sociology edu

• According to Sutton Trust, in a three year period, one public school alone - Eton - sent 211 pupils to Oxbridge, while over 1,300 state schools sent none
• Centre for Longitudinal Studies found that by the age of three, children from disadvantaged backgrounds are already up to one year behind those from more privileged homes
• Where parents use language that challenges their children to evaluate their own understanding or abilities (what do you think?/are you ready for the next step?)

  Cognitive performance improves
• Feinstein found that educated parents are more likely to use language in this way
• Feinstein found that educated parents are more likely to use praise - children develop a sense of their own competence
• Feinstein argues that parents' own education is the most important factor affecting children's achievement


  Since m/c parents are better educated, they are able to give their children an advantage by how they socialise them
• Bereiter and Englemann claim that language used in lower-class homes is deficient


  As a result children fail to develop language skills
• Douglas found that w/c parents placed less value on education
• Bernstein and Young found that m/c mothers are more likely to buy educational toys, books and activities that encourage reasoning skills and stimulate intellectual development
• Sugerman argues that the w/c subculture has four key features that act as a barrier to educational achievement

  Fatalism, collectivism, immediate gratification, and present-time orientation
• Keddie describes cultural deprivation as a myth and sees it as a victim blaming explanation

  A child cannot be deprived of its own culture. m/c and w/c children are culturally different and not deprived. m/c children fail as a result of the biassed education system
• Troyna and Williams argue that the problem is not the child's language but the school's attitude towards it

  Teachers have a speech hierarchy = m/c speech then w/c speech then black speech
• Blackstone and Mortimore argue that w/c parents attend fewer parents evenings not due to lack of interest but because they work much longer hours (multiple shifts) or because they are put of by the m/c atmosphere
• Department for Education state that barely a ⅓ of pupils eligible for fsm achieve 5 or more gcse as against nearly ⅔ of other pupils
• Flaherty argues that money problems in the family are are a significant factor in young children's non-attendance at school
• Flaherty argues that fear of stigmatisation explains why 20% of those eligible for fsm do not take up on their entitlement
• 90% of 'failing' schools are located in deprived areas
• Howard notes that young people from poorer homes have lower intakes of energy, vitamins and minerals. Poor nutrition affects health resulting in more absences from school due to illness
• Wilkinson found that among 10yo the lower the social class, the higher the rate of hyperactivity, anxiety and conduct disorders, which all will have a negative effect of the child's education
• Blanden and Machin found that children from low income families were more likely to engage in 'externalising' behaviour which disrupt schooling
• Bull = the costs of free schooling. Children from poorer families will have to do without equipment and miss out on experiences that would enhance their educational achievement
• Tanner = costs of books, computers, calculators and art equipment places a burden on w/c families. As a result w/c children have to make do with hand me downs with may result in stigmatisation and bullying
• Smith and Noble add that poverty acts as a barrier to learning in other ways, such as inability to afford tuition, and forcing them to apply to poorer quality local schools
• Ridge found that children in poverty take on jobs having a negative impact on school
• Callender and Jackson found that w/c students are far more debt averse (saw debt as negative and something to be avoided) and so they were less likely to apply to university
• Tuition fees increased to £9000 in 2012, and applications fell by 8.6% compared in the previous year
• Reay found that w/c pupils were more likely to apply to local universities to cut back on costs such as housing etc, giving them less opportunity to go to the highest status universities
• Mortimore and Whitty argue that material inequalities have the greatest effect on achievement
• Robinson argues that tackling child poverty would be the most effective way to boost achievement
• Bordieu argues that educational, economic, and cultural capital can be converted into one another
• Sullivan found that where pupils of different classes had the same level of cultural capital, m/c pupils still did better. She concludes that the greater resources and aspirations of m/c pupils explains the remainder of the class gap in achievement
• Becker found that teachers judged pupils according to how closely they fitted an image of the 'ideal pupil'
• Dunne and Gazeley argue that schools persistently produce w/c underachievement because of the labels and assumptions of teachers
• Rist found that teachers used information about children's home background and appearance to place them in separate groups, seating each group at a different table
• Rosenthal and Jacobson show the self-fulfilling prophecy at work. They labelled some pupils as gifted and the rest as normal. When they returned to the school a year later they found that teachers treated each pupil according to their label. Half the pupils with the 'gifted' label internalised it and improved significantly
• Douglas found that pupils placed in lower streams at age 8 had suffered a decline in IQ by age 11
• Gillborn and Youdell show how teachers use stereotypical notions of 'ability' to stream pupils. w/c and black pupils are seen to have less ability and so they are put in lower streams
• Gillborn and Youdell = 'educational triage'


  Teachers sort pupils into 3 categories: those who will pass anyway and can be left to get on with it, those with potential who with help can get a better grade, hopeless cases, those who will fail
• Publishing league tables lead to the educational triage
• Lacey uses concepts of differentiation and polarisation to explain how pupil subcultures develop


  Differentiation = teachers categorise pupils according to how they perceive their ability, attitude and/or behaviour. Streaming is an example. Polarisation = process in which pupils respond to streaming by moving towards one or two opposite 'poles' (pro and anti school subculture)