Nine Years Old

In 1972, Dr Margaret Pollak published her book Today's Three-Year­ Oids in London. This was a sensitive study of family life and the social environment of a large number of London children, together with an account of their developmental assessment by various test methods. She showed that variations of developmental performances were more closely related to the quality of family life than to social and economic factors. Dr Pollak has now re-investigated the same children at nine years of age and this book is a record of her findings. The differences in development which were noted at three years of age remain in the older children. Those children who, at three years of age, were underachievers, particularly in verbal and adaptive abilities, are the children who, at nine years, can still be identified by lower achieve­ ment at school. These results must be of important relevance to educationalists, and all concerned with the psychologists as well as to paediatricians welfare of children. We must all be disturbed by the failure of any children in our urban city centres to benefit from education and our anxieties must be heightened if, amongst the underachievers, there are particular groups who can be identified by their ethnic identities. In Britain, education in school occupies a relatively small part of a child's life. Dr Pollak has identified some of the factors in a child's wider experience and, especially, in the total home environment which are associated with the persistence of inferior performance.