Social Class Flashcards
Statistics
- children entitled to FSM are 27% less likely to achieve 5 GCSEs, grades 4-5
- middle class pupils make the most progress in schools and are overwhelmingly more likely to go to university
- working class pupils are more likely to be placed in lower sets
- white working class boys are the least likely to achieve in achieve in schools
External factors
- material deprivation
- cultural deprivation
- cultural capital
Smith and Nobel: significant barriers to learning
- cold, damp homes
- lack of reliable internet access
- lack of space
- poor finances
- poorer health
All contribute to a poverty penalty
Smith and Nobel - criticisms
- overly generalised and overlooks intersectionality
- measures are now in place to tackle this: FSM and pupil premium- schools get £1000 for students in need
Calender and Jackson - debt aversion
Working class students are 5x less likely to apply to university than their middle class peers. 30% of all university students are from a working class background.
Sugarman - working class subcultures
- fatalism
- collectivism
- immediate gratification
- present time orientation
Sugarman - criticisms
- oversimplified: some working class pupils may be realistic, not fatalistic
- opportunities may be blocked due to money and location
- similarities between middle and working class pupils are ignored
Bernstein - language
- restricted code
- elaborate code
Working class people often use restricted code, schools favour elaborate code; may lead to negative experiences in school.
Bernstein - criticisms
- the labour government (1990s) put compensatory education values in place to tackle it early on
- too simplistic, full of assumptions and generalisations
- lack of hard evidence
- Bernstein claims to like and have no prejudices against those who use restricted code, but often describes it as ‘improper’, ‘inadequate’, etc.
Gill Evans - cultural deprivation is a myth
- conducted an ethnographic study for 18 months
- she argues that working class parents do value education, but simply don’t incorporate its importance early in life
- 14% of children from low income backgrounds have never or rarely read a book for interest: lack of intellectual stimulation
- working class parents are less likely to attend their child’s parents evening compared to middle class parents
Gill Evans - criticisms
- social desirability effect: parents could’ve lied to Evans
- going native: Evans could’ve started having a bias
Bourdieu - cultural capital
- middle class parents possess knowledge, values, attitudes and language skills described by society that they pass down to their children to succeed in school
Cultural capital - details
Middle class parents are involved in schoolwork and school events, willing to sacrifice time and money for their children’s extracurricular activities. The education system, as a result, values middle class habitual, such as cultural participation, reading habits and participation in extracurricular activities.
Cultural capital- criticisms
Goldthorpe - takes issue with the idea that working class pupils develop an anti school culture. Points out that there has been huge expansion in education among both the middle and working classes, no evidence of increasing inequality between classes
Sullivan - believes it does have a significant effect but is only a partial explanation of class differences in attainment
Internal factors - Dunne and Gazeley
Negative teacher labelling:
Argue that school,s persistently produce working class underachievement via labels and assumptions.
Negative teacher labelling: a negative label and stereotype
Master status: a reputation
Self fulfilling prophecy: living up to people’s expectations
Anti school subculture: finding a connection with others in a similar situation
Underachievement
Negative teacher labelling- criticisms
Labelling theory is deterministic in that it assumes that labels inevitably determine particular outcomes.
Internal factors - Jo Boaler
Setting and psychological prisons:
Made a study in 2 schools. School A had mixed ability sets, school B had specific sets. Bad experiences with school B, better experiences with school A.
Internal factors - Martin Mac an Ghail
Pupil subcultures:
Observed lessons and conduct of students around school through: the use of setting and how decisions were made, the curriculum on offer, teacher/student relationships, the increasingly delicate nature of the employment market.
The macho lads, the academic achievers, the new enterprises. All primarily made of working class pupils.
Internal factors - Louise Archer
Social class identity and school:
Habitus- features of one’s identity, such as ways of speaking, dressing, outlook on life
Working class habitus is discouraged in schools = symbolic violence
Working class students either fight against it and exaggerate habitus or conform to fit in
Home schooling and the pandemic- how it affected working class students
The department of education define a disadvantaged pupil as someone who was on FSM within 5 years prior to sitting their GCSEs or someone who has been in care/adopted from care. Pupils in private schools were 5x as likely to receive almost full time teaching online. Almost 1/3 (31%) of private school pupils were provided with more than 4 hours of meetings/lessons per day compared to 71% of state pupils who received between 0-1 hours per day. The digital divide widened the social class differences in academic progress due to working class pupils being unable to get the same quality of learning as pupils with their own electronic devices, leaving them behind in some aspects. Parental education and confidence also contributed to the social class divide: parents may have had less confidence in being able to help their children in their education: 30% of graduate parents and 40% of non graduate parents reported feeling useless in helping their kids with schooling. This affected their children owns performance at school.
Diane Reay - the miseducation of the working class
Based her research on 3 things:
- a qualitative method to find out how children ‘see through’ dividing pupils by setting or streaming.
- being fully aware of their position in the hierarchy of school.
- statistical data on educational outcomes based on social class.
Found that even in good schools, pupils with working class backgrounds are still put in lower sets through evidence by students on FSM, living in council estate based on a mix of statistics, more than 500 interviews and her own personal memoir. Predominately middle class teachers can be very snobbish, resulting in middle class students feeling comfortable in school, but working class students are left with their self confidence destroyed by the school system. She also found that middle class parents use 4 strategies to ensure educational advantage for their children:
- insisting that the primary school curriculum prepares children for the the selective entrance exam after primary school,
- campaigning for setting and streaming to be introduced,
- employing private tutors,
- buying properties within catchment areas of high achieving schools.
