Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgements and dedication -- List of illustrations -- 1 Introduction -- Style of this book -- Overall aim -- Why should we care that there is an achievement gap? -- The costs of child poverty -- Overview of the book -- Parents - an inclusive term -- Caveat -- 2 Learning, education and schooling - clarifying the terms -- Learning -- Formal, informal and non-formal learning -- Education as generally understood -- Schooling -- Three premises -- 3 Premise 1: the achievement gap is significant -- The achievement gap in England -- Free school meals as a binary measure -- Gains in closing the gap(s) to date -- The gap starts early -- What causes the gap(s) -- One gap or many? -- Causes of the gaps -- Poverty and disadvantage -- Ethnicity -- School effects -- School readiness -- Expectations and aspirations -- 4 Premise 2: the achievement gap is systemic and malleable -- Social and cultural capital -- Parenting -- Parents' engagement with their children -- Parents mean fathers, too -- Theoretical understandings of parenting and parental engagement -- Social and sociocultural learning theories -- The importance of context -- Concepts of parental self-efficacy -- The ecological view -- Social capital and parenting -- Parenting styles -- Parents' engagement with their children's learning -- 5 Parental engagement for all parents -- Problematising parenting research -- Frameworks for parental involvement -- The Hoover-Dempsey framework -- Epstein's model -- Continued engagement -- Home learning environment -- With schools or with learning: the importance of culture -- Deficit models -- Relationships with schools -- Determinants of engagement -- Barriers to parental engagement -- Conclusion -- 6 Premise 3: parental engagement with children's learning offers the best lever to narrow the achievement gap