Education

SOCIAL CLASS AND EDUCATION

Statistics on education show us that students from poorer backgrounds statistically achieve significantly worse in school than students from richer backgrounds.The best way of predicting educational performance is parental income.

PETER SAUNDERS- (USE IN INTRODUCTION)- He argues that over time the less intelligent genes have filtered to the bottom of the class system,therefore the current working class students in the education system have significantly lower intelligence than the middle class.DOUGLAS- PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT- He found that the amount of parental interest and encouragement someone has,has a huge impact on their educational performance.Middle class parents are far more likely to attend parents evenings/visit school to meet teachers etc.They also encourage their children more to stay into post-16 education.BARRY SUGARMAN- He argues that middle class parents are future orientated- they encourage their children to defer gratification- to put off the opportunity of earning money full time,because if they study further- A-levels/Degree etc. they will earn a lot more in the long term.Working class students have immediate gratification.They choose to have a full-time job at 16.This creates issues in school because they know they are going to leave at 16 so see no point in aiming high and trying to succeed.This explains why they perform badly in school.BASIL BERNSTEIN- LANGUAGE CODES- He explains the gap in the achievement between working class(w/c) + middle class(m/c) through language; M/C students able to speak the elaborated language code- this is formal language with a wide vocabulary + sophisticated grammar.W/C students are able to speak restricted language code- informal/slang language,peer vocabulary + grammar.The education system uses + expects the elaborated code- this gives M/C students a huge advantage.ROSENTHAL + JACOBSEN- They conducted some research on the power of teacher labelling.They went into primary schools and conducted IQ tests on students,made up the results and went back in at the end of year to monitor their progress.The students randomly allocated on above average IQ had performed the best,while the students randomly allocated a below average IQ had performed the worst.The power of teacher labelling creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.M/C students are far more likely to be labelled in a positive manner by teachers- this explains why they do better in school.STEVE BALL- He looked at how teacher labelling impacts on setting and streaming.He found that teachers tended to expect students from middle class backgrounds to perform better and therefore placed them into higher sets,whilst the reverse was true for those from working class backgrounds; teachers labelled them negatively and they ended up in the lower sets.

ETHNICITY AND EDUCATION

Statistics show that there is a clear gap in educational attainment between different ethnic groups.The best performing groups achieving significantly higher than the worst ones.The worst performing ethnic groups are; AFRO-CARIBBEANS and BANGLADESHI'S.INDIANS and CHINESE are the top performers. 

OUTSIDE SCHOOL FACTORS;PILKINGTON- He argues that the differences in achievement are actually not linked to ethnicity at all.Children of Bangladeshi and Afro-Caribbean backgrounds tend to come from the poorest areas in society.The underachievement of these groups in education is caused by poverty- it has very little to do with their ethnicity.CULTURAL DEPRIVATION- Many sociologists argue that ethnic minority students have a different socialisation to many white students and this causes their underachievement.PRYCE talks about how most Afro-Caribbean families are lone-parents with the mother in charge(matriarchal).This particularly disadvantages the boys who grow up without a strong male role model.LANGUAGE- There are many ethnic minority students in the UK for whom English is a second language(this is a minority now though).This causes them issues when starting school(although most eventually catch-up),because their parents may not be able to read or write English to a good standard and therefore will not be able to assist with homework.

IN-SCHOOL FACTORS;ETHNOCENTRISM- This is the idea that the curriculum in UK school does not reflect the multi-ethnic nature of the population.COARD talks about how the 'important' people are almost exclusively white,whilst ethnic minority art,literature,music and contributions to science are uniformly ignored.The lack of positive presentations of their cultures produces low self-esteem.LACK OF ROLE MODELS- There are just over 2% of teachers in the UK from ethnic minority backgrounds- the figure should be around 15%.This does not give students from minority backgrounds positive role models.TEACHER RACISM- CECILE WRIGHT- She conducted a study which found that many teachers treated ethnic minority students differently.In interviews they all claimed to treat students fairly,but her observations all found that Asian children received the least attention from teachers and when the teachers did address them it was in overly-simplified language.Teachers also displayed insensitivity towards their customs and traditions.

GENDER AND SUBJECT CHOICE

IT WILL ONLY EVER BE A 17 MARKER,therefore only two reasons are needed.

INNATE ABILITY- One reason is that boys and girls are naturally better at different subjects.Boys choose maths/science based subjects because they are better at numbers than girls,whereas girls choose language base subjects because they are better at communication.  The most 'male' subjects are Physics(76%),Computing(73%) and Maths(60%). The most 'female' subjects are English Literature(71%),Sociology(69%) and Modern Languages(68%)

2.  GENERAL PERCEPTIONS- Certain careers are deem end to be mainly for males(engineering etc),whereas careers like nursing,primary teaching etc are deemed to be mainly for females.Students who want to follow these career paths are therefore more likely to choose subjects at GCSE and A-Levels that link closely to these careers.To an extent there is an element of the self-fulfilling prophecy- the cycle keeps repeating itself simply because people are aware of the cycle.

Social Class and Education

Ethnicity and Education

Gender and Subject Choice