I'm pretty shocked at the latest view on children and their attainment. I was totally unaware of the link between high income and intellectually stronger offspring. I'm sure when I was at school there wasn't such a gap... Or maybe you just don't notice?

I didn't notice at school, but then i'm from a low income family, so lacked the intellectual capacity...

Looking back (with binoculars), I can sort of see what they're saying.

A lot of the kids who came from higher earning parents all seemed to be in top sets for all of the subjects, then there was the kids who had average earning parents that were in the sets just below top, and then there was the kids with low/unemployed parents in the bottom sets.

I was in the just below sets for most of my subjects, and top for one or two and my parents certainly weren't high earners (unless they've kept their fortunes hidden from me )

I can remember being moved up into a top set for one subject and the difference between the two was huge. I lasted a week. The work was different and the people in the class were different, they didn't talk amongst themselves and came across as, well, boring really.

I wouldn't consider myself as intelligent and can be as thick as a castle wall at times.

You must've been the thick kid then

It's a never ending circle...

thick = low income = thick = low income = ...

Richard Branson came from a council estate without a penny to his families name.

A simple equation

Poor x thick x L = Rich

L=Luck (~ value )

I have been known to make very stupid decisions and on occasions not see the wood for the trees....

I was mostly in top sets, I did 3 science exams and not the two combined and I'm sure there was a good mix, maybe.
Are you suggesting genetics kayjay? Perhaps it parenting and the boundaries / guidance given?

Its a terrible thing to report in the news, it has great potential to stigmatise many children before they even get a chance to prove themselves.

Don't worry about it chaps.
Being thick is a good thing as no one expects anything from you.

And money makes you sad.

Genetics... hmm... loads find that the easy way out of many a discussion.

Genetics = 50%
Environment = the other 50%

So despite genes you should have a 50% chance to jump out of the circle.

I wouldn't stigmatise anyone, but if you read the media you get many a story telling about 'he came from nothing and he built everything up himself'. So it looks like they already made their minds up.

This is one of those subjects that has a feeling of moving forward at a snails pace but it should be aired and discussed from time to time

Are you sure?

"Branson was born in Blackheath, London, the son and eldest child of barrister Edward James Branson (10 March 1918 – 19 March 2011)[4] and Eve Huntley Branson (née Flindt).[4][5] His grandfather, the Right Honourable Sir George Arthur Harwin Branson, was a judge of the High Court of Justice and a Privy Councillor.[6] Branson was educated at Scaitcliffe School (now Bishopsgate School)[7] until the age of thirteen. He then attended Stowe School until the age of sixteen. Branson has dyslexia and had poor academic performance as a student, but later discovered his ability to connect with other"......

Are poor people thick because they're poor or are thick people poor because they're thick?

FWIW I think it's more to do with upbringing. As a general rule poor people are poor because they're lazy. That laziness spills over into the way they raise their children. The children are then lazy at school as they know no better. They then end up poor and have their own children and so on, and so on...

You can introduce all the schooling you want. If the kids don't want it and won't be made to do it then they'll end up useless drains on society creating more useless drains on society.

After a brief chat with the wife my memories are some what rose tinted, most of the people from families where the parents didn't really care about anything and hence didn't really have jobs or any real drive / routine or social responsibility did, infact, inhabit the lower of the 6 available ability classes at school.
Wonder if these new magic super teachers can break the cycle caused by bad parenting.........

Fees at Stowe school - £10k per term.

That's why the family had to live in a council house

This is about academic attainment, not intelligence. While the two may correlate to some extent they are not synonymous.

Largely though I think you're pretty close to the mark. Wealth correlates with academic attainment, in most cases, and that in turn indicates parents who value education.

Children who have parents who lack the inclination or ability to help them through school are likely to do worse than children who have that support. I doubt that this is a major surprise to anybody.

We may, however, see a shift in this over the next couple of years. GCSEs are moving away from coursework based assessment and back to exam-based grades. This, to an extent, levels the playing field a bit, because it's more a measure of what the child has learned, and not of how much their parents have helped them with their homework (it also means that the past 25 years of education have been a bit of an exercise in futility, as we've effectively arrived back at 'O' levels).

The school leaving age is also being raised over the next couple of years, so 16 year old children can no longer be disenfranchised by their parents and quit school at that age, even if they've got the intelligence to continue into 'A' levels.

The next challenge is going to be in persuading those capable of a university education to get one.

I'm advertising an entry-level (£16k pa) job in my team at the moment, and every single applicant was at least degree-level qualified, with a couple of masters in there as well.

It's getting harder and harder for young people to get into the work place and it's hard to imagine anybody without a degree getting more than a minimum wage job these days. Which, of course, perpetuates the cycle we're talking about - they work hard, get good GCSEs and 'A' levels and still end up flipping burgers, so what are they going to tell their kids about the value of sticking in at school?

Apropos of which: you may recall how scathing I was of the 2012 GCSE maths papers I posted recently. I have now located the 1976 O level paper I passed in school. I hold Maths O and A level, a BSc, and MSc, and several post-grad certificates and diplomas. I work in a very high tech industry, and use certain bits of maths regularly - yet that paper slowed me down a bit.

http://bland.in/GCE/gce_book_73_76.pdf

Degrees have been totally devalued by New Labour. If university educated people are climbing over each other for a £16k a year job then the system is sick. It's not just those (majority) doing worthless degrees either. Grad engineers are on pitiful money. The idea that the majority of people will benefit in their lives from racking up £40k "studying" is ridiculous.

I came from a very low income background in my early years. My parents, however, cared and instilled values of working hard and bettering oneself. Despite having no degree I have worked my way to a six-figure salary. Of course that means I now have to give half of my salary to people who won't work.

As for poverty, nobody in the UK is in genuine poverty. If children are going hungry it's not because their parent(s) don't have the ("free," or otherwise) money. It's because they're stupid enough to spend it on fags, alcohol, other drugs and a BrightHouse TV rather than giving poor Johnny a bowl of cereal before school. I work in a country where 2/3 of the population live on less than $2 a day and they manage to feed themselves.

Do what you like to the school system. Dross breeds dross and our society almost encourages it. Returning to O Levels is about as likely to solve the problem as taking a mop and bucket downstairs on the Titanic.

FWIW, that was the foundation level paper, meaning that those who sat only that paper couldn't get a GCSE grade higher than C. I worked through it with my daughter (13, and hardly the most gifted mathematician) and she could answer all of the questions on it. So it doesn't exactly represent the zenith of maths teaching in modern schools.

You came from a low income background Brewster?

Thats because your parents were Lazy, apparently

Indeed; but the part 2 paper was no better.

If you say so. They've both done rather well for themselves for lazy, working class people though. I've made no secret in the past that the first house I grew up in was a council house. Lady T gave my parents the right to purchase that house which they did. From there they've both made successful lives for themselves through their own determination.

In this country if you are poor* then it is either your own fault or your parents fault and it shouldn't be the responsibility of hard working people to provide you with an income.

* Poor in relation to others. Nobody is poor in the UK.

No, I don't say so, you did.

No I didn't.

I'm no fan of New Labour, but the devaluation started long before we'd ever heard that idiom. The Conservative government of the 80s held a dream of a country where everybody could be middle-class; nice, clean, hi-tech service industries, everybody a degree-qualified, mortgaged tory voter.

It was a pipe-dream then, and it's a pipe-dream now.

And grads are climbing over themselves for £16k jobs because it's what's available. Wages and salaries are not keeping pace with the cost of living for the vast majority of people and the government, still obsessed with Maggie's magnificently naive comparison of government spending with household budgets, are making things worse with their ill-considered austerity measures.



It's good that you (on your "six figure" salary) know that there's nobody in poverty in the UK, and that those who are on benefits are all sitting in their council houses, smoking 60 a day, swigging from cans of Asda own-brand lager and watching Jeremy Kyle on their 48" TVs.

Have you ever looked at how this country's benefit bill breaks down? Almost half of our total benefit bill is paying pensions. It accounts for around £75bn in payments, compared to less than £5bn in JSA. Income support and tax credits (i.e. benefits for those working, but on too low an income to make ends meet) account for more than 5 times that figure.

What's taking all of that hard-earned dosh out of your pockets isn't supporting Pikey Dave's crack habit, sorry.

This country is seeing (and has been seeing for a while) the rich accelerating away from those on an average income, and the average person being squeezed more - not to keep an underclass in fags and beer, but to keep the rich rich.

People in this country to live in poverty, despite your confidence otherwise, and that's something of which we should be ashamed. Instead, the government is telling us to blame the poor, or blame the immigrants, or blame the education system. They've held up the worst extremes of these things and told us that they represent the norm. They demonise these people because that makes it OK to treat them like scum; it's their own fault that they're where they are.



Nearly, disillusionment breeds disillusionment. That can be fixed with a fairer society where there are jobs paying a living wage, but this government would rather have the problem than the solution.

"As a general rule, poor people are poor because they are lazy" didn't you say? Our are your parents they exception?

JSA is a small amount comparatively as most people who don't work aren't on JSA. Single mothers, addicts, glass backs, etc are all accounted for in other sections. They aren't classed as "unemployed" because they're unemployable.

I repeat, people elsewhere in the world live on $2 a day. Someone with a free (to them) house and enough money to feed themselves is not in poverty. They just aren't and no crying about Lady T is going to change that.

Austerity hasn't even happened. Osbourne has nibbled here and there enough to piss off the middle ground, but there has been no slash and burn as is needed. One of the reasons I shall be moving my vote from herein.


Maybe that should have been poor people remain poor because they are lazy. There is a disgusting, jealous malaise hovering around the country since New Labour happened that anyone who has done well for themselves has done so at the expense of someone who has less. The keying of cars, the hatred of bankers and CEOs, the "right" to top up your salary with benefits so you can have that holiday abroad this year.

I have worked hard to put myself in the position I'm in and I owe nobody on benefits (pensions excepted) a penny of it.

I can remember all of those things and charmless attitudes like yours long before New Labour was a twinkle in John Smith's eye. Adam, please think about something other than yourself just once in a while.

<sigh> I agree, people in genuine poverty do nothing of the sort. I have seen them with my own eyes whilst travelling through Africa. With the exception of some homeless people who choose to be homeless, nobody in the UK is in poverty. Nobody.