educational attainment and social class Flashcards
(13 cards)
Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) 2022
- despite decades of policy attention, there has been no change in disadvantage gap in GCSE attainment in past 20 years
- 16 y/o who are eligible for free school meals still 27% less likely to get good GCSE grades than less disadvantaged peers
- failure ‘baked in’ at early age
- relationship between family background and attainment is not limited to the poorest but educational performance improves as family income increases
Marcus Rashford letter (2020)
- 200,000 children had to skip meals during lockdown due to families unable to access food
- 1.3 million children registered for free school meals
- 2018: 9/30 children in UK classerooms living in poverty
- Gov. wanting to cancel food voucher scheme leads to children not being able to access enough food during school holidays
How did Covid hit poor pupils?
- schools with poorer pupils had fewer live lessons
- no laptops/devices to work on so they had nothing to work on (10 hours of work max) along with parent at work (key workers) so they have nobody to supervise them
- private school students more likely to have tutor offers however those in comprehensive schools more likely to take up offered support
- 61% of schools with FSM pupils most likely to take up catch-up work
- 45% pupils in most deprived schools fell behind classmates compared to 37% comprehensive schools
- 2/3 students changed education plans
what impact did the free school meal scheme have on schools?
- obesity lebels reduced by 7-11% among children in London who adopted scheme
- making school meals universal increased up-take to those entitled to them by 8%
- 1/3 children ate lunch at school for first time
- Sharon Hodgson: ‘breaks stigma […] breaks cycle of inequalities that exist outside the school gates being reproduced in the dining halls’
what causes working class children to underachieve?
- split between WC and upper-middle class (more than 70% of top 10th families earn good GCSEs compared to 30% from poorest households
- children eligible for FSM perform significantly worse at every stage in schooling (Tanir, 2022)
- lack of resources
- less pressure to excel and may not receive as much support from parents if they didn’t thrive academically
- low cultural capital/bad parental attitudes
- education system advantages MC
- most disadvantaged 6x less likely to go to uni
- children written off to work
what is the chance that children of lone parent families will under-achieve compared to those of dual-income? what would Charles Murray say about this?
1.5%
Murray: single mothers cannot control their children
The Guardian, 2022: covid effect on SATS results for poorest pupils in England
43% of disadvantaged children met attainment target compared to 65% of non-disadvantaged pupils
what would functionalists, marxists and interactionists say causes under-attainment among WC pupils?
functionalists: WC fail because they’re not the best pupils and WC culture doesn’t value education; they would succeed otherwise as schools are meritocratic
marxists: the education system exists to legitimise ruling class power, so the system is biased against the WC, existing to oppress poorer pupils
interactionists: schools are MC institutions and teachers label WC children as failures (Becker); the children live up to labels by failing
why WC children under-achieve in school: lack of food
Avon Longitudinal Study, 2011: link between a high-fat diet and reduced intelligence in children
Liu et al for PubMed 2023: frequent consumption of individual and ultraprocessed foods may impact cognitive function in children aged 4-7
Wakeman, 2015: long term food bank users risk nutritional problems as food is processed rather than fresh
why WC children under-achieve in school: lack of resources
Smith and Noble, 1995: poor parents can’t afford additional resources like books, computers and spaces to work
Ridge, 2002: children in poverty take on jobs to supplement household income, which has negative impacts on their schoolwork
why WC children under-achieve in school: inequalities in the system
Tomlinson, 1997: marketisation creates ‘failing’ schools, choice policies ensure that more disadvantaged pupils attend schools that are at risk of acquiring ‘failing’ label
Ding, 2023: having parents from high socio-economic background doubles chance of a child being rated ‘above average’ by teachers, 2/5 MC children rated above average compared to 1/5 WC children, the effect of parenting activities is less significant than parent’s class income and educational level
Gorard, 2009: segregation in schools leads to higher clusters of disadvantaged students, 30% of pupils living in poverty would have to exchange schools if they were to be evenly spread, MC can get children into desirable schools
Chubb and Moe, 1997: private schools perform better than public schools as they’re answerable to paying parents (marketisation)
Ball, Bowe and Gerwitz, 1994: marketisation benefits MC children, beciming increasingly MC moves schools up the league table, schools engage in cream skimming and silt shifting to get the best pupils in their school, WC students end up in undersubscribed and under-funded schools
Callender and Jackson, 2004: MC more likely to partake in higher education as they’re more debt tolerant, WC less likely to join so they can stay at home and save on transport costs
Feinstein, 2003: children of wealthy parents likely to catch up, whereas those of WC parents unlikely to catch up
why WC children under-achieve in school: working class culture
Louise Archer, 2007: clothing and style are significant in the culture of young people, failure to attain style leaves young people w/o status so the poor will often work long hours in order to purchase consumer goods; street style sets up the poor in confrontation with schools who demanded middle class standards and style of dress
Sugarman, 1970: WC subculture has 4 key features that prevent the WC from moving forward educationally (fatalism, belief in fate; collectivism, valuing being part as a group; immediate gratification, leaving school ASAP and getting a dead-end job), fewer promotion opportunities in WC jobs so less encouragement, parents pass on these values through primary socialisation
Parsons et al 2021: children with reported behavioural problems at age 5 perform more poorly on a vocabulary test as teenagers in both cohorts
Bernstein, 1975: restricted code - the language used by friends/family in informal settings, basic language; elaborated code - the language used by well educated people, extensive/detailed/articulate
why WC children under-achieve in school:
Gillies, 2004: involvement in children’s education demands an investment that makes considerably more sense to MC parents, pays off in terms of greater academic success and future prospects and is likely to be experienced as a positive form of intimacy between parent and child; for WC parents and their children school is often a site of conflict and stress, hopes of their children succeeding are soon revised at an early stage of poor marks and conflict with teachers, more fundamental aspirations for their children to gain a basic education/stay out of trouble take precedence
Hubbs-Tait, 2002: MC parents are more likely to use praise and language that challenges their children’s understandings and abilities which improves their child’s cognitive ability; WC parents use less challenging language, more likely to communicate by gestures or single words
Douglas, 1964: WC children often receive less support from their parents, they’re less ambitious for their children to take less interest in their education, less likely to attend parents’ evenings
Major, 2021: MC parents of school-age children are more likely than WC parents to
- ask teachers for info regarding children’s education (61% vs 46%)
- attend open evenings (38% vs 24%)
- look at Ofsted inspection reports (41% vs 24%)
- scrutinize the latest data on pupil progress (19% vs 8%)
Feinstein, 2008: parent’s own education is the most important factor affecting children’s achievement regardless of their social class, educated parents more involved in child’s education and have high expectations, uneducated parents have harsh/inconsistent discipline which prevents child learning independence or self-control which leads to poorer motivation at school and problems interacting with teachers
