here  are  few  longitudinal  studies  of  adolescent  students’  choice  to  persist  in  post-compulsory  education. Hence, the present study introduces a longi-tudinal  model  that  describes  the  interplay  between  sociological  and  psychological  explanations  of  adolescents’  choice  to  persist  in  post-compulsory  education  in  the  UK.  Data  on  parental  education,  early  childhood  self-regulation  (age  5),  sustained  school  engagement (ages 7, 11, 14) and persistence in education after the end of compulsory schooling (age 17) were  utilised.  The  sample  comprised  8333  (51.1%  females,  89.5%  white)  children  from  the  Millennium  Cohort  Study.  Statistical  analyses  included  state–trait modelling, longitudinal mediation and multigroup moderation.  A  trait–state–occasion  model  was  run  to disentangle the trait from state variance in school engagement.  Afterwards,  two  hypotheses  were  formulated, namely the ‘instilment’ and the ‘differential’. The  ‘instilment’  hypothesis  involved  a  longitudinal  predictive  model,  whereby  parental  education  predicted  early  childhood  self-regulation  which,  in  turn,  predicted  sustained  school  engagement  which  predicted  students’  choice  to  persist.  The  ‘differential’  hypothesis  examined  whether  higher  vs.  lower  parental education changed the nature of the predictive relations  between  self-regulation,  sustained  school engagement  and  persistence.  The  results  were  in  favour  of  an  ‘instilment’  hypothesis,  whereby  higher  parental  education  was  translated  to  higher  levels  of  early  self-regulation  which  predicted  higher  sustained engagement, which, in turn, predicted greater probability  of  persisting  in  post-compulsory  education. The findings suggest a pathway from early childhood  experiences  to  educational  outcomes  via  the  development of a trait of engaging with school.