Following her wide-ranging study of the conditions in which young people are growing up across this country, children’s commissioner Rachel de Souza offers some bleak conclusions.
A third of five-year-olds are unprepared for school, one in eight children feel unsafe in their neighbourhood, over half fail to achieve an acceptable standard in GCSE maths and English and at least one million get referrals.
There are stark local variations. A quarter of children in Croydon feel unsafe, while pupils in Blackpool are nearly 30 times more likely to be missing school than in Lambeth.
Ms de Souza says we are in the throes of
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