This is an important issue that needs to be addressed in order to provide an equal and fairer society while ensuring our children and our country succeed in the future. There is sufficient evidence proving there is a consistent gap in the attainment levels between pupils from the wealthiest and poorest backgrounds …show more content…
Presenting the evidence of an attainment gap and how it can expand throughout their lives. It will look into parent’s socio-economic status and how it can affect children’s education and should give students an informative and constructive view on what could prove beneficial towards raising attainment of children from low-income families.
Figure 1 – (Scotland.gov.uk, 2014)
Tackling child poverty continues to be a major challenge for Scotland. In 1999, the then UK Prime Minister Tony Blair pledged to halve child poverty by 2010 and eradicate it completely by 2020. The years that followed the pledge saw a considerable decrease in child poverty levels, nonetheless statistics show an increase in subsequent years. (Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland, n.d.) Confirms that more than one in five (220,000) children are now living in poverty. A further 15% from the previous year of 180,000 living in relative poverty. In 2011/2012 it was recorded at …show more content…
It is much more than a lack of domestic income and deprivation of material possessions (Treanor, 2012) and (Sime, 2013) agreed that the evidence indicates, children who grow up in poverty are more likely to experience more adverse outcomes throughout life than their peers and has an impact on future generations. This evidence can be seen in early pre-school children, persisting to grow throughout the education system of primary and secondary education. These children leave school accomplishing lower levels of attainment, further affecting their lifetime