The general assumption for the past 100 years has been that as income increases, so the life chances of the poor improve. History has seemed to support such a thesis. The rise in real incomes over the past half century resulted not only in higher living standards all round, but also in many children from poor families moving into well-paid employment.

More recently, though, with incomes still increasing, social mobility has stalled. The changing composition of the job market may be one reason for this. But I believe there's a more subtle and influential force at work.

Back in the Fifties, the sociologist Geoffrey Gorer wanted to understand why England had moved from being a pretty violent and uncivilised nation to one of respectability. He identified the growing trend among families for a tough-love approach to parenting during the latter half of the 19th century and into the 20th century as a key factor in this march of progress.

Parents who set clear boundaries for their children's behaviour, who love them, bond with them, read to them and teach them essential social skills, are the agents who open the doors of opportunity for them. But the end of the consensus around this style of parenting has had a devastating impact on many children's lives – particularly the poorest.

Four months ago, the Prime Minister asked me to conduct a review on poverty and life chances. Our most shocking finding so far is that we can predict the life outcomes of children by their ability level at the age of five. Hence we are developing an index to measure how successful we are at transforming the abilities of the bottom 30 per cent of children before they actually enter school for the first time.

The campaigns I headed at the Child Poverty Action Group to raise the incomes of the poorest families were obviously important. But I no longer believe that raising those incomes by, say, £50 a week, would halt the route of many poor children to, at best, a life on low pay or, at worst, unemployment. Cash benefits are not irrelevant, but by themselves they won't bring fundamental change to the life chances of the poorest.

So what should a new strategy embrace? The review will not peddle the idea that unless we intervene effectively during the first years of a child's life, all is lost. But the plain fact is that our current programme intended to balance life chances, which is carried out through schools, is not particularly effective.

In response to requests from young people, Manchester Academy is working on ways to include lessons in parenting and life skills.

Part of the trouble with the existing approach is that few young parents are aware of the help available to them. To counter this, I suggested to the Prime Minister that he establish three clear stages to our education system. Replacing early years, a new Foundation Years programme would lead up to the school years, which will, in turn, feed into the further, higher and continuing education years.

The Foundation Years would start when mothers first register as pregnant, and the most vulnerable would receive the most help. After the child reached the age of two, a new partnership would be established as parents seek good child care. The higher the quality of this care, the greater the impact on all children, but particularly the poorest.

The single objective of the programme would be to improve poorer children's life chances. One driver of opportunity could come through the early introduction of the Coalition's "pupil premium" – a cash incentive paid to a school for every underprivileged child it teaches – during the Foundation Years. This premium is likely to lead to better outcomes if it is put to good use before the child has even crossed the school threshold.

Central to the pre-school years will be a reformed network of Children's Centres, where families of under-fives can go for information and support.

The contracts to run Children's Centres should be opened up to competition, to drive down costs, but also to develop more innovative ways of finding and supporting the poorest parents. Here lies the key to profound change: the building of a strong partnership with the parents of the poorest 30 per cent of our children. With this in mind, parents should have more of a say in the running of the centres (which, incidentally, need to become more dad-friendly).

We still have a long way to go. But one research report concluded that we now know as much in theory about parental involvement affecting pupils' achievements as Newton knew about the physics of space travel. By 1650 Newton had laid out the theoretical basis of how to reach the moon. But we had to wait for more than 300 years for the theory to be understood and put into practice.

We cannot afford to wait three years, let alone 300, before we make the reforms to equalise life chances. Applying the knowledge we have about the Foundation Years will open up a new and, I believe, decisive front on the war against poverty and disadvantage.
--By Frank Field,30 Sep 2010

Frank Field is the Labour MP for Birkenhead and currently leads the Independent Review on Poverty and Life Chances