It is an inescapable fact that the well-being of the young people in our classes is at the front of our minds, so when we read that “almost two-thirds of children worry all the time”, it makes us stop and think.

According to a survey by mental-health charity Place2Be the main concerns children have are:

• Family well-being – 54%
• Well-being of friends – 48%
• School work – 41%
• Worries got in the way of school work-  40%
• Those saying that once they started worrying they could not stop –  nearly 30%
• Those saying they did not know what to do when worried – 21%

The complete fact sheet is here.  Whether you think this is the sort of thing we need to be considering or not is up to you to decide, but being informed about these issues will widen your professional understanding.

This is the Teach First charity’s analysis of Ofsted  data. They found that over 85% of the top 500 schools took a smaller proportion of disadvantaged pupils than lived in their immediate areas.

Other headline findings include:

• By age 11 only 35% of pupils from low-income backgrounds achieve the expected standards in reading, writing and maths, whereas 57% of their better-off peers hit the target
• The gap gets wider during secondary school, culminating with…
• Almost one in three 17-year-olds who are eligible for free school meals not getting to Year 13, so they’re no longer participating in education.

It is worth noting that half a million children are failing to be school-ready by age five, with a disproportionately high level coming from from low-income backgrounds.

And so it goes on:

• Those who’ve succeeded against the odds and made it to university find things don’t get a lot better. One in 12 freshers from a low income background drops out each year whereas it is nearer one in 20 from better off families
• When a student from a low-income background graduates, they tend to earn 10% less than their wealthier peers, even when accounting for subject area and institution
• Privately-educated graduates earn £4,500 more than their state school counterparts employed in top jobs three years after graduation.

The whole report is here for extra comments regarding barriers to social mobility.