Posters who say they want all children to have an equal chance in life

[GeneralPeter]

Do you actually mean equal, or do you mean you want a decent minimum standard for all children (perhaps a very high minimum), plus good avenues for social mobility?

I believe in the above (not strict equality), and I'm always curious whether that's what others mean too when they say "equal" on these boards.

Of course we have to strive for equality. But we can't crack the nut of how private choices are made. If people who aren't well equipped to be parents choose to have kids, those kids start life with a disadvantage it's almost impossible to pull back.

Teachers all agree that early reading to kids is vital, but that happens in private. The state can provide books through libraries, literacy schemes etc but it can't make parents read to their kids

Absolutely this. I’m a governor and parent at a primary school which is struggling with reading outcomes. At meetings it’s all about how to get the kids engaged with reading, then outside chatting to parents half of them are bragging about never reading with their child at home, while making up fake comments in their reading journals to pretend they have. Where do you start with things like that? So much of it comes down to core personal values, and the old phrase about leading horses to water springs to mind.

The school makes lots of noises about equity, but in practice (as I see it playing out in this particular context) this means targeting their very limited resources at a group of disadvantaged kids whose parents do nothing to back these efforts up at home, while effectively keeping high achievers like DD in a holding pattern in the hope that everyone else will catch up. I don’t see that doing anyone much good really.

@frozendaisy I agree with your post. I'm certainly not defining success as purely financial. There are many, many versions of success, including not being any kind of outward 'achiever' at all -- but contributing to those around us in the ways we best can.

To be fair I am in Ireland I have seen exceptional change in very problematic areas. Limerick, Moyross and Darndale Dublin are held up as examples in International Universities. The biggest factor that may help is recognition that every euro /£ spent in early years gives back four fold the impact of the same amount in Higher education.