If you were born in 1958 into a family in the bottom quarter of income earners then you had a 17 per cent chance of getting into the top quarter of income earners by the age of 30. If you were born in 1970, that chance had declined to 11 per cent.

Peter Lampl, quoted in The Sun today.

Research by the Centre for Economic Performance is reported in many newspapers today. But this is the point at its most succinct.

State education was created to give children equal opportunity. Some even believed it would eliminate entirely the advantage of those who come from richer and better educated families. In fact it has done the very opposite. It has reduced the chances of the poorest to advance themselves. They have, instead, been condemned to the worst of the state schools where they have a very small chance indeed of getting an education that will give them the skills and the ambition to get to the top.

State education for the poor is now so inadequate and, in many cases, positively damaging, that probably the fastest growing trend in education today is for poor people to pay for private - usually faith-based - schooling.

The link to the report is here.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Education

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