months, and that Britain's class divide in education is one of the worst in the Western world. David Milliband, schools standards minister, said: "We continue to have one of the greatest class divides in education in the industrialised world, with a socio-economic attainment gap evident in children as young as 22 months."

The class divide, once set, then maintains itself with increasing rigidity throughout school life, with the gap growing for most children: "Only 14% of young people from lower income backgrounds go to university, compared to 75% from more advantaged homes." The DfES has set up a special unit to look at the class issue and see how parents of working-class children can be helped to close the divide. Giving out free books for parents to read to their children, parenting classes and ways of improving the economic standing of lower income parents are all being investigated.

Milliband's comments were based on research by Leon Feinstein, a researcher in child development at University College, London. Just before their second birthday, children were given four simple tasks to see how they were developing their skills:

• The ability to point to different facial features when asked
• Putting on and taking off a pair of shoes
• Stacking a pile of coloured bricks
• Drawing lines and circles on a piece of paper, as opposed to simple scribbles

The research fits in with other findings which revealed that children of working-class parents tend to be more passive, less engaged in the world around them and have a more limited vocabulary. Children from middle-class households had a wider vocabulary, better understanding of how to talk to other people and were more skilled at manipulating objects.

Education officials said that parents' willingness to spend time with their children, how much they spoke to them and the amount of reading they did all produced differences in their child's attainment.

The research found that toddlers in the bottom quarter of the test results were significantly less likely to leave school with qualifications. The findings also revealed that children in the top 25% of results at the age of three-and-a-half were twice as likely to go on to A-levels than those in the bottom quarter.

Penny Leach, a baby and child care expert, said the Government had to be careful not to send out negative messages to working class parents. She said it was important that parents took time to interact with their children, giving the child enough time to respond to questions, and that they acted as 'enabler' for young children - helping them complete tasks - rather than a 'doer' who takes over the task for them.

(Observer, 10 November 2002)

Poor reading skills are a significant barrier to health, wealth and happiness, and increase the risk of social inclusion, a report by the Basic Skills agency reveals. 

Reading problems identified at 10 increase the negative impact on the lives of those at risk from family poverty and low levels of parental education. The study, Basic Skills and Social Exclusion, looks at adults born in one week in 1970 who were at high risk of social exclusion in childhood. 

From that high risk group, it compares those whose early reading skills were good with those whose were poor. It found poor readers were 10% less likely to report they were in excellent physical health at the age of 30 than other groups, and they earned about £2 an hour less than the average hourly wage.

They were twice as likely to be unemployed at 30 and to have experienced a continuous spell of unemployment for more than a year.

Women who were poor readers were more likely to be single parents and have had more than two children.

It also said that poor readers had a higher average score on the "Malaise Scale" of symptoms of depression at age 30, and were twice as likely to feel that "whatever I do has no real effect on my life".

Alan Wells, director of the BSA, said: "Defeating social inclusion by directly tackling the risk factors that produce it, and building up the protective factors that prevent it, has never been more necessary."

(TES, 28 June 2002)

Ministers in England are supporting a £600 million package to give 16 to 18-year-old students means tested grants despite concerns that it may not attract enough students from low-achieving groups.

Evidence from a new study of education maintenance allowance pilots shows that the biggest impact is on students who are already well qualified and likely to succeed.

One in five students in the pilot areas receives an allowance of up to £40 a week. But the cash is failing to attract the hoped-for numbers of lower achievers, black students and some other excluded groups.

The report, by the Learning and Skills Development Agency, is positive about the potential of grants to reach targets but warns that it will take time. Colleges and schools in the study report a "significant effect" on retention, the report says. However, evidence of improved achievement is emerging only slowly."

(TES, 28 June 2002)
 

• Children from less well-off families are to be paid up to £40 a week to stay on at school after the age of 16. Government figures show that Britain loses £97,000 in benefits, lost productivity, crime, ill health and drug misuse for every child who drops out of school at 16. This can be tackled by the special allowances which are paid out on a sliding scale of £5 to £40, according to the parents' income. In the 56 areas where the special allowances have been tried, the school stay-on for pupils is 5% higher than the average.

(Guardian, 2 July 2002)