Persistent association between family socioeconomic status and primary school performance in Britain over 95 years

In Britain and elsewhere, the influence of family socioeconomic status (SES) on education is evident in primary school and persists and increases throughout schooling. We show that over 95 years in Britain the association between family SES and children's primary school performance has remained stable. Across 16 British population cohorts born between 1921 and 2011 (N = 91,935), the correlation between family SES and children's school performance was 0.28 [95% CI 0.22–0.34] after adjusting for cohort-specific confounders. Contrary to assumptions that inequality has increased, we observed only minimal differences in the association across cohorts. We argue that education policies must prioritize equity in learning outcomes over equality in learning opportunities to disrupt intergenerational inequality, and that the influence of family SES on education will weaken only if primary education settings better remediate children's differential learning needs.

Sophie von Stumm, Sophie Nicole Cave, Paul Wakeling