The UK also came 25th out of the 37 countries – behind Slovenia, Poland and Romania – in reading, maths and science [Image: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images].

The gap between British children from wealthy and disadvantaged backgrounds is growing because of a failure by the government to tackle inequalities in child health, education and income, according to a new Unicef report.

Warning that the UK is trailing behind a range of other developed countries by failing to reduce inequality in child well-being, the UN’s children’s rights body directly criticised the government by predicting that its ambitions to eradicate child poverty were unlikely to materialise in the near future.

Among key areas of concern, Britain was also ranked bottom out of 37 countries for the disparities in healthy eating between children from differing social and financial backgrounds.

The study, Report Card 13, which is published on Thursday, is the latest highly critical view of the UK from the UN and follows interventions such as the 2013 call by the body’s special investigator on housing for the scrapping of the bedroom tax.

Source: Unicef criticises UK’s failure to tackle child inequality as gap grows | Society | The Guardian

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