THE stark fact that more than two-thirds of five-year-olds in the poorest families in Bradford are not perceived to be ‘school ready’ is a damning indictment of their early upbringing and one which is likely to be a determining factor throughout their lives.

The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission’s second annual state of the nation report makes sobering reading about the sheer numbers of young children in Bradford and Britain who are being failed by their families, bringing with it the likelihood that their futures will be mired by poverty as they continue to lag behind their peers throughout their school lives. The report argues the new goal for education should be closing the gap between disadvantaged children and their better-off classmates.

And it goes so far as to call for bad parents to be given parenting classes to make sure their children get a better start in life and therefore try to avoid a predicted insurmountable chasm developing between the nation’s rich and poor.

Former Labour cabinet minister Alan Milburn, who leads the Commission, is unequivocal about what needs to be done and unafraid of where to point the finger. “The starting point should be parenting,” he said. “Effective parenting has a bigger influence on a child’s life than their wealth, their class or even their education.”

No-one is saying that parenting is an easy job as it requires an arsenal of skills, but for anyone who chooses the huge responsibility of bringing up a child, it should be among the most important of their lives.