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Few children in the class have excellent marks.
Few of the children in the class have excellent marks.
Do you see the difference in the meaning? Is there really the need to use the second version, or is it useless? If it's the same rule as with a determiner "some", then I know that the correct answer is only the second one.
In general, "of the" indicates that there is a specific group of children. In your example, however, the phrase, "... in the class..." does that job by specifying exactly what the group of children is, so "of the" is redundant, and therefore entirely optional.
Without a specifying phrase like "... in the class...", there is a difference. In "Few children have excellent marks", it's ambiguous whether you're referring to children in general, or some particular group of children, whereas in "Few of the children have excellent marks", it's clear there's a specific group of children, even though it hasn't been described in the context.
