DEA - Class

• 3 forms of material deprivation

  1. The costs of ‘free schooling’
  2. Housing
  3. Diet and Health
• Internal factors

  1. Teacher-student relationships (labelling)
  2. The organisation of teaching and learning (the formal curriculum, setting and streaming)
  3. Pupil identities & subcultures
  4. The hidden curriculum
• Becker argues that teachers operate with an ‘ideal’ stereotype of a student in mind when they are teaching.

  They use this to judge and label students.
• Rist (1970)

  Studied an American kindergarten. Found the teachers used information about the children’s home backgrounds and their appearance to place them in separate groups. 

  • ‘The Tigers’ = labelled as fast learners, sat nearest to the teacher were mainly middle-class, neat and clean in appearance.
  • ‘The Cardinals’ & ‘The Clowns’ = labelled as lower ability, more likely to be working-class, sat further away from the teacher, given lower level work and fewer opportunities to demonstrate their abilities.
• Evaluation of the Labelling theory

  • Wider society influences stereotypes- is it really all teachers fault?
  • Home background can be argued as a reason for academic failure (Cultural Deprivation Theory)
  • Presumption that once labelled pupils automatically fall victim to the self-fulfilling prophecy and fail- but some don’t.
  • Blames teachers for labelling pupils but fails to explain why.
• Setting and streaming

  Part of comprehensivisation included ‘setting and streaming’ students based on perceived ability.

  Those who were placed into top sets and streams accessed higher quality knowledge.

  Both pupils and the knowledge they are taught are labelled as either high or low status.

  Low status knowledge was ‘common sense’ information. High status knowledge was abstract and theoretical information

  Most state schools use setting and streaming, though it is not a legal requirement
• Positives of Setting and Streaming


  • Everyone gets the education that’s right for them
  • Able students are not held back
  • Weakest students get more attention
  • Pupils can be prepared for different levels of exams
  • Helps schools to improve results and league table positions
  • Students can be allocated into qualifications that best suit their skills
• Hallam et al - Criticisms of Setting and Streaming

  1. Self fulfilling prophecy
  2. Creates feelings of inferiority or superiority
  3. Low ability streams pupils felt friendless and neglected
  4. Children in non-streamed classes had healthier attitudes to peers of different abilities.
  5. Polarises pro and anti school attitudes
  6. Develops anti school subcultures
  7. Once streamed it is difficult to get out.
  8. Does not have a great impact on positive achievement and results
• Pupil subcultures and identities

  Lacey researched a boys’ grammar school and found that streaming led to polarising boys into two subcultures, pro-school and anti-school.

  Pro-school subcultures were mostly middle class students who accepted the values of the school. They achieved better results because of this.

  Anti-school subcultures were more working class. Members of this subculture had lower self esteem and achieved poorer results due to worse behaviour and truancies.
• Woods: Complex pupil subcultures

  • Ingratiation: Pro-school- ‘teachers pet’
  • Ritualism: going through the motions, staying out of trouble
  • Retreatism: Daydreaming and messing about a bit.
  • Rebellion: Anti-school- outright rejection of everything the school stands for
  • Gender subcultures
  • Ethnic subcultures
• Furlong

  students can switch between subcultures between lessons, classes, different teachers etc.
• Tanner et al

  Poorer children may have to make do with hand-me-downs and cheaper unfashionable equipment.
• issues with housing and school

  Overcrowding: no room to do homework, disturbed sleep, lack of space to store books, sharing bedrooms with siblings.

  Temporary Housing: changing schools, no internet access, no established peer group.

  Health and welfare: accidents, cold and damp housing, infections, psychological distress, illness leading to school absences, bad smelling clothes. 

  Divorced parents: disorganisation, losing work, stress, lack of routine
• Howard

  Young people from poorer homes have lower intakes of energy, vitamins and minerals, likely to result in more illness related absences and difficulties concentrating in class.
• Wilkinson

  The lower the social class the higher the rate of hyperactivity, anxiety and conduct disorders. These are likely to have negative effects on the child’s education and are more likely to lead to absences from school.
• 3 forms of Cultural Deprivation

  1. Language
  2. Intellectual development
  3. Attitudes and values
• Sugarman 


  working-class culture has four key features that act as a barrier to educational achievement where are the middle class have the opposite values that helps them to achieve.
• Working class vs. Middle class values

  1. Fatalism vs Meritocracy
  2. Collectivism vs Individualism 
  3. Immediate gratification vs Deferred gratification
  4. Present-time orientation vs Future-time orientation
• Functionalism - is it schools fault working class children underachieve?

  • No! It’s the external factors of material and cultural deprivation that are most to blame. Schools are neutral institutions that allow all children an equal opportunity to achieve.
• Marxism - is it schools fault that working class children underachieve?

  Yes! It’s the internal factors within the education that ensure working class children underachieve. Schools are focused more on middle class culture and because of this they purposely fail working class children by ignoring their culture.
• Interactionism - Is it schools fault that working class children underachieve

  Yes! Working class children are more likely to be negatively labelled by teachers because they are least like the ideal pupil and are more likely to be placed in lower sets and streams
• New Right- is it schools fault that working class children underachieve?

  No! Working class underachieve because they are the least intelligent and least committed to school.
• Bernstein


  there are two main language codes that people use when communicating. While everyone uses the restricted code in casual speech, the middle class are able to switch into using the elaborate code, with complex sentence structures and vocabulary.