Social Mobility In The UK

Individuals within a society are grouped into certain rankings that is based on their wealth, income, race and education known as the social stratification. Sociologist use this to determine the social standings of individuals within a society. Social stratification can also appear in much smaller groups. These groups such as the work place, schools, and businesses can “take the form of a distribution of power and authority down the ranks”. (Cole, 2017) The Caste system is also another form of stratification that one does not get a choice in. They are born into it and regardless of their talents will hold positions that are given to them their whole life. Social mobility is the ability for individuals to move about their social standings.

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 UK, particularly in England and Wales, children’s life chances are determined by the economic status of the families into which they are a part of. Children from poor households are more likely to suffer the consequences of their families’ condition. They will have to endure the stigma of poverty in a profoundly lopsided society where the socioeconomic standing of individuals is determined by their capacity to buy. These poor children also have less access to quality educational opportunities (Welbourne, 2012). Furthermore, children living in poverty at present are likely to remain poor for the rest of their lives because of intergenerational cycles of poverty

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

|inequality between gender and class and also, the extent of poverty in the current British context. I will also cover causes of |

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

Wealth and Income Inequality in America The United States of America was founded upon the ideals of freedom and equal opportunity for all individuals. Many people strive to achieve the American Dream by enhancing their socioeconomic status. Today, many people argue that these rightful values are no longer relevant due to the growing income and wealth disparity between different social classes. Income and wealth are two social issues that are commonly misinterpreted; although the two concepts are related, the overall concepts are a little bit different.

Income inequality plays a major role in the education disparity present in communities such as West Chelsea. The economic hardship several families experience affects the way a child grows up and the certain education they receive. As seen in Class Divide, more privileged children can attend schools such as The Avenues where they are given opportunities to grow and learn, while less privileged students are

Tracing the life of a child, he shows how an initial slow start can cause the child to lag further behind as time goes on. What struck me the most about this was how early children’s life courses are set – even before birth. Barry lists poor nutrition during pregnancy, lack of paid parental leave, and low-quality medical care in childbirth as factors that can permanently impact the child’s future learning abilities. And when students carry their environmental disadvantages into schools, Barry ways schools become places where these hindrances are “compounded and not corrected for.” These early life experiences often disqualify students from even reaching college and getting a degree, which is becoming necessary for obtain a well-paying job. In this way, education seems to become a trap – education is a way out of poverty, but poverty is a hindrance to education. The ways in which inequality compounds in schools challenges how I think about the role schools play in society as educational institutions. By looking at how disadvantages and advantages accumulate through the course of schooling, I can better understand how schools contribute to wider social

Collins, Collins, and Butt (2015) researched on the social mobility. This study focused on how mobile students can academically achieve according to their social background and ethnicity. The authors precise that the study focused on the UK due to the lack of social mobility, the UK achieved poorly in an international league table that displayed how many disadvantageous students achieved successfully (Collins et al. 2015). Learners with a strong social background, for an instance mobile students and students who experienced movement are likely to achieve academically. This study concerns target the UK about a lack of social mobility and the remaining of a strong link between social background and educational achievement (Collins

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,

In Australia, New Zealand, the United States and the United Kingdom, a student’s chances of academic success are greatly influenced by factors such as ‘ parental wealth, occupational status, education and aspirations’ (Argy, 2007:para3,

However, they are individuals just like any other child and they should be given the same opportunities that all children have. Poverty is a huge problem in many areas of the world. MacQueen states “poverty puts children behind from birth, and keeps them behind for life (2003).” If a child is in a household with little money, they may lack “the stable home in a safe neighbourhood, adequate nutrition, and the kind of involved parenting” that would be influential on the correct and desired development of the young child (MacQueen, 2003).

Social disadvantage is hard to summarise in one single definition as there are a number of ways to measure it such as level of employment to health and life expectancy. However it is still problematic to solely conclude the existence of social disadvantage from measures such as these as Clegg and Ginsberg (2006:10) note how a family could have a good occupation and economic state, but If they reside in a poor neighbourhood it could have an effect on development. Due to the difficulty defining social disadvantage researchers have tried to distinguish between poverty status and SES (socio-economic status). Within this guideline three measures to determine it are taken into account: Occupation (often paternal), level of parental education (often maternal) and economic deprivation. The level of SES is therefore a useful way to determine the degree of social disadvantage, with low-SES being a useful way to define it. With this definition there has been an increasing level of focus on the issue of children from low-SES backgrounds displaying limited success academically than that of children from more socially advantaged backgrounds. In relation to language, this academic underachievement has been attributed to language skills inadequate for accessing the curriculum (Clegg

This distribution of the working class into lower prestige jobs can be accounted for by a number of factors that shall be discussed later. The inequality that exists here regarding school leavers is one that results in an economic inefficiency since the talent of many working-class pupils could have been transferred into higher skilled jobs yet due to certain other factors the talent in a crude sense is ‘wasted’. Why this is the case could be attributed to the fact that a large number of families may rely on their children to bring in a second or third income. With the deterioration of the nuclear family in society there is an increasing trend towards single parenthood and this may result in children having to leave school to get a job and support the family. Furthermore parental influence plays a large role in shaping their children’s attitudes to school. For example Furlong 1987 argues that parents from working class backgrounds who left school at an early age may not press upon their children from their early days in their school life and before five years old the importance of a good education but rather the importance of work and making money. So the culture passed onto children from their parents will have a serious effect on their educational achievement and if this is borne in at an early stage in the life cycle especially pre five, it will be