How Does Social Inequality Effect A Child 's Educational Achievement?

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

What does social class mean? Social class means a division of a society based on social and economic status. Now, what does hidden curriculum mean? Hidden Curriculum means a side effect of education, such as norms, values and beliefs in the classroom. Accordingly, Jean Anyon’s, author of “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work” claims that each and every social class has it’s own very different way of teaching in schools. Anyon states a plethora of strengths and weaknesses in this article. She believes that all children have been taught to learn, comprehend, and behavior in plenty of different ways due to the social class’s they have been thrown into. Anyon examined each social class which have been named The Working Class, The Middle Class, The Affluent Professional Class, and lastly The Executive Elite Class. An educational perspective came well from her work view point and based off it - I have thrown in my own opinion by agreeing with her during this essay.

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”.

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

Trepidations pertaining to young people, being unable to fulfil their educational goals, being involved in antisocial activities, expelled from mainstream schools because of truancy and other disruptive transgressions or out of work, reinforce the obligation to the end child poverty ingenuity implemented by the Coalition Government in 1999. Equally, in their manifesto, the Conservatives avowed to enhance the emphasis on assisting families and vulnerable young people. Subsequently, this is trailed by the government’s enactment of pertinent policies to try and refine the life probabilities of young people who have numerous concerns. Likewise, this has prompted the invention of more initiatives, including the advent of the targeted youth programs.

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

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.

Unequal Childhoods is a book based on the study of a variety of families ranging in class, race and family life. The author Annette Lareau objective was to analyze and understand how and if social life impacts the children pertaining to these different classes. Lareau also examines the affect social class has on those interviewed by following up years later in their transitions to adulthood. Regardless of ones race social economic status plays a role in how a child develops and learns the skills they will eventually grow up to use.

The article ‘Making sense of white working class underachievement’ by Diane Raey (2009) In the K. P. Sveimsson (ed) Who Cares about the White Working Class? , Published by The Runnymeade Trust, is important in indicating the weaknesses of the education system in the United Kingdom today. According to this article, the White working class children do not perform well in academic performance. This issue is the centre stage for a tug of war among the parents, teachers, the government and the wealthy and middle class people within this jurisdiction. As it emerges, the issue is more complex than it seems and includes historical perspectives, the perceptions towards the

The current league tables measure not necessarily the best, but instead the most middle-class schools (Taylor writing for The Guardian, 2006). If we look at this theory through The Sociological Imagination, we can connect the history of society, which is that children tend to do better in school if they are from more well-off areas than those from deprived areas. Many children from working-class backgrounds also do not do as well as they could in school as they don’t need a lot of qualifications in order to achieve the same success in life as their parents. This then becomes a repetitive cycle generation after generation. It could be said that this contradicts the idea that children’s success in school is based on the intelligence of their parents as many children are naturally gifted, but do not perform as well as they could in exams due to lack of encouragement, poor teaching skills,

Social class has a major influence over the success and experience of young people in education; evidence suggests social class affects educational achievement, treatment by teachers and whether a young person is accepted into higher education. “34.6 per cent of pupils eligible for free school meals (FSM) achieved five or more A*-C grades at GCSE or equivalent including English and mathematics GCSEs, compared to 62.0 per cent of all other pupils” (Attew, 2012). Pupils eligible for FSM are those whose families earn less than £16,000 a year (Shepherd, J. Sedghi, A. and Evans, L. 2012). Thus working-class young people are less likely to obtain good GCSE grades than middle-class and upper-class young people.

Imagine a boy that has been teased mercilessly by his peers throughout his schooling because of his clothes and his free and reduced lunch status. He is constantly under pressure from peers to have the newest and niftiest gadgets, but his mother cannot afford to provide food and permanent housing, much less, these extra luxuries. So he has to make do with what his mother can afford. She tries to provide for her children and wants to give them the world, but because of her economic situation, she cannot give her children everything and they are forced to ask for help from the government and close family and friends. This situation brings light to the turmoil that socioeconomics brings upon children and that they need to endure to survive in

Imagine a boy that has been teased mercilessly by his peers throughout his schooling because of his clothes and his free and reduced lunch status. He is constantly under pressure from peers to have the newest and niftiest gadgets; nevertheless, his mother cannot afford to provide food and permanent housing, much less, these extra luxuries. Therefore, he has to comprise with what his mother can afford. She tries to provide for her children and wants to offer them the world. Nonetheless, due to her economic situation, she cannot provide her for children adequately; they are forced to ask for aid from the government, close family, and friends. This situation brings light to the turmoil that socioeconomics brings upon children and that they need to endure to survive in this society. When it comes to socioeconomics, children are the utmost affected. Socioeconomics has long term effects, prevalently distresses children in school and in development. Through my friend’s experience that he has shared with me, it has allowed me to notice the harrowing effects that socioeconomics has on children.

Pursuing this discussion further, it could be implied that there is a connection drawn between education and social class. Usually when conferring about these two aspects, social class and underachievement becomes the focus of attention. “Working-class children experience a much greater cultural clash when they enter school than those from more privellaged homes” (Giddens and Griffiths, 2006, p.710). Gillborn and Youdell (2000) took this further suggesting how teachers believed that ability was ‘fixed’ (Darmody, Tyrrell and Song, 2011) and saw working class pupils as having less ability and as lower achievers.

Over 71% of Euro-American children performed at a higher grade level compared to African American children; these children who tend to live in lower-income families frequently perform worse than middle-class families. This lack of performance follows an affected child throughout their education and later leads to a deficit in the number of students graduating high school and college (4). Even if a poverty-stricken child graduated, many lead the same lifestyle and remain in the same social-class that their parents lived in. However, whether the parents have limited education or a lack of wealth, they can still provide their children with the