Class Differences in Education – External Factors

MATERIAL FACTORS:

  • According to the Department for Education, barely a third of pupils eligible for free schools meals (FSM) – a widely used measure of child poverty – achieve five or more GCSEs at A*-C including English and Maths, as against nearly two-thirds of other pupils.

  • According to Jan Flaherty, money problems in the family is a significant factor in younger children’s non-attendance at school.

  • Exclusion and truancy are more likely for children from poorer families. Children excluded from school are unlikely to return to mainstream education, while a third of all persistant truants leave school with no qualifications.

  • Nearly 90% of ‘failing schools’ are located in deprived areas.

  • This suggests a major cause of educational achievement is money and resources (material background).

    • This would make a difference to educational achievement because pupils need money to buy educational resources (like books), parents will be less stressed by finances – creating a more comfortable and encouraging environment; undernourished children will have less energy to put into school work.

OVERCROWDED HOUSING:

  • Poor housing – indirect effects on health – overcrowding runs a greater risk of accidents – cold and damp causes ill health.

  • No quiet place to do work.

  • Will probably have to look after others in the house.

  • Illness will spread easily within overcrowded housing.

  • No place to ‘yourself’ to relax – detrimental to young child – deprives them from learning about their environment.

  • Need to split resources more between all the people.

DIET AND HEALTH:

  • No access to activity clubs because of lack of money.

  • Low immunity – more prone to illness.

  • ‘Unhealthy’ foods are typically cheaper to make than meals with healthy ingredients – they don’t supply necessary nutrients meaning the child lacks vitamins and minerals.

  • Poor sleep causes low energy for work.

  • Poor diet leads to low energy – no energy for work as it’s all put into surviving.

  • Wilkinson: among 10 year olds, the lower the social class, the higher the rate of hyperactivity, anxiety and conduct disorders.

  • Lack of warmth causes the body to become more frail – causes poor health that leads to lack of attention – parents may not be able to afford medicines to keep children health.

FINANCIAL SUPPORT AND THE COST OF EDUCATION:

  • Financial support is provided in school but only in school and doesn’t help the root cause.

  • Equipment needed for school is expensive and therefore parents with less resources can’t afford it – leads to children being bullied, isolated and stigmatised.

  • Lack of homework space & comforts and resources.

  • Parents can’t keep buying uniform – kids bullied for looking ‘different’.

FEAR OF DEBT:

  • Children may have to work part-time to support the family.

  • Arguments that disrupt the child from doing their work.

  • Children are likely to look after younger siblings.

  • Marketisation leads to better resourced and oversubscribed schools in affluent areas while lower classes are populated in unpopular schools.

  • A lot of low income families won’t have members that’ll go to university due to fear of debt.

  • Causes lack of attention as children have bigger concerns at home.

EVALUATION OF MATERIAL FACTORS:

  • Possible Solution – Excellence in Cities:

    • Aims to improve the education of children in the inner cities by providing a number of measures, including:

      • Better resourcing schools to enable them to specialise in particular vocational needs.

      • Providing learning mentors to reduce the number of pupils excluded.

      • Special provision for those in danger of being excluded.

      • Other resources to encourage gifted and talented pupils to stay in education post-16 and aspire to higher education, especially from families who hadn’t themselves been to university.

  • This offers a solution because it gives support to those who are disadvantaged financially and allows or encourages them to get as much education as possible without the fear of being a financial burden or reaping the results of a financially struggling household.

CULTURAL FACTORS – LANGUAGE:

  • Hubbs-Tait et al:

    • Questioning that improves cognitive ability – What do you think? Are you ready for the next step?

  • Fernstein:

    • Educated parents ask the type of questions that improve cognitive ability.

    • Educated parents are more likely to use encouragement and praise.

  • Bereiter and Engelmann:

    • Code 1:

      • Has limited vocabulary and is based on the use of short, often unfinished, grammatically simple sentences. Speech is predictable and may involve one single word, or even just a gesture instead. It’s descriptive not analytical. It’s context-bound, the speaker assumes that listener shares the same set of experiences.

    • Code 2:

      • Has a wider vocabulary and is based on longer grammatically more complex sentences. Speech is more varied and communicates abstract ideas. The elaborated code is context-free, the speaker doesn’t assume that the learner shares the same experiences, and so they use language to spell out their meanings explicitly for the listener.

    • Code 1 is restricted speech code.

    • Restricted speech code is used more by working-class parents.

    • Claim the language used in lower-class homes is deficient.

    • Describe lower-class families as communicating by gestures, single words or disjointed phrases.

    • This means children fail to develop the necessary language skills.

      • Grow up incapable of abstract thinking and unable to use language to explain, describe, enquire or compare.

      • This means they’re unable to take advantage of opportunities at school.

ELABORATED SPEECH CODE:

  • The elaborated speech code is the language used by teachers, textbooks and exams.

  • It’s seen as the correct way to speak and write; and also, according to Bernstein, it’s also a more effective tool for analysing and reasoning and for expressing thoughts clearly and effectively – essential skills in education.

  • Early socialisation into the elaborated code means middle-class children are fluent users of the code when they start school.

  • They feel ‘at home’ in school and are more likely to succeed.

  • Working class children are likely to feel excluded and less likely to achieve.

  • Bernstein feels children aren’t failing because they don’t know the code, but because schools aren’t teaching the code.

PARENTS:

  • Their awareness of educational needs/behaviour:

    • Parents who understand and help their children with educational needs/behaviour will have higher achieving children as they will have the resources to help as much as possible.

  • What they use their income for:

    • If they use their income to buy the child the supplies and resources they need then the child will achieve more.

  • Their own education:

    • Parents who are well educated and appreciated their education will be more encouraging to achievement of their child.

  • Their style of parenting:

    • Parents who encourage their child to do their best and work as hard as they can will have children who achieve better. Those who aren’t encouraging will have children who don’t bother trying.

FERNSTEIN:

  • Found that parental education has an influence on a child’s achievement regardless of class or income.

  • So, within any given social class, better educated parents have children who are more successful at school.

    • This might help explain why all working-class children don’t do equally badly, and why all middle-class children aren’t equally successful.

CULTURES AND VALUES:

  • Working-class students may also underperform in education as the attitudes of their parents towards education differ to those of mainstream society,

  • There’s a working-class subculture.

  • This subculture has four features that act as a barrier to education:

    • Immediate gratification: seeking pleasure now rather than making sacrifices in order to get rewards in the future.

    • Fatalism: a belief in fate – that ‘whatever will be will be’ and there’s nothing you can do to change your status.

    • Present-time orientation: seeing the present as more important than the future and so not having long-term goals or planes.

    • Collectivism: valuing being part of a group more than succeeding as an individual.

  • Middle-class values:

    • Future gratification: seeking rewards that will come later on in life (deferred gratification).

    • A belief in self-fulfilling and that you work towards what you want to achieve.

    • Future-time orientation: having long-term goals and plans, future more important than present.

    • Individualism: valuing succeeding as an individual rather than being part of a group.

EVALUATION:

  • Possible solution – Compensatory Education:

    • Operation Headstart was a multi-billion dollar scheme introduced in the USA in the 1960s.

    • It included improving parenting skills, setting up nursery classes and home visits by educational psychologists.

    • Started the well-known TV programme Sesame Street.

  • Sure Start:

    • Was a major element in the New Labour’s policies to tackle poverty and social exclusion.

    • By 2010 there were 3,500 centres, with all young children in the most disadvantaged areas having access to one.

    • Provide integrated education, care, family support, health services and support with parental employment.

    • Aim is to work with parents to promote the physical, intellectual and social development of babies and young children so they can flourish at home and school and break the cycle of disadvantage.

    • When many centres were closed after 2011, this resulted in a decline in support towards achieving well in an educational environment. Will lower results of educational achievement.

CULTURAL DEPRIVATION THEORY AND ATTITUDES:

  • Keddie describes cultural deprivation as a myth and sees it as a victim-blaming explanation.

    • Points out that a child can’t be deprived of its own culture and argues that working-class children are simply culturally different, not culturally deprived.

    • The problem is the middle-class education system.

    • Believes working class culture should be recognised and built on, and teachers’ anti-working class prejudices tackled.

  • Troyna and Williams agree saying teachers have a speech hierarchy; middle-class – working class – black speech.

    • It’s the school’s attitude to language not the child that’s the problem.

  • Blackstone and Mortimer argue that working class parents attend less parents’ evenings not because of lack of interest, but because they work longer hours, or are put off by the school’s middle class atmosphere.

    • There’s also evidence that the communication system between parents and teachers is less effective in working class schools, making it harder for parents to keep in touch about their child’s progress.

  • This suggests that their culture is just different and not ‘incorrect’ and they’re not deprived. Their speech is perfectly fine – just not respected by those of the middle class.

CULTURAL KNOWLEDGE AND MATERIAL DEPRIVATION:

  • Sullivan used questionnaires to conduct a survey of 465 pupils in four schools.

  • She asked them about a range of activities, such as reading and TV viewing habits, and whether they visited art galleries, museums and theatres.

  • She also tested their vocabulary and knowledge of cultural figures.

  • Found that those who read complex fiction and watched serious TV documentaries developed a wider vocabulary and greater cultural knowledge.

  • The children of graduates had the most knowledge and were more likely to be successful at GCSE.

  • However, cultural knowledge only accounted for part of the difference.

  • Where pupils had the same level of cultural knowledge, middle class students still did better.

  • Sullivan concluded that greater resources and aspirations of middle class families accounted for the gap in achievement.

BOURDIEU:

  • Argues that both material and cultural factors contribute to educational achievement and that they shouldn’t be treated separately, but as interrelated.

  • Identifies three ‘types’ of capital to explain his argument.

  • Cultural capital: knowledge, attitudes, values, language, tastes and abilities. Middle class children acquire the ability to grasp, analyse and express abstract ideas. They develop intellectual interests and an understanding of what is required for success in education. In school middle class culture is transmitted and working class culture seen as ‘rough’ and inferior. Many working class students ‘get the message’ and truant, leave early and/or don’t try.

  • Economic capital: wealth.

  • Educational capital: affording private school and/or private tuition or living near a good school.

  • In Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital, one form leads to another as all factors allow the person to have the resources and knowledge in order to be successful.

  • Sullivan’s study shows that Bourdieu’s ideas are right.