In Great Britain, a government study of five-year-olds has found that the children of wealthy parents have more advanced reading skills than other children, and ” the gap occurs irrespective of natural ability, parents’ education or how often mothers and fathers read to their child,” according to Amelia Hill in areport for The Observer. The survey is “a stark reality -check,” says Anne Longfield of the educational charity 4Children. “It shows that the only way to level the playing field is to look at ways of providing extra child benefit and extra educational emphasise to disadvantaged children.”