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In this paper, we examine the trajectories of initially higher- and lower-achieving children from lower and higher socio-economic status families from primary school through to university in England for the first time. We also explore what explains these trajectories. This enables us to provide new insights into when and why the performance of children with similar initial achievement diverges on the basis of their socio-economic background. Our results indicate that pupils from poor backgrounds who are higher achievers in primary school fall behind their better-off but lower-achieving peers during secondary school. This suggests that secondary school may be a critical period to intervene to prevent poor children from falling behind their richer peers. Our analysis suggests that there is less divergence in performance between pupils from different socio-economic backgrounds who attend the same schools. This result is particularly strong for children with low initial achievement. While we remain cautious about the implications of these findings, they provide suggestive evidence that schools (or the sorting of pupils into schools) play an important role in explaining why the test scores of richer and poorer children diverge over time. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper investigates the relationship between stream placement and the academic progress made by children in England in Year 2 of primary school, drawing on data from the longitudinal Millennium Cohort Study (MCS). The MCS is a sample of 19,000 children born across the UK around the turn of the century and their families. Academic progress was compared between children in England in the ‘top’, ‘middle’ or ‘bottom’ streams, and among the majority of non-streamed children. Multiple regressions took into account child, family and school characteristics and showed that stream placement significantly impacted on the academic progress made by children. Children in the ‘top’ stream achieved more and made significantly more academic progress than children attending schools that did not stream, while children in the ‘middle’ or ‘bottom’ streams achieved less and made significantly less academic progress. The reasons for this and the educational implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There are long-standing achievement gaps in England associated with socio-economic status (SES), ethnicity and gender, but relatively little research has evaluated interactions between these variables or explored school effects on such gaps. This paper analyses the national test results at age 7 and age 11 of 2,836 pupils attending 68 mainstream primary schools in an ethnically diverse inner London borough. The groups with the lowest educational achievement and poorest progress were both Black Caribbean and White British low SES pupils. White British middle and high SES pupils made substantially more progress than White British low SES pupils, significantly increasing the SES gap over time. However low and high SES Black pupils made equally poor progress age 7–11. School effects on pupil progress were large, but there was no evidence of differential school effectiveness in relation to SES, ethnicity or gender. Low SES pupils in the more effective schools performed significantly better than high SES pupils in the less effective schools, but all pupils (both low and high SES) benefit from attending the more effective schools and so these schools do not eliminate the SES gap. The limits to change that may be achieved by schools alone are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]