Many children from disadvantaged backgrounds are educationally up to ayear behind their more privileged counterparts by the age of three,according to research published last week.
A study of the vocabulary scores of more than 12,000 children showed thesons and daughters of graduates were 10 months ahead of those with theleast educated parents.
Another "school readiness" assessment measuring understanding ofcolours, letters, numbers, sizes and shapes given to more than 11,500children, revealed a gap of 12 months between the groups.
The assessments were carried out for the Centre for LongitudinalStudies, based in the Institute of Education, University of London, andform part of the Millennium Cohort Study, which is tracking 15,590families of children born between 2000 and 2002. In both tests, girlsfared better than boys by around three months, while Scottish childrenwere three months ahead of the UK average in their language developmentand two months ahead in "school readiness".
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