Examine the view that the school is the most important factor in childrens achievement.

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Examine the view that the school is the most important factor in children’s achievement.

The school is an essential factor in a child’s achievement. However there are many other factors that contribute to their achievement that are vital too.

The school performs vital factors that affect children’s achievement. These factors include, labelling, streaming and the self fulfilling prophecy and pupil subcultures. Studies have shown that teachers often attach labels regardless of the pupil’s actual ability or attitude. Instead, they label pupils on the basis of stereotyped assumptions – working class are labelled negatively and middle class are labelled positively. This puts the working class pupils at a disadvantage as they are labelled. However, not only just the pupils are labelled, the knowledge they are taught can also be labelled. Nell Keddie (1971) found, both pupils and knowledge can be labelled as high or low status.

Moreover, streaming separates pupils into different ability groups that are taught separate things for all subjects. Studies show that the self-fulfilling prophecy is most likely to occur when children are streamed. Working class pupils tend to be labelled negatively and teachers tend to see them as lacking ability and therefore have low expectations of them hence they will be in the lower stream. Once they are streamed, it is hard to move up to a higher stream because of the low expectations of them. This creates a self-fulfilling prophecy in which pupils live up to their teacher’s low expectations of them by under-achieving. By contrast, middle class pupils tend to benefit from streaming as they are likely to be in the higher streams and having high expectations from teachers. In Stephan Ball’s a study of banding, he showed that banding had similar effects to streaming. Banding is a system in which pupils are grouped into ability bands. Teachers treated pupils from different bands differently which resulted in positive or negative self-esteem that affected the child’s performance. David Hargreaves and Colin Lacey (1970) found that teachers had lower expectations of the lower band pupils and responded to them differently. This had a negative effect on the lower band pupils and they responded to this by being anti-social. Marxists see banding to convince working class pupils that they are to blame for their own education failure and therefore deserving of manual work.

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Furthermore, many studies have shown that pupil subcultures may play a part in creating differences in achievement. Lacey’s concept of differentiation is the process of teacher’s categorising pupils according to ability, attitude and behaviour. Those who the school deems more able are put into the higher streams and those who are not are placed in the lower streams. Polarisation is the process in which pupils respond to streaming.  Lacey’s study is an example of the power of labelling and streaming creating failure. Hargreaves found a similar response to labelling and streaming in a secondary modern school – the boys were ...

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