A press release from the End Child Poverty Campaign states that 44% of young people from the richest, fifth of the population go to university compared to 10% of those from the fifth of the population living in the poorest households.

It draws on statistics showing at just 22 months, a child from a disadvantaged background begins to fall behind children from more comfortable ones and that everything which happens in the 13 years of education following that age widens rather than bridges that gulf.

In this country, the fifth richest in the world, we have three million children likely to be locked into a cycle of poverty they can’t escape and will pass down through the generations.

By the age of six, a less able child from a rich family is likely to overtake a more able child born into a poor family. As a teenager, the gap between a poor child’s ability and more wealthy child’s is even wider. Children receiving free school meals are half as likely to obtain the vital GSCEs as other children.

It is because of what the Campaign calls this immoral social injustice that it has organised a demonstration in Trafalgar Square on Saturday 4 October.

More information is available from the Campaign’s website by clicking this link.