Signs it’s August? Combines back in the fields, Kilkenny back in the All-Ireland final, and suggestive headlines on the front page of the Irish Independent regarding farm families and education.

This year’s offering arrived on Wednesday: “Children of farmers are three times more likely to go to college,” it proclaimed.

The inference is that farmers’ children have some advantage that gives them an inside track. This is confirmed by the lines “ongoing and wide social divides when it comes to attending college are exposed by a new report”.

It’s never made clear what exactly farmers have and others lack that leads to this phenomenon, which seems to so obsess the Indo.

Could it be farmers’ income? Well, that’s unlikely, as the average farming income lags way behind the average industrial wage.

Is it privilege? Unlikely as well. The points system allows little scope for undue influence to gain preferential access to third-level education for farmers’ kids.

Perhaps it’s the grant system. The Indo has suggested this in the past, but IFA chief economist Rowena Dwyer firmly debunked that particular urban myth last year, showing that about half of children from farm families who attend college are grant-aided, absolutely in line with what income levels in the sector would suggest.

The reason children from farm families attend third-level institutions in such numbers is because their families place a massive priority on education. Children are driven to strive, to work hard and to have high aspirations from school and life. In The Dealer’s experience, mothers on Irish farms play a particularly strong role in this regard.

The aspirational want their children to have a better life than they did, and make sacrifices to prioritise their children’s education. It’s an attitude not unique to farmhouses. A whole generation from terraced houses and rural cottages took the opportunities provided by free education to succeed in education and in life.

Another point to be made is that perhaps the statistics might suggest the smaller rural and village schools attended by many farm families have much to commend them. Ruairi Quinn wanted to close them down, we were told. Perhaps new Minister for Education Jan O’Sullivan will have a more enlightened view.