It may confirm what many of us already believed, but for the first time new research has it in black and white - if your dad's a blue-collar worker your chances of getting on to a course to become a doctor or a lawyer are slim. John Downes reports.
Just take a glance at what job a child's father does if you want to know whether they will make it onto the university course of their choice. A doctor or a lawyer's child will, on average, score about 100 more CAO points than the offspring of an electrician or a carpenter.
This fact, contained in new research conducted by Prof Colm Harmon and Dr Kevin Denny of the Institute for the Study of Social Change (ISSC), in UCD, confirms what many have previously believed.
Based on the findings of the new research, it is difficult to escape the impression that children of parents from wealthy professional backgrounds have it all. Extra grinds, money for extra-curricular activities such as trips abroad, and, in many cases, a private education, all contribute to the fact that they will perform much better in the Leaving Certificate than others from different backgrounds.
Indeed, much has been made of the growth in the number of grind schools catering to children of parents who are able to afford them. And they doubtless provide an excellent service to the students concerned. Extra study notes and intensive revision courses, paid for by their parents, all help to ensure these young people have a head start in the points race.
But what this latest research shows is that students of parents who work as tradesmen or technicians are losing out in the points race.
Before they can aspire to become a doctor or a lawyer - if that is what they want - they are stopped short by the number of points they are likely to obtain in the Leaving Cert exam.
It is worth remembering that these students may come from families where the father (and mother) have not attended university. As a result, the expectation that their child will make it to third level is not always there.
Even when it is, however, such students still face an uphill struggle to get into their chosen course at university.
By comparison, children coming from a professional background frequently have the ongoing support of parents who have been through university themselves, and know what it takes to get their child there.
Most teachers maintain that a bright and enthusiastic student, committed to their studies, stands as good a chance as anybody of getting a decent Leaving Certificate result. And many of us would like to think that the points system as it currently stands is, for all its faults, at the very least meritocratic. If you put in the work, or so the thinking goes, then you will get the result you deserve.
But the sad fact is that if you compare two young children starting out on their first day of primary school, whether they will make it on to the university course they desire depends to a large extent on what their father does for a living. While the tears and excitement of that first day might be universal, if their fathers work in different types of jobs, it is unlikely that each will have the same opportunities.
Prof Harmon and Dr Denny's research paints a very important picture of the challenges faced by students from a variety of backgrounds. It is worth noting, that it does not take account of the occupation of the student's mother. Nevertheless, there is, say the authors, a direct link between Leaving Certificate points, social class and university participation: children whose fathers work in skilled, semi-skilled or unskilled jobs stand a much lower chance of getting into university through the current CAO points system.
This is particularly true of high-points courses, such as medicine. Indeed, even the proposed new system of entry to medicine, intended to widen access to the profession, has as its starting point a minimum requirement of 450 points, well beyond what children of unskilled workers generally obtain.
"Children from wealthy backgrounds get the highest marks and the distribution of marks from the Leaving Certificate to a large extent mirrors the distribution of income," Harmon and Denny state.
"Young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are far less likely to attend third level, particularly the universities, because they either don't complete the secondary-school cycle or, when they do, their Leaving Certificate scores are not as high as children from wealthier backgrounds."
Clearly if your father is a doctor or a lawyer, you stand an excellent chance of getting a place in university. But in today's Ireland, if your father works as a carpenter, or is unemployed, it is a different matter entirely.
Addressing the difficulties faced by such students is unlikely to be easy.
Earlier intervention, at both pre-school and primary level, is one worthwhile approach. All the evidence suggests that the provision of supports to those students wishing to strive for a place at third level, whatever their background, can have a real impact.
This is particularly true when such support is accompanied by initiatives to encourage parental education in families with low educational attainment.
Another possibility might be to level the playing field, by ensuring that every child has the same access to extra tuition and extra-curricular activities, regardless of their parents' bank balance.
But clearly, as with much of education policy, whether the political will - and corresponding funding - exists for such initiatives is another matter entirely.
What seems in little doubt, however, is that the ISSC's latest research has wide-ranging implications for Ireland as we strive towards the creation of a so-called knowledge economy. This is a fact not lost on Harmon or Denny.
While much progress has been made in increasing participation rates in third level here, there remain real barriers to certain professions, they say.
"The chances of a poorer child becoming a doctor or lawyer are very slim," they say. "They might expect to be a computer technician - and this is progress - but it is not an argument that barriers have broken down in educational choices."
