Class and Educational Achievement

Question 1

What are some of the internal factors that could impact on a students achievement, in relation to class?

Answer 1

• Their attitude to learning
• Relationships between pupils and their teachers.
• Teacher labelling
• School subcultures (pro-school, pro-education, anti-school, anti-education).

Question 2

What are some of the external factors that could impact on a students achievement, in relation to class?

Answer 2

• Money - does the student, or their family, have enough money to purchase the resources needed?
• Home background
• The level of parental support or encouragement that the student receives.
• Parental attitudes - do the parents think education is important?
• Changes in family circumstances.

Question 3

What are the usual characteristics of middle class jobs?

Answer 3

• Non-manual

- Professional

Question 4

What are the usual characteristics of working class jobs?

Answer 4

Manual (either unskilled or skilled)

Question 5

What are some of the official statistics for education?

Answer 5

• Private school classes are often half the size of state school classes.
• Private schools education 7% of British children.
• The middle class are more likely to stay in education for longer.
• Private school pupils are almost 1/2 of the children in Britain who go to universities such as Oxford and Cambridge.
• Children from the middle class, on average, perform better in education that those from working class backgrounds.

Question 6

Give three examples of policies that are used to determine a pupils class.

Answer 6

• Free school meals
• Pupil premium
• Bursary funds

Question 7

What happens to the gap in educational achievement?

Answer 7

It widens with age

Question 8

What are some of the reasons why the working class underachieve?

Answer 8

• The working class fail to socialise their children adequately which results in them becoming culturally deprived.
• Working class families tend to have a lack of resources to stimulate their children and help them through their education.
• Working class culture has deprived children of the language skills needed for education.

Question 9

How does the education system benefit the middle class?

Answer 9

As classroom dialogue, exams and textbooks are written in an elaborated speech code.

Question 10

What is compensatory education based around the idea of?

Answer 10

Positive discrimination (treating some pupils more favourably than others, usually to help them overcome their disadvantage.

Question 11

What was the purpose of compensatory education?

Answer 11

To tackle the problem of cultural deprivation in the home, by providing extra resources to schools in deprived areas.

Question 12

What was Operation Head Start, and what was its purpose?

Answer 12

• A form of compensatory education, which took place in deprived areas of the USA, in the 1960s, to help pre-school children.
• To equip parents with the parenting skills to give out nursery classes.
• To provide home visits by health and education psychologists.
• To make sure that parents from deprived backgrounds were able to support their children to make the best start in life.

Question 13

What did Sesame Street (part of Operation Head Start), allow?

Answer 13

Children to learn basic literacy and numeracy skills which their parents would then support them with at home.

Question 14

What compensatory education was introduced in the UK?

Answer 14

Educational priority areas - founded in 1960s.

Educational action zones - founded in 1990s.

Question 15

What was Sure Start, and what was its purpose?

Answer 15

Compensatory education, aimed at helping pre-school children and their parents in the year 2000.

Question 16

What are some evaluation points for ideas about cultural deprivation?

Answer 16

• Compensatory education system acts to hide the real cause of underachievement - social inequality and poverty.
• Keddie (1973) believes that rather than viewing the working class as deficient, schools should build on its strengths and challenge the anti working class ideas of teachers.
• Troyna and William (1986) believe that the problem is not the child’s language, but the attitudes of teachers towards the language that working class students use.
• Blackstone and Mortimore believe that the parents of the children can be held responsible to some extent.

Question 17

What is material deprivation?

Answer 17

The lack of material necessities such as adequate housing or income.

Question 18

What evidence is there to suggest that poverty is linked to educational underachievement?

Answer 18

• 2006 - Only 33% of students on free school meals gained 5 or more A*-C grade GCSEs.
• 90% of failing schools are in deprived areas.
• More working class children are likely to be excluded from school.

Question 19

How can housing affect the education achievement of students?

Answer 19

• It is likely that the housing that working class students live in, is overcrowded, or children find themselves living in temporary accommodation - children have to move schools more frequently as a result.
• More working class students experience health and welfare problems.
• If houses are overcrowded, in increases the chances of pupils not having a quiet place to work.

Question 20

What material factors can cause educational underachievement?

Answer 20

• Hidden costs in education which working class parents may not be able to afford.
• Not having enough money to be able to buy books and other resources, uniform, or pay for transport for example.

Question 21

How might parents not being able to afford uniform affect students?

Answer 21

• If families are having to cope with hand me downs, this can often make students feel socially excluded.

Question 22

What is the main reason why students who are entitled to free school meals, do not access them?

Answer 22

• There is a real stigma around free school meals. Only 20% of eligible students do actually make use of their entitlement.

Question 23

Why might the fact that many working class parents are only in part time employment, impact educational achievement?

Answer 23

The parents may not be able to afford books, uniform and transport, as well as the other things that students are expected to have for school.

Question 24

What internal factors affect educational achievement?

Answer 24

• Stereotyping or teacher labelling.
• Streams and sets
• Teacher ‘style’.
• Peer groups - pro/anti school subcultures

Question 25

How do teachers label students?

Answer 25

• There is evidence to suggest that teachers label students based on non-academic factors, such as stereotyped assumptions about their class.

Question 26

How can teacher labelling affect educational achievement?

Answer 26

By leading to the creation of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Question 27

How can self-fulfilling prophecies produce underachievement?

Answer 27

• If teachers have low expectations for a certain child and communicate these expectations during interactions with the student, then the student may develop a negative self-concept.
• Students may see themselves as failures and therefore stop trying, and end up for-filling the original prophecy.

Question 28

What does streaming involve?

Answer 28

• The separation of children into different ability groups called streams.
• Teaching each ‘stream’ separately for each subject.

Question 29

How might streaming impact on student attitudes and motivation?

Answer 29

• The self-fulfilling prophecy is more likely to occur when students are streamed.
• Once students have been placed into streams, it is usually difficult to move up to a higher stream, children are almost locked into a teachers low expectations of them.
• Children in the lower streams ‘get the message’ that their teachers have written them off as no hopers.
• The idea that children ‘get the message’ creates a self-fulfilling prophecy where students live up to the low expectations of their teachers, by underachieving.

Question 30

In what ways do the middle class benefit from streaming?

Answer 30

• They are likely to be placed in higher streams and therefore reflect teachers views of them being the ‘ideal pupil’
• Becoming the ‘ideal pupil’ means that they develop a more positive ‘self-concept’, gain confidence, work harder and improve their grades.

Question 31

What is a pupil subculture?

Answer 31

A group of pupils who share similar educational values and behaviour patterns.

Question 32

Why do pupil subcultures emerge?

Answer 32

As a response to the way pupils have been labelled, and in particular as a result of streaming.

Question 33

What subculture do pupils in higher streams usually belong to?

Answer 33

• Pro-school subculture.
• This is normally because, pupils who are placed in higher streams, usually middle class, tend to remain committed to the values of school.

Question 34

What are the usual characteristics of pupils who form the anti-school subculture?

Answer 34

• They are placed in lower streams and tend to be working class.
• Suffer a lack of self-esteem and feel that their school has undermined their self worth by placing them into a position of inferior status.
• Label students with failure and cause them to turn to alternative ways of gaining status, such as going against the values of school.

Question 35

What is joining an anti-school subculture likely to cause?

Answer 35

A self-fulfilling prophecy for educational failure.

Question 36

What is a possible criticism for the labelling theory? Give at least two examples.

Answer 36

• Teacher labelling supports the idea that that educational underachievement is caused by a persons social class, and therefore it is likely that working class students will be labelled by their teachers and therefore are likely to be placed in a lower stream.
• These studies are not useful in showing that schools are not neutral or fair institutions, as cultural deprivation theorists assume.
• The labelling theory has been accused of determinism. It assumes that all pupils who are labelled, have no choice, but to for-fill the prophecy and will inevitably fail. However, studies such as Fuller’s (1984) show that this is not always true.
• Marxists also criticise the labelling theory for ignoring the wider structures of power within which labelling takes place.
• The labelling theory tends to blame teachers for labelling pupils but does not explain why they do so.

Question 37

What is symbolic capital?

Answer 37

• The idea that middle class pupils are deemed by their school to be valuable.
• This is because schools have a middle-class habitus, and the pupils that are socialised into a middle class habitus at home, gain ‘symbolic capital’