To What Extent Does Social Class Affect the Success and Experience of Young People in Education?

One of the major causes of underachievement is the lack of economic capital, proposed by Pierre Bourdieu (1984), that a working class family possess. As item A states, ‘sociologists claim that factors outside the school, such as parental attitudes and parental income, are the main causes of working class underachievement.’ Children who belong to a working class background may not be able to afford the necessary equipment or meet the

Social Class and Education”. It opens by discussing research conducted in the 1960’s in an effort to identify factors contributing to differences in the academic achievement of Whites and Blacks (Banks & Banks, 2013). Researchers hypothesized that the achievement gaps were mainly the result of disparities in school resources and characteristics, but found that there is a high correlation between achievement and socioeconomic status (SES) (Banks & Banks, 2013). Furthermore, attention is drawn to the class stratification which exists in our educational system and works to maintain inequality through exclusion strategies such as ability grouping and tracking (Banks & Banks, 2013). Evidence of the correlation between social class and

Lubrano explains how middle-class children understand the importance of receiving higher education, while working-class children fail to see the purpose of preparing for a higher level in the short term. According to Lubrano, “Middle-class kids are groomed for another life” (534). Author Patrick Finn states, “Working-class kids see no such connection, understand no future life for which digesting Shakespeare might be of value” (534). In answering this question, Lubrano must look at the various circumstances that account for the poor performances among working-class individuals, the supportive relationships middle-class students have with their parents and teachers, and how children of working-class parents struggle when preparing for later life. In the address, Alfred Lubrano must address the difference in treatment between working-class and middle-class children attending

Social class is a large faction of people who have similar positions in an economic system. In an exemplary world, all students would have an equal shot at success, excellent schools, and educators that dedicate themselves and their time to achieving this goal. However, social class can significantly affect a student's success, highlighting the correlation between low socioeconomic statuses and academic problems. In all social groups, class plays a significant role in the attainment of children in education. Unfortunately, this has always been the case and the effects are just more evident today. Families from high social classes are more likely to obtain a greater level of education than those in low social classes. Members of upper social classes tend to be better educated and have higher incomes; therefore, they are better able to supply educational advantages to their children as well. Being in a financially disadvantaged can also affect a child’s performance during school.  It is important, therefore, to examine the way in which education is distributed through social class. Between societal pressures, expectations and parental negligence, children can be negatively impacted in their pursuit for future success through their education as exemplified through “College Pressures” and “The Sanctuary of School”.

In the study Lareau conducted, it can be see that working class and poor families differ slightly in that being poor means less resources and a means of a greater struggle for the child. The similarities found explain why being lower class has it benefits in some areas then if you were middle or upper class. Now Lareau is not telling people to raise their children one way or that being rich is better because even the rich have many disadvantages their children encounter. Lareau emphasizes, “Overall, daily life for working-class and poor children is slower paced, less pressured, and less structured than for their middle- and

According to Bynner and Joshi (1999) class differences have persisted since the late 1950’s. It can be seen that all studies carried out by various theorist came to the same conclusion that middle class pupils tend to do a lot better than working class in terms of educational achievement. Pupils from middle class backgrounds tend to pass more exams, stay on at school for longer and are five times more likely to go to university. This gap in achievement widens with age as right from nursery school to university, processes like labelling or the self fulfilling prophecy take

Considering that school is the foundation on which a person’s future is laid, one can assume that without a solid foundation in education, a person is much more likely to end up on the bottom of the working class earnings scale. Learned persons would agree that

Gender differences in achievement can be explained best by changes that have occurred in factors outside of school, known as external factors. A DfES (2007) bar chart showed that throughout the years (1985 – 2007), there has been a higher percentage of females that achieved five or more A*-C grades at GCSE. The percentage has been constantly increasing at a faster rate than the male percentage. This proves that changes in wider society have affected both genders differently, but girl’s achievement has benefited from this more.

In Gillian Evans’ book of ‘Educational Failure and Working Class White Children in Britain,’ she mainly draws attention between the link of social class and education. Children, who have been brought up in a working class background, do not really have much of a head start in education in comparison to children who come from middle/upper-class backgrounds (Evans, 2006). Educational and economic status of parents plays an essential role on the road to success for their children. What’s more, her chapter proposes that children from working class backgrounds are innate to possess a low level of intelligence, but it can still be argued that a minority of children who come from working class backgrounds do tend to get great results (Evans, 2006). The author has illustrated an outlook on the social structure of intelligence and the way in which a child’s and parents relationship can have an impact on their level of understanding (Evans, 2006). It is commonly known that children tend to always pick things up and the learning process is

Bowles and Gintis argue that education is the reason that this does not happen, as it legitimising class inequality by producing ideologies that justify why this inequality is fair and inevitable. Bowles and Gintis describe education ‘as a giant myth-making machine’ like the myth of meritocracy, which means that it is untrue that everyone has an equal opportunity to achieve, that rewards are based on effort and so on. A reason for achieving high income is argued to be determined more from your family and class background rather than ability or educational achievement. This serves the higher classes as it makes it appear that they gained their roles in the workforce by an equal opportunity but in reality, that is not the case, they use this to trick working class pupils to accept inequality. This means that the education system exists not only to allocate and train young people for their future work roles but also to accept the roles they are given and for the bourgeoisie to keep their power.

Over the board, middle class students generally do better than working class students in educational achievement. Some sociologists argue that this is due to three key factors. Labelling, subcultures and marketisation. This focuses on things that occur internally.

There are huge class differences within the tripartite system. This consists of grammar schools for academically able pupils, technical schools, and secondary modern schools. Two- thirds of grammar school places are taken by middle-class pupils, and working-class pupils mainly attend secondary moderns. This suggests that being in a higher class gives the pupils more opportunities being at a grammar school, and suggests that they have higher academic abilities. Grammar schools have more facilities and will offer far more opportunities for the pupils, and as the pupils are from a higher class they will be able to afford any extra curricular activities or trips. Secondary moderns may not offer these things or may not have the same facilities so there is a big inequality. This is where material deprivation comes into place and families in the working class will suffer. If families are unable to afford uniforms, trips, transport to and from school, classroom materials and textbooks, it can lead children to be isolated and bullied, meaning their school work suffers. Marketization of schools means that there will be better resourced, oversubscribed schools in more affluent areas, while socially disadvantaged children are concentrated in a limited number of

"We are shaped by society 's structures," is the primary concept of the idea developed by C. Wright Mills (Henslin). In this paper, I will demonstrate how my social class affected my family life and education.

Efforts to reach this are the provision of schools, with entry on a meritocratic basis. Following the 1944 Education Act in Britain, the removal of fees from secondary schools and the provision of student grants, certain financial barriers to educational attainment were minimised. Whether we measure equality of access fairly is a debateable topic, however there is overwhelming evidence which confirms that social class origins are strongly and clearly implicated in educational success or failure. Halsey, Heath and Ridge (1981), in a study of 8529 males educated in England and Wales, found that a boy who was considered middle class, compared to a boy in working class had fourth more times of attending a public school, eighteen times more chance of attending a minor independent school and twelve times more chance of attending a direct grant school and three times more chance of attending a grammar school (Journal of Social Policy, 1981). So this study heavily implies that the pattern of unequal access to the more prestigious secondary schools remained, despite the post war education reforms ‘the probability of a working-class boy receiving a fair education in the mid-fifties and sixties were very little different from that of his parents’ generation thirty years earlier’ (Halsey,

The correlation between social class and gender fails because these two types of inequality have a fundamentally different relationship when it comes to the educational systems (Jacobs). The differential access to educational needs is a principal support for the racial and social class inequality (Stromquist, 1990). Different access to different education, in other words, a disadvantaged social position either holding less formal positions in society, the unemployed which is due to less education,