Student Experience

• Differentiation & polarisation

  • Differentiation is the process by which pupils are ranked and categorised into different streams or sets.
  • Polarisation is when pupils become divided into opposing groups or ‘poles’; those labelled as top-stream conformist high achievers and those labelled as lower stream failures.
• Responses

  • Differentiation and polarisation can then lead to a range of subcultural responses, including pro- and anti-school subcultures.
• Pro-school subcultures

  • Pro-school subcultures encourage peer-group support for success in education and are most likely found among middle-class or skilled working-class backgrounds.
• Anti-school subcultures

  • Anti-school subcultures are those likely to adopt a set of delinquent values as a means to resist a system of schooling that has labelled them as failures.
• Woods

  • Woods found that there were a range of responses between pro- and anti-school subcultures that would change over time as pupils moved through different stages of schooling; this might be different in respect of gender, class, and ethnicity.