Education - Factors in Attainment - People to Know

Sharpe (76-94) - Found that girls were focues on marriage and children rather than careers in 1976, by 1994 this had shifted and girls were more motivated to succeed and secure higher status work.

Stanworth (84) - Found that girls underachievement pre 1990s was due largely to them recieving much less attention from teachers.

Mitsos & Browne (98) - State that girls success nowadays is largely due to femenism raising expectations and self esteem of women.

Francis & Skelton (2005) - They identify a moral panic over boys underachievement. The sitatuin isnt that bad boys are still improving, just not as fast as girls.

Willis (77) - Many boys see no value in gaining qualifications. They see manual labour as more respectable than 'pen pushing' 

Jackson (2006) - Academic work is too feminine to be seen as cool by boys, it goes against laddish masculinity to achieve.

GIST - Girls into Science and Technology programme has widened female participation and opened up new routes for academic success.

The National Curriculum (88) - This has limited the imbalance in teaching. Schools have fewer options in what can be taught and to whom.

Modood (2004) - Social class makes more difference to attainment between white british students, than in ethnic minority groups.

Gillborn & Youdell (2000) - Racism continues to disadvantage ethnic minority students in education. Many Black Children were written off rather than supported.

Mirza (92) - Black girls achieve higher than black boys. Although there is some evidence of racism, Mirza states that most black girls kept their self confidence and were concerned with academic success. They were prepared to work hard even though teachers didnt push them.

Sewell (97) - Sewell found that Afro-Caribbean boys suffered from being raised in lone parent families due to a lack of role models and material deprivation. They are more susceptible to peer pressure. However his study did show that despite high exclusion rates amongst black students the majority of black students conform and value education.

Coard (71) - Afro-Caribbean students feel inferior in the British Education system due to:
.Racist Teachers
.Content of the Curriculum
.Low Expectations
.Bullying 

High Achievers:
.Chinese & Indian (dont say Asians! there are many different pattern of achievement throughout asian groups!)

Low Achievers:
. Pakistani, Afro-Caribbean, Bangladeshi & White Working Class Boys. 

Youth Cohort Study (2006) - 57% of children from higher professional backgrounds gained A/AS level qualifications compared with the 16% of those from routine occupational backgrounds.

Douglas (64) - Parental Interest is they key factor in education attainment. Middle class parents communicate with schools much more and gave their children more attention and stimulus in their early years.

Feinstein (2003) - found as douglas did that parental interest was key, found that working class children performed better in schools where there was a large presence of children from professional backgrounds.

Bernstein (72) - Middle class children benefit from using the same elaborated code at home as is used in schools. Working class struggle to understand the language of schools due to their restricted language code. Middle class children can switch between codes.

Bourieu (84) - Cultural Capital. Students from higher classes have a built in advantage as they are already socialised into the dominant culture (of schools and society). Trips, Visits, Holidays and home activites such as reading give them an advantage.

Ball et all (95) - Middle class parents have more stamina to research and find good schools. THey also have material advantages such as the ability to provide or pay for transport to get their children to better schools that may be greater distances away. They can also move home to get into a good schools catchment area, this is called the Middle class Drift.

Reay et al (2005) - Students from ordinary 6th Forms or 6th Form colleges felt they would be out of place at the elite universities. Private school students are comfortable applying to these places as they find they are full of people with similar values and lifestyles.

Keddie (73) - More advanced knowledge is withheld from students in lower streams. Middle class children fitted the image of the ideal pupil.

Streaming - Children are palced in a class based on general (often english) ability.

Banding - A more flexible form of streaming with some variation between subjects

Setting - Pupils are palced in particular sets according to subject ability.

Ball (81) - Students from professional backgrounds tended to occupy the upper bands. Teachers had lower expectations of lower bands and set less testing work.

Subcultures (Hargreaves 67) - Teachers percieved lower sets to be disruptive and label them as troublemakers. As a result the students turn against the school and form anti school subcultures.

Mac an Ghaill (94) - Macho Lads - Academic Failures - Low Skilled working class backgrounds.
Academic achievers - highly skilled working class backgrounds.