Educational disadvantage: The bearing of the early home background on children's academic attainment and school progress

Abstract

This paper describes the result of a longitudinal study of a sample of children from culturally and materially disadvantaged homes and a matched control group in which the children's educational attainments were assessed at the ages of 7, 11 and 15 years respectively. The finding that the disadvantaged children made significantly poorer academic progress than their more advantaged peers throughout their entire school careers and appeared to suffer a ‘cumulative deficit’ in their academic learning, supports the view that the early home environment has a major bearing upon the child's subsequent school progress. However, the importance of the early environment in this respect is probably conditional upon the stability of that environment during the child's school years. Aspects of the early environment which may particularly bear upon the child's school progress are discussed, but the importance of the interplay between home, school and ‘within child’ factors in determining the child's academic attainment i...