Papers in this volume and elsewhere consistently find a strong relationship between children's cognitive abilities and … their parents' socio-economic position (SEP). Most studies seeking to explain the paths through which SEP affects cognitive … determinant of children's cognitive abilities, namely parental cognitive ability. A range of econometric strategies have been …

It is well known that children growing up in poor families leave school with considerably lower qualifications than … children from better off backgrounds. Using a simple decomposition analysis, we show that around two thirds of the socio … behaviours of young people and their parents during the teenage years play a key role in explaining the rich-poor gap in GCSE …

follow two cohorts of students in England - those who took GCSEs in 2001-02 and 2002-03 - from age 11 to age 20. The findings … hold for both state and private school students. This suggests that poor attainment in secondary schools is more important … in explaining lower HE participation rates amongst students from disadvantaged backgrounds than barriers arising at the …

This paper examines the impact of month of birth on national achievement test scores in England whilst children are in … younger children performing significantly worse, on average, than their older peers. Furthermore, almost all of this … difference is due to the fact that younger children sit exams up to one year earlier than older cohort members. The difference in …

children may only encourage a small number of low income lone parents to return to work. …Childcare costs are often viewed as one of the biggest barriers to work, particularly among lone parents on low incomes …. Children in England are typically eligible to start school - and thus access a number of hours of free public education - on 1 …