Working Class Underachievement

• Poor housing conditions can make studying at home difficult.
• Higher levels of sickness affect school attendance.
• Financially difficult for lower-paid paernts to support children in education after school leaving age, no matter how bright their prospects.

Material deprivation puts pressure on students to leave college, not attend it, or start apprentiships due to the cost.

Previous governments introduced EMA, designed to tackle material deprivation to encourage students to stay at college.

• This is useful as it can explain why working-class children have higher rates of absenses - due to sickness and poor housing conditions.
• Can also explain why working-class children might be unable to concentrate or be more distruptive in lessons as they are unlikely to have had breakfast.

• Middle-class parents visit the schools more frequently to discuss how their children are getting on. This interest grows as children reach more important stages of education.
• Are also more likely to encourage their children to stay at school beyond the minimum learning age.

• Diane Reay argues that 53% of the poorest families wanted their children to go to university, which would suggest they are still ambitiouseven in a system that is unlikely to help them.
• Working-class parents are more likley to work longer hours, doing shift work and overtime. They are less likely than the middle-class to get paid for time off work.

• Douglas considers the idea that parents can be a positive resource, who encourage their children to revise, complete essays, and attend.

• Argue middle-class parents are more 'child centred' because they have more social control and encourage their children to plan for the future.
• Saunders - The middle-class are more intelligent, work harder, and are more motivated.

• Keddie angrily rejects this view, working-class culture is just different, not inferior.

• This is useful because it can explain why working-class children can be more difficult to teach and are more distruptive.

• Talked about the natural pull of your class. Families will self regulate so their children will attend working-class schools because its more comfortable.
• Similar to cultural comfort zones - Tony Sewell
• The highest performing comprehensives are more socially selective. They have 50% less children on free school meals than non exclusive schools (Sutton Trust).

• Some schools in very wealthy catchment areas actually prioritise children who came from poverised areas - but this is very rare.

• It is useful because it can explain why certain schools get incredibly good results. This may be because they are more selective about the students they take.

• Success at school depends very heavily on language. There is a relationship between language use and social class.
• Language used by the middle class has an elaborate code, while language used by the lower working-class has a restricted code.

• Bernsteins argument is not validated because he assumes that all middle class speak in elaborated codes which isn't the case.
• He fails to recognise the diversity of speach and provides little evidence to support his theory.

• He considers the idea that working-class children might not be able to communicate with teachers or understand the content in textbooks. Meaning they are unlikely to pass/ succeed.

• Symbolic violence - the knowledge, skills and experience of working-class culture is devalued.
• Cultural capital - Middle-class children do better in education because their attitudes, values and behaviour (their culture) is similar to that of the teachers.
• Habitus - Refers to the lifestyle, values and expectations that develop out of the experiences of a social group.

• Both cultural capital and economic capital can be an advantage for middle-class and disadvantage for working-class.

• Lynch - Material deprivation is more important than cultural differences.

• Can explain why working-class children may stop engaging with teachers because their culture keeps being devalued.

• Studied 60 teachers from Chicago. The teachers had an ideal type about the type of student they would want to teach. This related to appropriate conduct, attitude, and appearances - most likely middle class kids. Interpreted working-class behaviour as lack of interest and motivation.

• Schools still set and stream. Driven by middle-class parents to protect their children from weaker or disruptive children. Schools are eager to attract middle-class kids.

• Views setting and streaming negatively. interviewed children as young as 10 and found they internalised what grade they were.
• This impacted on how they saw themselves.

• Blackman notes that black girls are often labelled very negatively by teachers and are located into lower sets. They work very hard to achieve in spite of the labels.

• Can explain why working-class children disengage in education and stop engaging with teachers. They have been labelled negatively and internalised these ideas, which result in them them giving up all together.
• They highlight that kids in lower sets are restricted of higher grades.