Topic 1 education

• Social class background


  • Has a powerful influence on a child's chances of success in the education system
  • Children from middle-class families on average perform better than working-class children
  • The class gap in achievement grows wider as children get older
  • Children of the middle class do better at GCSE
  • Stay longer in full-time education
  • Take the great majority of university places
• Private schools


  • Educate only 7% of Britain's children
  • Account for nearly half of all students entering the elite universities of Oxford and Cambridge
• One public school alone - Eton - sent 211 pupils to Oxbridge, while over 1,300 state schools sent no pupils at all to these universities
• The existence of private education does not account for class differences within state education
• Internal factors


  Factors within schools and the education system, such as interactions between pupils and teachers, and inequalities between schools
• External factors


  Factors outside the education system, such as the influence of home and family background and wider society
• Cultural deprivation


  • Class differences in children's development and achievement appear very early in life
  • By age 3, children from disadvantaged backgrounds are already up to one year behind those from more privileged homes
  • The gap widens with age
• Cultural deprivation


  • Many working-class families fail to socialise their children adequately
  • These children grow up 'culturally deprived'
  • They lack the cultural equipment needed to do well at school and so they underachieve
• Aspects of cultural deprivation


  • Language
  • Parents' education
  • Working-class subculture
• Language


  • An essential part of the process of education
  • The way in which parents communicate with their children affects their cognitive intellectual development and their ability to benefit from the process of schooling
• Restricted code


  • The speech code typically used by the working class
  • Has a limited vocabulary
  • Based on the use of short, often unfinished, grammatically simple sentences
  • Speech is predictable and may involve only a single word, or even just a gesture instead
  • It is descriptive not analytic
  • Context-bound
• Elaborated code


  • Typically used by the middle class
  • Has a wider vocabulary
  • Based on longer, grammatically more complex sentences
  • Speech is more varied and communicates abstract ideas
  • Context-free
• Working-class pupils fail not because they are culturally deprived, but because schools fail to teach them to use the elaborated code
• Parents' education


  • A key factor affecting children's achievement
  • Working-class parents placed less value on education
  • They were less ambitious for their children, gave them less encouragement and took less interest in their education
  • They visited schools less and were less likely to discuss their children's progress with teachers
• How educated parents give their children a head start


  • Parenting style that emphasises consistent discipline and high expectations
  • Engaging in educational behaviours like reading to their children, teaching them letters, numbers, songs, poems and nursery rhymes, painting and drawing, helping with homework and being actively involved in their schooling
  • Using their income to buy educational toys, books and activities that encourage reasoning skills and stimulate intellectual development
  • Having a better understanding of nutrition and its importance in child development
• Even within a given social class, better educated parents tend to have children who are more successful at school
• Working-class subculture


  • Has different goals, beliefs, attitudes and values from the mainstream culture
  • Acts as a barrier to educational achievement
  • Features: anti-school attitudes, immediate gratification, fatalism, and lack of future orientation
• Fatalism


  A belief in fate - that whatever will be will be and there is nothing you can do to change your status
• Collectivism


  Valuing being part of a group more than succeeding as an individual
• Immediate gratification


  Seeking pleasure now rather than making sacrifices in order to get rewards in the future
• Present-time orientation


  Seeing the present as more important than the future and so not having long-term goals
• Parental attitudes towards education


  • Parents with poor personal experiences of education may identify the researcher with the school and refuse to participate
  • Some parents may see questions about parental support for their child's education as 'getting at' them or attempting to portray them as bad parents
  • If the researcher can gain parents' trust, they may be more willing to talk because it gives them the opportunity to speak about their feelings towards school
  • Parents are not easily contacted, except through school, so the researcher has to depend on the head's cooperation
  • Another way of contacting parents is through the school's parents association, but the middle class are more likely to get involved in such organisations, which may reduce representativeness
  • Issues such as truancy or parental support are sensitive, and parents may be defensive about their role, for example exaggerating the support they give
  • Parents are used to receiving and returning communications from school and may see involvement in the research as a useful aspect of their relationship with the school
  • Some parents have literacy or language problems or may find it difficult to articulate their feelings
• Working-class children internalise the beliefs and values of their subculture through the socialisation process, which results in them underachieving at school
• Middle-class values


  Encourage long-term planning and a willingness to invest time and effort in gaining qualifications
• Working-class values


  Jobs are less secure and have no career structure through which individuals can advance, and there are few opportunities for advancement and earnings peak at an early age
• Cultural deprivation theorists argue that parents pass the values of their class to their children through socialisation, and middle-class values equip children to succeed whereas working-class values fail to do so
• Compensatory education programmes


  • Aim to tackle the problem of cultural deprivation by providing extra resources to schools and communities in deprived areas
  • Intervene early in the socialisation process to compensate children for the deprivation they experience at home
  • The best known example is Operation Head Start in the United States, a multi-billion dollar scheme of pre-school education in poorer areas introduced in the 1960s, with the aim of 'planned enrichment' of the deprived child's environment to develop skills and instil achievement motivation
  • In Britain, there have been several compensatory education programmes, such as Educational Priority Areas, Education Action Zones and Sure Start, a nationwide programme aimed at pre-school children and their parents
• Nell Keddie (1973) describes cultural deprivation as an 'alibi' and sees it as a victim-blaming explanation, dismissing the idea that failure at school can be blamed on a child's deprived home background
• Keddie argues that working-class children are simply culturally different, not culturally deprived, and that schools should recognise and build on the strengths of working-class culture rather than seeing it as deficient
• Barry Troyna and Jenny Williams (1986) argue that the problem is not the child's language but the school's attitude towards it, with teachers having a speech hierarchy that labels middle-class speech highest, followed by working-class speech and finally black speech
• Tessa Blackstone and Mortimore (1994) argue that working-class parents attend fewer parents' evenings, not because of a lack of interest but because they work longer or less regular hours or are put off by the school's middle-class atmosphere, and that they may want to help their child progress but lack the knowledge and education to do so
• Material deprivation


  Poverty and a lack of material necessities such as adequate housing and income
• Poverty is closely linked to educational underachievement, with pupils eligible for free school meals (a measure of child poverty) achieving much lower GCSE results than other pupils
• Money problems in the family are a significant factor in younger children's non-attendance at school, and exclusion and truancy are more likely for children from poorer families
• Nearly 90% of 'failing' schools are located in deprived areas
• How poor housing can affect pupils' achievement


  • Overcrowding can make it harder for the child to study, with less room for educational activities, nowhere to do homework, disturbed sleep from sharing beds or bedrooms, etc.
  • For young children, development can be impaired through lack of space for safe play and exploration
  • Families living in temporary accommodation may have to move frequently, resulting in constant changes of school and disrupted education
  • Poor housing can also have indirect effects, such as increased risk of accidents and health problems, leading to more absences from school
• There is a close link between poverty and social class, with working-class families much more likely to have low incomes or inadequate housing
• Young people from poorer homes have lower intakes of energy, vitamins and minerals, which can affect their health and energy levels, leading to more absences from school and difficulties concentrating
• Children from poorer homes are also more likely to have emotional or behavioural problems, which are likely to have a negative effect on their schooling
• Financial support and the costs of education

  Lack of financial support means that children from poor families have to do without equipment and miss out on experiences that would enhance their educational achievement