Household Risks that Undermine Education

Household risks that undermine education

A new study[1] claims that 27% of UK children live with multiple risks to their educational development. The identified risk factors are:

Ø      Mother or her partner often feels depressed

Ø      Mother or partner has a longstanding physical illness that limits daily activities

Ø      Mother smoked during pregnancy

Ø      At least one parent drinks alcohol more than the recommended amounts (14 units weekly for women; 21 for men)

Ø      Mother or partner often gets into a violent rage

Ø      The family finds it difficult to manage financially

Ø      Neither mother nor father in paid employment

Ø      Mother’s first pregnancy was when she was under 20 years old

Ø      Either mother or father lacks basic skills; this limits daily activities

Ø      House is overcrowded (more than 2 people per room not including toilets, hall, kitchen, living room and garage)

Of course some of these risk factors are correlated. If you have no basic skills you are less likely to be in employment; overcrowding is linked with illness and with depression.

“Children living in families with multiple risks are more likely to have long-term disadvantageous cognitive and behavioural consequences.” Already by the age of 5 they have poorer behaviour and cognitive assessments than their peers in no risk households.

Children with 2 or more risk factors are likely to do less well at school.

Number of risk factors	Approximate percentage	Number of risk factors	Approximate cumulative percentage
None	43%	None	43%
1	30%	At least 1	57%
2	15%	At least 2	27%
3	7%	At least 3	13%
4	3%	At least 4	6%
5	1%	At least 5	2%
6	1%	At least 6	1%
7	0.2%	At least 7	0.2%

The authors found that there are ethnic differences in the exposure to risk factors. “48 per cent of Bangladeshi families faced two or more risks, followed in order of prevalence by Pakistani families (34.4 per cent), other mixed (32.9 per cent), black African (31.4 per cent), black Caribbean (29.2 per cent), white (27.8 per cent) and Indian (20.4 per cent) families.”

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[1]  Ricardo Sabates and Shirley Dex 2012 Multiple Risk Factors in Young Children’s Development Centre for Longitudinal Studies London available at    http://www.cls.ioe.ac.uk/news.aspx?itemid=1661&itemTitle=More+than+one+in+four+UK+children+facing+multiple++risks+to+development%2c+study+finds&sitesectionid=905&sitesectiontitle=Press+Releases accessed 7^th February 2012