The race to succeed in life is over for many children in the UK by the day they first arrive in primary school, a report warned.

By the age of just five, “huge class differences” already exist between the abilities of pupils from comfortable and disadvantaged backgrounds, condemning many poor children to grow up to be poor adults, said the report’s author Frank Field.

The Labour MP called on the Government to give more support to parents and children in the first five years of life, with the aim of breaking the cycle of disadvantage which traps families in poverty over generations.

The report by his Independent Review on Poverty and Life Chances was welcomed by the Prime Minister and his deputy Nick Clegg as a “hugely valuable contribution” to the coalition Government’s drive to end child poverty by 2020.

Mr Field recommended the creation of a set of Life Chances Indicators to measure children’s cognitive, physical and emotional development at the ages of o three and five, as a measure of how successful Britain is at making life’s outcomes more equal for all children.

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