Using material from item A and elsewhere, assess the extent to which material deprivation is the most important home factor affecting social class differences in educational achievement.

Authors Avatar by davob (student)

Ieuan Murrant

Using material from item A and elsewhere, assess the extent to which material deprivation is the most important home factor affecting social class differences in educational achievement.

Pupils in education from a working class background (a pupil whose background includes a far more manual job) have a tendency to underachieve in education compared to pupils in education from a middle class background (one from a non-manual background). Hence tend to gain lower GCSE results and don’t go on to further and higher education for example statistics show   . Factors outside the school such as material deprivation and cultural deprivation as well as linguistic depravation can all affect achievement, and are all linked in with social class.

        The first reason for why working class students tend to underachieve in education is because of material depravation. Material depravation is a lack of the physical properties that would give a child an extra boost during there education, for example not being able to afford stationary, or revision material which a middle class students parents could afford, due to poverty. This causes working class pupils to underachieve in education compared to middle class pupils because if working class children are materially deprived, they won’t have the advantage provided by materials that a middle class child might have, such as revision guides, or basic equipment such as a pen, pencil and a ruler. Meaning that whilst a middle class child has this equipment to use at their leisure, a working class child will always have to spend time requesting these valuable items, and often can engage in tasks such as homework out side of school. Other issues caused by material deprivation are things such as not having space to study or poor living conditions which will affect the advantage a child has on their education, because a lack of peaceful places to study will in turn affect the quality at which a child can study, because they will more than likely become distracted. Whilst having no where to study affects the time a child has to learn at home, poor living conditions will have more of an impact on learning at school as well as at home, because a child could contract an illness as a direct result of these living conditions, resulting in them having to constantly take time off school, putting them far behind their other class mates. JWB Douglas is a sociologist who agrees with material deprivation being the most significant impact on a working class Childs education he argues that young poorer people from working class backgrounds are more likely to obtain part time jobs such as a paper round, which will support their family financially, which will eat in to the total amount of time which they will have to study at home.

Join now!

        However, it is possible that cultural deprivation is a more important home factor than material deprivation. Cultural deprivation is a theory that claims some young people fail in education due to their “culture” (or way of life), for instance if the family places in a high value on the placement of education then it is more likely that their children will achieve higher in education than that of one who’s family feels that education is a waste of time.  For example parents reading to their children at night or trying to teach their children numbers and letters when they ...

This is a preview of the whole essay