There is no doubt that children from working-class homes consistently underachieve at every level of the education when compared to middle-class and upper-class children. Numerous studies demonstrate the differential attainment of children from form different social groups.
The debate:
Conflict theorists argue that schools routinely tailor education according to students’ social back ground, thereby perpetuating social inequality. Functionalist theorists like Talcott Parsons have focused on how education helps to maintain society and its smooth running. Meighan called all of us ‘empty vassals, waiting to be integrated by teachers’. He believes the schools are an ‘integrating force’ of our society that keeps all of us together.
Marxists, in opposition to functionalists, claim that schooling only serves the interest of rich and powerful. They claim that through schooling working class pupils are taught obedience and capitalist culture is instilled in their minds. They claim that pupils often follow their class background in employment and as a result predetermined economic division (i.e. bourgeoisie governs proletarian masses) is restored. It, according to Marxists, favours the children from middle class and others are forced to either conform to the capitalist values or dropped out of the system.
The Tripartite system; pupils divided by intelligence(?):
The Education Act of 1944 is the best example to illustrate this point. It was argued that the psychological theories of intelligence were, as was believed, able to predict future attainment of a child at a relatively early stage. It was suggested that the intelligence an innate and static force could be measured and used to offer children their ‘right’ place in the society. Through Butler Act the government tried to address the issue of fairness in the national education system. It introduced a tripartite system of schools, where schools were divided into grammar, technical and secondary modern schools, according to the level of intelligence of their pupils.
Children sat tests of intelligence at the age of 11based on questions in English, mathematics and general knowledge. The results were used to allocate them their ‘right’ place in the system. Academically able students were sent to Grammar schools. Technical schools were designed to train in practical skills. Secondary modern schools were the ‘lowest’ in the table, which were intended to provide non-academic general education to the pupils who failed to obtain a space in the upper two layers of schools.
It was not long before it became obvious that tripartite system was not delivering the results it was invented for. Gurney –Dixon Report on Early Leaving (1954) found, through its analysis of the 1946 students intake of the schools, that ‘a pupil’s performance was closely related to his or her father’s occupational status; the higher hat status, the better a pupil’s performance, not only in leaving school less early but in having a better academic record too’.
The Crowther Committee, commissioned by the government, confirmed in 1959 after an extensive research the findings of the Gurney-Dixon Report. Their views were shared by the Newsom Committee in 1963. In addition to these findings, it was noticed that the ‘parity of esteem’ promised in the 1944 Act was diminishing. The Grammar schools were receiving more qualified staff and better resources. These schools, in some cases, had almost total population of children from middle class back ground. As a result the tripartite system earned heavy criticism as being socially divisive, inefficient and wasteful.
In 1965, the Labour government issued circular 10/65 to all Local Education Authorities to plan for the re-organisation of the education system. Though some LEAs resisted this change, it however, paved way for the introduction of the Comprehensive System. By the mid-1980s the secondary education system comprised of:
- over 3 million pupils in nearly 4000 comprehensive schools
- about 170,000 pupils in 285 secondary modern schools
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about 120,000 pupils in 175 grammar schools
The attainment is determined by what?
Coleman (1966) conducted a large scale survey of about half a million students in some 4000 schools. It indicated that ‘the educational attainment was largely independent of the schooling a child received’. Jencks in 1973 reanalysed the statistical data from several social changes outside the school. Family background was considered to have more influence than genetic inheritance on an individual’s educational attainment but only a moderate influence on eventual occupation and income.
As we discuss the debate about influence of socio-economic factors in attainment it is probably worth looking into those factors that are said to be prominent and frequently talked about.
i) Families:
It appears that educational success generally rises with family income. Many sociologists see material deprivation as the major cause of inequality in educational success. Halsey, Heath and Ridge (1980) examined the education careers of males and found that those from higher social backgrounds were much more likely to stay in education past the minimum leaving age than those from working class backgrounds. They pointed out that a major reason for this was the cost of staying in education, and this denied many working class people from gaining higher-level educational qualifications.
Douglas (1967) also believed that poor living conditions at home were major factors in educational failure. In a survey, he divided his sample into two groups: those who had sole use of household facilities, such as bathrooms, and those who did not. He found that the children living in ‘unsatisfactory’ condition scored much more poorly on tests than those in ‘satisfactory’ conditions. Explanations given for these results included poor housing conditions and diet leading to ill health, leading to absence from school, and under-performance.
ii) The problem of ‘correct’ expression
Marxist Pierre Bourdieu argues that the role of the education system is to reinforce class differences. This, he believed, is achieved by promoting the ‘dominant culture’ of the ruling classes in the classroom through the use of language, ensuring that working class students will be less likely to understand and be understood. This disadvantages working class pupils and effects their performance at school, leading to underachievement on their behalf.
Basil Bernstein expounded this theory with the notion that the different speech codes used by the middle and working classes causes divisions in itself. The ‘restricted code’, which is context bound and requires previous common knowledge between users and the ‘elaborated code’, which is not context-bound and does not require previous common knowledge. He believed that middle class children are fluent in both codes but that working class children are confined to the restricted code and are therefore placed at a distinct disadvantage. Teachers normally use the elaborated code. Middle class children are therefore more likely to understand the teacher and be understood themselves and consequently achieve more at school.
iii) Self-fulfilled prophecies
Other factors inside the classroom can also determine educational success or failure. For example, concepts of labeling theory and self-fulfilling prophecy. These rely on the notion that if someone is labeled in a particular way, others will respond to their behavior in terms of that label and the person will act in terms of that label resulting in a self-fulfilling prophecy.
This was illustrated in a study by Rosenthal & Jacobson, who selected a random sample of 20 pupils to take an IQ test and told the pupils’ teachers that they could be expected to show a significant intellectual development. After a year, the same pupils were re-tested and were found to have gained higher IQ scores. Rosenthal and Jacobson said that this improvement had occurred, not just due to intellectual development, but because the children had been labeled in such a way that the teachers would have higher expectations of them, which they believed influenced pupils performance. A self-fulfilling prophecy took place – pupils were told to be able to achieve more, so they did.
iv) Government spending
Writers like Bowles and Gintis have argued that ‘educational inequality is rooted in the basic institution of our economy’. Its sources are to be found in the mutual re-enforcement of class sub-cultures and social class biases in the operation of the school system it self. One of the criticism of the tripartite systems of 1950s was that the schools of children from middle and upper classes were equipped better and earned more generous funding by the Local Education Authorities.
Conclusion:
Throughout the twentieth century, there have been many changes made to the structure of the education system. These include the 1944 Education Act which, as discussed earlier, made secondary education compulsory and introduced the tri-partite system of schools, the move to a comprehensive system of schools in the 1960’s, and the introduction of the National Curriculum in 1988. While official statistics have shown that all these measures have served to increase the overall levels of educational attainment (as defined by attainment of qualifications), both official and sociological evidence, as mentioned above, indicates that class-based inequalities in educational attainment have shown no tendency to decline.
Only The Netherlands and Sweden show persistent trends of equalising access to education in the course of the twentieth century’. In the UK, the education system was found to reflect stratification in quality of provisions for different social classes’. Through the studies and perspectives we have considered, it is undoubtedly the case that socio-economic factors within the education system do influence the attainment of a student and even functionalists would not disagree that schools are not free of such ailments.
Bibliography:
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Educational Trends in the 1970s (1984) A Quantitative Analysis, OECD
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M. Marcus and A. Ducklin (1997) Success in Sociology John Murry
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R. Meighan (1997) A Sociology of Education
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Jo Mortimore & Tessa Blackstone (1982) Disadvantage and Education Heinemann Educational Books, London
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W. T. S. Gould (1993) People and Education in the Third World Longman
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J. J. Macionis and K. Plummer(2000) Sociology, A Global Introduction Pearson Education Ltd.
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T. Bilton et al (1987) Introductory Sociology Second Edition
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M. Haralambos and M. Holborn (1995) Sociology, Themes and Perspectives Fourth Edition
Jo M. and T. Blackstone, p. 6
Jo M. and T. Blackstone, p. 8
M. Marcus and A. Ducklin, p. 163
introduced by Mr. Rab Butler and often referred to as ‘Butler’s Education Act’.
Burt, 1943 and Fenwick, 1976
