A level sociology revision – education, families, research methods, crime and deviance and more!
Category: education
Sociological perspectives on the role and functions of education in society; the significance of in-school processes such as teacher labelling and subcultures for pupil identities; explanations for differences in educational achievement by social class, gender and ethnicity; the impact of education policies of marketization, selection and privatisation, and the globalization of education
The problem is, are teachers going to cope with this? When stress levels are already a historic highs:
Being a teacher during the Pandemic has been a horrifically stressful experience for most teaching professionals. Whether schools are closed are open, it means more work for teachers than pre-pandemic, even without extra catch up lessons.
While schools are in full lockdown, teachers still have to manage online lessons for as long as they did while in school, knowing full-well that some students would be paying minimal if any attention during said lessons, which creates a demand/ need to chase such pupils.
And surely things are worse when back in school – if some students are isolating, teachers have to manage the classroom AND those students who can’t attend in person, juggling yet more tasks.
And then there’s having to deal with not just the academic side of things, but the social and mental health problems that come with dealing with a Pandemic overall.
Teacher stress is at an all time high according to a recent survey by education support, so it’s all very well and good putting in place plans to help students catch up, but this might break some teachers.
I really don’t understand why there is such a panic over exams next year, when the solution is quite simple:
Put all other school years not doing exams on a part-home study schedule with about 1/5 of their lessons to be done at home, self-study for the duration of the exams.
This means every class gets 1 day home-study a week, make it the same day of the week per class for simplicity. So class 1A is always Monday, class 1B always Wednesday and so on.
This will free up 1/5th of classrooms, set them up as exam-rooms.
1/5th of classrooms will be equivalent to the entire cohort (year 11) sitting their GCSE exams, so sufficient room even for those large compulsory exams such as English.
If classrooms are a little cramped, a portion of the class could sit the exam in the regular exam hall (typically the sports hall) – but the extra space created by the classrooms being used should allow an extra measure of social distancing.
Simply get GCSE students to sit their exams in their regular class-sets, even if in different class rooms.
If necessary mix the teachers up as invigilators and get volunteer parents in to be second invigilators.
As far as I can see it the above is a pretty minimally disruptive way of minimising disruption for regular teaching while maintaining ‘class bubbles’ and the integrity of the exams.
Parents coming into the school will not increase the risk of transmission of covid compared their kids coming in!
OK there will be a bit more mixing of people than in regular classrooms, but honestly, will it be more than takes place during regular break times?
OK it’s a bit of hassle for the parents who may need one day off of work a week to look after their children, but it’s only for a month of exams.
I fail to see what all the fuss is about!
Of course with A-levels it should be a no-brainer to not scrap them – with those you COULD send the entirety of year 12 home to study independently for 3 weeks while the exams take place which really would create sufficient classroom space for the A-levels – year 12s are 16/17 so need no legal adult supervision at home!
Then teachers can simply teach the year 12s until the bitter-end of the summer term -right up until the 20th of July if necessary, rather than letting it all ease off.
I can highly recommend Practice Portuguese as the best place to European Portuguese online.
Many of the most commonly used platforms and downloadable apps for learning the language, such as Duolingo focus on Brazilian Portuguese as there are many more people seeking to learn the Latin American version compared to the European version.
HOWEVER, there are significant differences between the two, especially in terms of pronunciation – so if you learn ‘Brazilian Portuguese in Portugal then you run the risk of not being able to understand what people are saying to you and not being able to make yourself understood.
Hence if you are a newly arrived resident in Portugal or are thinking of moving to Portugal in the near future (which I recommend btw!) then you’re better off using a dedicated European Portuguese learning platform such as Practice Portuguese, which is what I use!
Course Structure
Trust me, as a professional teacher I don’t recommend any old online learning platform – but I’m happy to direct people to this site because it’s so well thought-out for those new to the language:
When starting out, you’re directed to a number of clear modules, with progress indicators, starting with ‘the basics’ and the gradually getting more complex.
There are lot more modules after this, I just don’t want to put in too many screenshots!
Videos and Podcasts for Learning Portuguese
Another feature I really like about the site is the collection of videos and podcasts which are available, again nicely organised and easy to navigate…
Being new to the language I cannot emphasise enough how useful being able to hear the language is, and being able to practice along is fundamental to gaining confidence in using it.
They even have videos focussing on gaining residency, which you’ll know is very useful if you’ve every tried dealing with Portuguese bureaucracy – attempting to speak the language goes a long way!
Discussion threads
Finally there’s a nice forum in which you can pose questions for people to answer, or just browse previous questions – which is a nice link to the lived experience of living in Portugal which you won’t get with some of the larger learning sites.
Practice Portuguese Final Thoughts
Overall I’m really enjoying using the site, it’s a very accessible way of learning European Portuguese.
I also really like the fact that it’s a relatively small scale, niche service run by two very friendly guys: Rui and Joel, which is much like what I do with this blog here!
The 2011 Review of Vocational Education, also known as the 2011 Wolf Report noted a number of strengths and limitations of Vocational Education in England and Wales in 2011, before going on to make almost 30 recommendations.
This is an important report because it set the scene for a possible major (if very gradual) restructuring of the delivery of vocational education in England and Wales.
The strengths of Vocational Education in 2011
Some vocational courses taught important and valuable labour market skills to a very high standard, skills which couldn’t be met through academic courses.
Some Vocational courses offered a direct route to higher level study – hundreds of thousands of students had benefited from these.
Some prestigious apprenticeships were massively over-subscribed, and thus very popular (in high demand)
Good vocational programmes are respected, valuable and an important part of our, and any other country’s, educational provision.
The limitations of Vocational Education in 2011
Too many vocational students were pursuing sub-standard vocational pathways:
Many 16 to 17 year olds were moving in and out of education and short-term employment.
Between a quarter and a third of post-16 vocational students were doing vocational qualifications with little labour market value.
At least 350,000 students were getting little to no benefit from the post-16 education system.
The report saw English and Maths GCSE (at grades A*-C) as fundamental to young people’s future prospects, yet less than 50% of students had achieved both by the age of 16.
The system then steered that 50% of Maths and English failures into ‘inferior’ vocational qualifications.
Recommendations based on the above report
The report made 27 recommendations, including:
Schools should have more freedom to offer vocational qualifications for pupils aged 14-16
Students who fail their GCSEs in English and Maths at age 16 should be required to redo them as part of their post 16 study.
There needs to be a set of general standards for all post 16 vocational programmes
Post-16 students shouldn’t be able to pursue a purely occupation based training course, there should be some kind of academic study in there.
The bottom quintile of achieving students should pursue post-16 education which focus on employability and ‘core skills’.
Employers who provided apprenticeships should be paid.
Generally there needs to be better links and standardisation between colleges and employers in the provision of training.
If students don’t use up their ‘education allowance by the age of 19’ they should be given a credit to use later on in life.
Young Female and Black is a research study of 198 young women and men who attended two comprehensive schools in London in the late 1980s. The main focus of the study is on 62 black women. The book was published in 1992.
Mirza used a variety of research methods, but this is primarily an example of a qualitative research study using observations and interviews with both pupils and parents.
The myth of Underachievement
Mirza argued that there was evidence of racism from some teachers, and that some of the girls felt that teachers had low expectations of them, she argues that these negative labels did not have a negative impact on the girls’ self-esteem.
When asked who they most admired, almost 50% of the girls said themselves, and the black girls in the study achieved better exam results than black boys and white girls in the school, both of which criticise the labelling theory of underachievement.
Types of Teacher
Overt Racists
These teachers were ‘overtly racist’. One of them even used the term ‘wog’ when talking to one of the black girls. The girls tried to avoid these teachers as far as possible and strongly rejected their negative opinions of black people.
The Christians
These teachers had a ‘colour blind’ attitude to ethnic differences. Their attitude was less harmful than that of the overt racists, but did create some problems. For example, they opposed the setting up multi-ethnic working parties because they didn’t believe there was a problem with racism in the school.
The crusaders
These were the teachers who tried to actively develop anti racist teaching strategies in their classrooms, however this could backfire. For example one teacher introduced a role play about a truanting pupil and her social worker, designed to reflect the experience of black pupils. However none of the girls in the class has ever played truant or had a social worker.
The liberal chauvenists
These teachers genuinely wanted to help black students, but their help was often patronizing and counter-productive. For example some teachers insisted black girls did less subjects because they felt they could not cope with a more demanding work load, because of issues like their parents not being able to cope at home.
This later point seems very similar to what Gilborn and Youdell found with banding and streaming!
Despite this, this group of teachers was well respected by the all students and were generally useful in helping identifying the needs of black girls.
Ineffective Teachers and Alternative Strategies
Most of the teachers were genuinley concerned with helping the black girls achieve a decent education, however, most failed to so and negative labelling made if difficult for the girls to realise their full potential.
Despite this, the girls were committed to academic success, but felt it necessary to avoid asking for help from most teachers, which was detrimental to their success.
Conclusions
This is an interesting study that criticises the labelling theory of educational acheivement – the girls did not accept their negative labels from their teachers and had positive self-esteem.
However, the end result was that still failed to reach their full potential because their only coping strategy amidst overt racism and negative labelling was to avoid teachers as far as possible and effectively study by themselves, meaning they were still disadvantaged in education.
Adapted from Haralambos and Holborn (2013) Sociology Themes and Perspectives, edition 8.
Vocational eduacation in Britain today is complex – involving a range or qualifications from GCSEs, BTECs, City and Guids, T levels and higher degree level qualifications and a range of providers – from schools to apprenticeships provided mainly by employers
The Vocational Education landscape in Britain today is very complex: there are number of different types and levels of vocational qualifications, and over 130 different awarding bodies.
This complexity is because there are several different institutions involved with delivering vocational education and awarding qualifications – from schools to employers in many different sectors.
Schools – who provide 14-16 Vocational Qualifications
Further Education Colleges – who mainly provide 16-19 vocational qualifications such as BTECs and City and Guilds qualifications.
Universities – who provide Degree level Higher Technical Qualifications (some FE colleges will also provide these)
Employers – who provide a range of different apprenticeships
Private training providers – who will provide a range of any post-16 qualification.
The report notes that today there are flexible pathways available to learners so that they may move between academic, vocational/professional and apprenticeship routes.
14-16 Vocational GCSEs
These don’t seem to be very popular. This report notes that only 33000 students started a vocational GCSE compared to 565000 who started maths, in 2016-17
16-19 Vocational qualifications
The main types of 16-19 vocational qualifications are either level 2 or level 3 BTECs and City and Guilds qualifications. You can explore the later by visiting the City and Guilds web site, which also has information about apprenticeships.
T-Levels
These are new technical A-levels to be introduced from September 2020 – they are two year courses designed to be the equivalent of 3 A Levels.
They involve at least 45 days of work experience and have been designed to provide students with a direct pathway into skilled employment
They are available in a number of different subject/ employment areas including:
accounting
catering
education and childcare
on-site construction
media, broadcast and production.
Apprenticeships
In 2018-19 there were almost 750 000 people in Apprenticeships, with the numbers of apprenticeship starts in recent years falling from 500 000 a year to 350 000 a year today.
There has been a lack of a clear, long term vision and strategy about what direction vocational education should take.
There has been insufficient funding, not helped by funding cuts to the post-16 sector since 2010.
There’s been poor employer engagement in training provision.
There is a fragmented system of delivery – with some students getting very high quality vocational education, but too many getting sub-standard training.
The majority of parents still hold academic qualifications in more esteem than vocational qualifications
Another recent report from 2018 which compares vocational education in Britain with that in France and Germany notes that:
The British education system values academic qualifications more and focuses its resources on nurturing the academically most able, vocational education is seen as inferior and gets relatively less funding.
Funding for vocational education ‘stop-gap’ or ‘reactionary’ – the government funds vocational opportunities in local areas where industry is in decline, to deal with unemployment, rather than pro-actively funding vocational courses.
The standards of British vocational courses are generally lower than in France or Germany
The diversity of choice is lower than in France or Germany.
These have tended to treat issues of ethnicity and underachievement together with poverty and educational achievement.
This study demonstrates how marketisation polices and racialised banding and streaming disadvantage black students in education.
Gilborn and Youdell (2000, 2001) studied two London Comprehensive schools (which they called Taylor and Clough) over two years, focussing on Key Stage 4 (ages 14-16) and GCSE results.
They used a mixed methods approach using classroom observation, interviews and the analysis of secondary documents.
Black students underachieving compared to white students
Gilborn and Youdell noted that in both schools, white students where achieving twice as many good passes (A-C) as white students.
Differential educational achievement by ethnicity was even starker when they compared those achieving a grade C or above in Maths, English and Science Subjects. In Clough school, 18% of white students achieved this, but only 4% of black students. In Taylor school, 37% of students managed it, but 0% of black students!!!
GCSE Tiers and and Educational Triage
Gilborn and Youdell believe that the introduction of tiers at GCSE was the main underlying reason for the ethnic differences in achievement outlined above.
Different GCSE tiers meant that students sat different papers based on their perceived ability – higher ability students got harder papers, which would allow them the opportunity to achieve an A, while lower ability students sat an easier exam paper, where the maximum grade they could achieve was a C.
14-16 education in both schools was organised through banding and streaming: students were put in the top bands if teachers believed they had the ability to sit the higher tier, more difficult exam paper, but restricted to the lower bands if it was thought their maximum potential was a C grade.
Gilborn and Youdell further argued that the schools operate a ‘triage’ system based on the perceived ability of the students.
Triage is a military-medical term which describes how medical treatment for wounded soldiers is rationed:
Those who need urgent treatment to survive are prioritized
Those with less urgent, non life threatening needs are dealt with later
Hopeless cases are left to die
Educational Triage works along similar lines, with schools rationing education based on the perceived chances of a student gaining five good (A-C) GCSEs.
Borderline students who could get 5 good GCSEs but need help to do so are prioritized.
More able students who will probably get 5 good GCSEs anyway are dealt with as necessary
Hopeless cases are written off.
Racialised Expectations
Gilborn and Youdell believed that teachers were not intentionally racist, in fact most of them were committed to equality of opportunity.
However, they also found that teachers tended to have lower expectations of black students compared to white students, which resulted in them being put in the lower sets, and written off as having no hope of ever achieving five good GCSE grades.
In Clough School for example, 29% of white students but 38% of black students where written off into the lower sets.
One of the reasons for lower expectations was because teachers often believed black students had a harder home life with higher poverty levels and high rates of absent fathers, making studying at home difficult, hence they often judged that black students would be less able to cope with the higher levels of work demanded of being put into higher tiers.
Gilborn and Youdell also found that teachers expected to have more discipline problems with black students and that ‘control and punishment’ should be given a higher priority than ‘academic concerns’.
When interviewed the black students themselves felt discriminated against tended to believe that their entry into low sets and lower tiered papers was not warranted based on their academic performance.
However, if black students questioned their low predicted grades or why they were in a lower set this would be seen as a challenge or a threat to authority rather than a legitimate councern.
Conclusions/ evaluations and relevance to A-level sociology
This is a useful study to show how the macro (marketisation policy) and micro (teacher labelling ) aspects of education work together to disadvantage black students.
However, given the current trends in educational achievement, with black Caribbean students catching up with white students, I wonder how relevant this is today.
I also have to wonder how representative these schools were. To have no black students in one of those schools achieving a grade C in English, Maths or Science, that has to be extremely rare?
Adapted from Haralambos and Holborn (2013) Sociology Themes and Perspectives, edition 8.
This was a short online survey (7-8 minutes) which was completed by just over 1000 students. Ethnic minorities were deliberately over-represented to boost the sample size of some of the smaller sub groups (roughly 50-50 white to ethnic minority sampling).
The survey reports that:
Just over one in ten of all students (13%) had experienced racial harassment since starting their course.
Around a quarter of students from an ethnic minority background (24%) had experienced racial harassment, compared to 9% of White students.
Men were twice as likely as women to have experienced racial harassment (16% and 8% respectively).
The main types of harassment experienced
Only 33% of cases reported
The report notes that the main reason for not reporting (cited in 44% of cases) was that the victims had no confidence that the matter would be dealt with effectively.
Survey of Universities
The EHRC’s survey of universities reveals that they receive very few complaints of racial harassment from either students or staff. The report notes that:
“Institutions received an average of 2.3 complaints of racial harassment of staff and 3.6 complaints of racial harassment of students between the start of the 2015/16 academic year and January 2019.
This equates to roughly one complaint for every 1,850 university employees and one complaint for every 4,100 students since the start of the 2015/16 academic year.”
Main reason for reporting racial harassment
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the main type of harassment reported is verbal…
Confidence levels in the reporting figures.
56% of staff are confident that the above figures are accurate, slightly lower for students
Outcomes of reports for harassment
Less than 40% of cases for students, and only 17% for staff result in some kind of redress fro the victim…
A few problems with the methodology of this study…
It’s not clear how the students were sampled (it doesn’t say in the report) – this may be a self selecting sample – students who have experienced racism are maybe more likely to take part.
There’s a lot of problems with subjectivity over definitions of terms, and whether some of the incidents being reported are actual harassment. Students reporting that they’ve been eluded from events on racial grounds for example – it’s very difficult to prove this is because of race, and I’m fairly sure it doesn’t count as harassment.
Conclusions
According to students in England’s universities, the experience of racial harassment is common place, with 13%, or roughly 1 out of every 7 students having been a victim of some sort of unfair treatment on the basis of race.
If we look at just ethnic minority students, 24% believe they have been a victim of racial harassment.
However, the universities seem to be largely oblivious to this – they only record 1 incident per 4000 students, which is so far away from the stated figures that the students themselves.
Maybe more worryingly 55% of universities think their own recordings are accurate. I think we can at least conclude from the above survey of students that this is something they may need to investigate!
Finally, if 33% of cases of harassment are being reported to universities, they are certainly not being recorded, again something which seems to suggest that universities are ignoring the issue!
Find out more
You could investigate the above reports for yourself, and even check out the qualitative findings if you like!
The PISA international assessments are part of the globalisation of education. The OECD (which runs the tests) claims there are benefits to having a global system of assessment because we can learn what the best educational practices are and apply them globally. However, critics argue that these tests could be doing more harm than good, by focusing on a narrow range of educational outcomes, which reflect the biases of Western educationalists.
The PISA international assessments are part of the globalisation of education. The OECD (which runs the tests) claims there are benefits to having a global system of assessment because we can learn what the best educational practices are and apply them globally. However, critics argue that these tests could be doing more harm than good, by focusing on a narrow range of educational outcomes, which reflect the biases of Western educationalists.
What are the PISA tests?
The PISA Tests are sat by a random sample of 15 year old students every three years, and measure their ability in reading, mathematics and science. More than 3 million students in over 90 countries have participated in the PISA tests since they started in the year 2000, with the latest round being in 2018, the next will be in 2021.
The PISA Tests aim to assess whether what students have learned in school can be applied to real life situations, focusing on their ability to reason and communicate rather than factual recall.
PISA stands for the ‘Programme of International Student Assessment and is run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. An overview of the PISA programme and summary of the 2018 results can be found on the PISA website here.
Countries volunteer to take part in the PISA tests and if a country isn’t equipped to conduct the test country-wide, then regions of that country can participate instead.
If a country volunteers to participate, then individual schools are selected to represent all 15 year olds, and the individual students who are to sit the tests are then randomly selected from within those schools.
Students take the test in their native language, and the tests involve interpreting texts, solving problems and using their reasoning skills.
According to the video below, the primary aim of PISA isn’t to rank countries next to each other, although this is what tends to catch the headlines, rather it is about assessing how successfully students are being equipped for further study and work , and about collecting data to put together a picture of what the most effective education systems look like.
PISA’s positive spin on ‘PISA’.
Examples of PISA test questions
You can find some examples of the PISA test questions on the PISA web site here.
These questions really are worth having a look. The ‘reading’ questions really do challenge students to read thoroughly and think about their answers, and the maths questions all seem to be applied to real-world circumstances.
An overview of the 2018 PISA Results
Top ranked countries
Selected regions in China (not all regions do the tests!) came out on top, with a mean score in all tests of 555, closely followed by 3 other wealthy Asian city-states, then Estonia, Canada and Finland. Overall, there’s not too much of a mix at the top end – it’s either Asian city or Euro-American-Australian!
Bottom ranked countries
Much more of a mix down at the bottom: The Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Saudi Arabia and Argentina stand out for me, either due to large population size or to just surprise due to their having quite a high level of development!
Problems with the PISA tests
This excellent (and short) 2019 article in The Conversation outlines seven problems with PISA tests, among which it mentions that economic and cultural factors in some countries can explain a of the difference in test results – poverty may account for up to 50% of the difference, for example,
It also mentions that the sampling of schools may bias the results – ‘indiginous’ schools which have higher SEN rates are not included in Canada’s sample, for example, which could boost it up to near the top.
This 2019 Washington Post article makes several main criticisms of the PISA tests, all based on a lot of research by serious academics. The gist of these criticisms are that the tests are very narrow – focusing on English, maths and science, and this narrow agenda reflects the biases of the rich people who have mainly been involved with designing them.
Despite their claims that the tests are universally applicable, they are not: the real world challenges faced by students in poorer countries probably aren’t being assessed by these maths/ english and science tests, they are probably more appropriate to students in wealthier countries.
Why do pupils in some countries get better PISA test scores than others?
Do European countries do well simply because the tests have been designed for them? And do the students in countries such as Saudi Arabia do worse because the tests aren’t culturally relevant (too narrow)?
Or is there at least some validity to these tests and then real underlying factors which might explain differences in student peformance?
Do those countries/ regions at the top end of the scale have features in common? Do their students perform well because of cultural factors such as parents valuing education, or economic factors because of the degree of equality, lack of poverty? Or is it because of the quality of education systems and amount of resources or way the schools are organised?
This is definitely something worth exploring, and it’s something I’d recommend all students think about doing.
You can do so by using either the individual snapshots of countries from PISA, or simply by doing your own independent research on the education systems of those countries at the top end of the league tables.
Are the PISA tests damaging education?
This letter, written in 2014 by education academics and published in The Guardian outlines several concerns about the negative consequences of the PISA testing regime. Some of these concerns include:
It has increased the pressure on national governments to rise up the rankings, which can increase the amount of testing (rather than education).
It encourages countries to focus on a narrow range of quantitative measures in mathematics, science and English rather than a broader range of qualitative educational goals.
It encourages a focus on a three-year improvement cycle, rather than longer term development.
‘Work readiness’ is not the main aim of education in some countries, yet this is what the PISA tests are designed to assess.
PISA has no mandate in countries, it has just ‘imposed itself on them’.
It opens the doors to private companies to sell ‘education improvement’ products based on PISA findings.
Pupils from the lowest fifth of households by income are twice as likely to fail both English and Maths GCSE.
The United Kingdom government does not routinely collect statistics on the relationship between social class and educational achievement!
Instead, we have to rely on statistics which use ‘proxy-indicators’ to look at the relationship between household income and educational achievement, rather than the relationship between social class and educational achievement.
Two sources we might use to to examine the relationship between social class and educational achievement are:
Free School Meal (FSM) achievement rates compare to non FSM achievement rates
Data on independent school results compared to government schools results.
Problems with relying on income as a proxy for social class
Both of the above statistics measure income alone, rather than the broader concept of social class.
Household income is related to social class, but income alone does not tell us exactly which social class someone is from. Some parents might work in traditionally ‘working-class’ jobs which could be very well paid, such as the building trades; while other parents might be earning a limited amount of money working part-time in traditionally middle-class jobs – as private music teachers for example.
Also, income does not necessarily tell us about the cultural aspects of class – how well educated parents are or how much social and cultural capital they have, for example.
Thus you must remember that household income indicators are only proxies for social class, they may not show us precisely what a child’s social class background is.
Achievement of free school meals pupils
In 2022 only 29% of Free School Meals (FSM) pupils achieved grade five or above in both English and Maths compared to 57% of non Free School Meal Pupils. This means that non-FSM pupils from higher income households are twice as likely to pass both English and Maths compared to FSM pupils from lower income households.
Similarly, only 26% of FSM pupils are entered for the higher status English Baccalaureate compared to 43% of non-FSM pupils.
Parents in households with a gross annual income of no more than £16190 were entitled to claim for Free School Meals. This means that all children from households with parents on benefits and some children with parents working part time in lower income jobs will be eligible.
22.5% of children were eligible for Free School Meals in 2022, which is just over 1/5th of all students. Thus the blue bar above represents the poorest fifth of children and the red bar represents the richest 4/5ths.
Limitations of Free School Meals statistics
One limitation is that it FSM eligibility is based on gross household income, so it doesn’t tell us about poverty differences within this group based on disposable income. For example, if one household owns their house outright they would have a lot more disposable income than a household with a mortgage.
A further limitation is that you are not getting a detailed comparison, you are only able to compare the achievement of the poorest 20% with the achievement of richest 80%.
It would be better if you could compare more categories, so the poorest fifth, the next poorest fifth and so on. If you did this you would probably see a wider achievement gap between the poorest fifth of children and richest fifth.
Independent School Results Compared to State Schools
Pupils attending independent, fee paying, schools get much better GCSE results than pupils attending normal academies or LEA controlled ‘comprehensive’ schools.
In 2021 more than 60% of GCSEs awarded to pupils attending private schools achieved a grade A, compared to only 30% of GCSEs awarded to pupils attending academies or LEA maintained state schools (approximate figures), and the gap between private and state schools is increasing.
It’s interesting to note that non-selective state schools (or the 150 so state grammar schools) get proportionately more A grades at GCSE than the private schools, but there are very few of these grammar schools)
In order to afford the fees to get your children into an independent school, you have to be comfortably in the top 10% of households, hence comparing the results allows us to explore the relationsip between income and educational achievement at the top of income scale.
There are a few scholarships for pupils from poorer households, but not in significant enough numbers to skew the overall comparison, it’s mainly rich kids attending these private schools.
Top 10 independent schools for A-level results
If we look at the very top, very expensive schools we see that money really does buy you a very good chance of achieving 3 A-levels at A-A*, with the top ten schools and colleges all having a 90% success rate at that level.
Although it will cost your parents a minimum of £15K a year to get you into one of those schools.
One advantage of the above stats is that it’s much more likely that you’re seeing the solidly upper middle class in these schools, rather than this just being about income.
However, this is at the same time a disadvantage as we cannot isolate variables. We can’t be sure the extent to which is is purely wealth and income influencing these results, or cultural capital.
One thing is for sure: it is not just the raw intelligence of the pupils attending these schools, they are being gifted with an enormous educational advantage compared to students sitting A-levels at regular state colleges.
Conclusions
If we use the above data, we can see there is a drastic difference in the achievement rates at the very top and the very bottom of the household income scales.
IF we think household income is a valid indicator of social class, we can also say there are huge social class differences in educational achievement based on the above statistics.
However, we don’t have systematic, annual data on the relationship between the vast majority of middle income households and educational achievement.
The lack of consistent monitoring could be due to our neoliberal government trying to disguise the truth that there is a clear difference in educational outcomes by social class, which in turn is due to social class inequalities in society, which is something neoliberalism is happy to maintain.
Signposting
The relationship between social class and educational achievement is one of the main topics within the sociology of education at A level.
