The link between poverty and educational failure has concerned many both in government and research for many years. If poverty in general does lead to educational failure, does this mean that those children born into poverty are born into a vicious circle - the cycle of poverty - that they cannot get out of? Born into poverty, poorly prepared if prepared at all for pre-school, failure when compared to others at primary school, inability to access the full curriculum at secondary school and failure when exams are taken. With such a background, how can a child born into poverty break out of the cycle?