Using a large-scale household survey, we investigate how disparities in learning change over the primary school cycle. Even controlling for other factors, household wealth and parental schooling drive sizeable gaps in learning, increasing in magnitude over the school grades. Gender gaps also widen, although only among the poorest. In contrast to other countries, overage status is positively associated with learning early on, but its importance dissipates by later grades. While the importance of factors varies across states, household wealth predominates. The analysis highlights the importance of tackling disadvantage associated with poverty early, to avoid its effects on learning becoming entrenched., The authors are grateful to the UK Department for International Development who funded our ‘think piece’ on overcoming learning inequalities by 2030 (Rose and Alcott, 2015), and ESRC-DFID (ES/M005445/1) for funding of the Teaching Effectively All Children (TEACh), both of which have contributed to the analysis in this paper. Views expressed here are those of the authors and are not necessarily shared by ESRC or DFID or any of the partner institutions.