Richard Adams quotes the Sutton Trust in his Guardian report on new ONS research on intergenerational poverty

A father’s level of education is the strongest factor determining a child’s future success at school, creating a self-reinforcing cycle of poverty and lack of achievement passed down from parents to children in Britain, according to research.

The report from the Office for National Statistics claims that children are seven and a half times less likely to be successful at school if their father failed to achieve, compared with children with highly educated fathers.

A mother’s education level was important to a lesser degree, with a child approximately three times as likely to have a low educational outcome if their mother had a low level of education.

The ONS research found that low levels of education are the most significant reason for the persistence of poverty in the UK, with those with a low level of educational attainment being almost five times as likely to be in poverty as those with a high level of education…..

Conor Ryan, director of research at the Sutton Trust, said the ONS work was in line with his organisation’s own findings on weak social mobility in the UK, with mobility declining for those born in 1970 compared with those born in the 1950s.

“This report shows just how important education is in breaking that cycle of poverty across generations and ensuring that poor educational achievement is not transmitted from parent to child,” Ryan said.

Read the full report here