Furthermore material and cultural deprivation can be a part in social differences in education because in item A students that fit the ''Ideal pupil'' are mostly middle class, so therefore there cultural experiences that are outside of school e.g. visiting a history museum will benefit them in the subject history and also middle class parents will be able to afford revision books etc this can help them in their studies and maybe at a earlier age where there still learning. On the other Bourdieu's studies show that there is a link between working class and educational achievement, he said that parents with more capital will have different values and wealth and thus it will give their child a advantage in school. Moreover The middle class use their greater economic capital to provide their children with an advantage, thus reproducing the advantages of the middle class from generation to generation and so there will always be a significant difference in educational achievement, with middle class children exceeding working class children with regard to educational achievement.
Interactionist have taken this approach further, they have examined the way in which labeling is linked to other processes within schools that result in class differences in achievement, these processes include the self-fulfilling prophecy and the polarization into anti and pro-school pupil subcultures as stated by Item A. The self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that comes true simply by virtue of it having being made, which leads to a student’s underachievement. basically teachers that have low expectations of certain children and communicate these expectations in their interaction, these children may develop a negative self-concept. They may come to see themselves as failures and give up trying, thereby fulfilling their original prophecy and leads to one’s underachievement.
Studies show that self-fulfilling prophecy is particularly less likely to occur when children are streamed. Streaming involves separating children into different ability groups or classes called 'set'. Each ability group is taught differently in terms of knowledge for instance higher sets will get high brow knowledge whereas lower sets have more simplistic low brow knowledge.
In addition Item A it mentions that David Gillborn and Deborah Youdell (2001) study examined the role of educational policies in creating the context for such school processes to take place. Their study shows that schools uses teachers’ idea of ability’ to decide which pupils have the potential to achieve five GCSE A*-C. They found that working class and black pupils are less likely to be perceived as having the potential, and are more likely to be placed in lover sets, and entered in lower GCSEs. This denies them the knowledge and opportunity needed to gain good grades and so widens the class gap between working class and the middle class in achievement. Some sociologist may argue that the A*-C economy produces educational triage. Triage basically means ‘sorting’. However, Gillborn and Youdell put the labeling and streaming process into a wider context, they also link the triage system to the marketisation policies within the educational system, such as league tables
As a response to the way that pupils have been labeled and streamed, students will often merge into pupil subcultures. A number of studies have shown that pupil subcultures might play a part in creating class differences in achievement, for example Colin Lacey’s (1970) study displays the concepts of differentiation and polarization to explain how pupil subcultures develop, He states that differentiation is the process of teachers who categories pupils according to how they perceive their ability, attitude and behavior. Differentiation is also a form of streaming, since it categorizes pupils into separate classes like Polarisation, on the other hand it's a process in which students move towards one of the two opposite poles’ of school e.g. pro or anti school subculture.
All in all social class differences aren't mainly caused by labelling but rather external factors that can influence difference in educational achievement such as material and cultural deprivation, these are important factors to consider because they can help understand external reasons for this happening not just internal reason within schools like labelling. one may argue that other factors can also be a culprit for social differences in educational achievement such as streaming, polarization and the image of ideal pupil, these external and internal factors could explain why social differences between the two classes in school determine their successes and failure. So in the end sociologist will think that labelling isn't the sole reason for the differences but rather one of the many influencing social classes.
