Despite 50 years and more of "progressive education" in the United Kingdom, classed patterns of educational success and failure stubbornly prevail. So how, where and when does it all go wrong for the many children who continue to fail or underachieve? Drawing on the work of Basil Bernstein, this article centres processes within early years education which are claimed to help launch children into careers as either educational successes or failures. Our data suggest that children more or less happily play their lives away in the progressive play pedagogies of early years education, in the process learning their position in social and ability hierarchies that help define their future careers inside and outside schools. That such hierarchies prevail is the fault of neither teachers nor parents. Indeed, it is what early years education settings are legitimised to do: sieve and sort, and make children "school ready," pliant and prepared for a lifetime of learning to succeed or fail.