Writing for the Guardian, Gaby Hinsliff cites Sutton Trust research on Higher Education.

Every year, at the beginning of July, hundreds of boys converge on Gary Hickey’s school to sit an exam that only about one in six will pass. And every year the headmaster gets a somewhat disturbing insight into the things some parents will do to ensure their child gets the golden ticket.

In one paper Reeves identified a group of Americans raised in higher earning families who went on to become higher earning adults. Yet judged on their teenage test scores, 43% had been distinctively average performers, the sort you’d naturally expect to fall back down the ladder. The main thing that seemed to have saved them was going to college – which sits interestingly alongside findings from the Sutton Trust in Britain that the children of professionals are three times as likely to attend an elite university as working class children are, and that 27% of the disparity couldn’t be explained by academic performance.

Read the full article here.

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