A key focus of the Children’s School Lives (CSL) longitudinal study is to understand the factors which shape children’s experiences of their learning and ultimately their capacities to flourish both in the here and now as children, but also in their future lives as adults. Our previous report into the wellbeing of children (Report 7) highlighted attributes related to children’s feelings about themselves and their lives in school – levels of happiness, worry, interest in learning as well as sense of accomplishment and meaning in life. In this report we locate children’s flourishing within the wider social context of differences in wealth, poverty, social status and belonging in the society at large. It is children, including those in primary school, who are at greatest risk of poverty1 (CSO 2024) in Ireland. While all children have a right to education, as enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, (Assembly, U. G. [1989]. Convention on the Rights of the Child. United Nations, Treaty Series, 1577[3], 1–23.) children’s capacity to realise these rights within education is influenced by the social, material and economic conditions of their everyday lives. This is especially important with respect to the earlier years of education, including in primary schools, where the foundations for children’s educational trajectories are established.