For the new grammar schools to live up to May's boasts of promoting social mobility, children from less affluent backgrounds will have to be offered lower thresholds to take a place, said Elliot Major – a place that would otherwise be taken by someone from a better-off background.
At 18 months, toddlers from better-off backgrounds can identify the correct object in 750 milliseconds—200 milliseconds faster than those from poorer families.
Even the standardized tests used for college admissions, like the S.A.T.s, are essentially proxies for income: students from better-off backgrounds get higher scores.
The tax would also help tackle health inequalities because poorer children are twice as likely to be obese as those from better-off backgrounds, he said.
Smoking-related deaths are three times more likely to occur among poorer people than those from better-off backgrounds, research showed.
They look at research showing the way the achievements of above-average-ability toddlers from poor backgrounds are overtaken long before they start school by less able children from better-off backgrounds.
While the government is expected to announce measures to avoid new grammar schools being disproportionately colonised by children from better-off backgrounds, as tends to happen with existing examples, May faces significant opposition to the plans.
"But, along with the previous research we review, today's analysis of the BBC Big Personality Test show that those from better-off backgrounds have yet another advantage when it comes to non-academic factors like extroversion and career aspirations".
Iram-Siraj Blatchford, professor of early childhood education at the Institute of Education, said although there had been some progress, the problem stemmed from the expansion of the schemes to include universal as well as targeted services, which meant children from better-off backgrounds benefited too.
Conor Ryan, director of research at the Sutton Trust foundation, said the study highlighted the need to "ensure that access to the best schools and universities is not restricted to those from better off backgrounds.
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