Category: Social class, wealth and income inequalities

Income Inequality in the UK – Some Infographics

Stratification is one of the core themes within A level Sociology and Sociology more generally. One of the major sources of stratification is found in differences between wealth and income within the UK. According to various sources of statistics (of course you should always question where these come from!) the UK is one of the most unequal countries in the developed world, and this is something I like to bang on about a lot. Below are a few handy infographics which illustrate the extent of wealth and income inequality in the UK.

  1. This first infographic from the excellent Equality Trust (authors of The Spirit Level) provides a nice general overview. The headline figure is quite easy to remember – the top o.1% earn about 100 times more than the bottom 90%, and the ratio is roughly the same for the earnings of a CEO of a FTSE 100 company compared to the average UK income.

income inequality UK

2. This infographic from Income Inequality Briefing reminds us that the wages of the richest have increased, while the relative wages of the poorest have decreased in real terms.

 

inequality UK

3. This third infographic, again from the Inequality Briefing, looks at things regionally – Basically I think it tells us that the wealthiest region (London) is twice as wealthy in terms of wages as the poorest (up north somewhere or Welsh valleys). It also reminds us that the UK is one of the most unequal countries in Europe. Basically the average income in London is double the average income in the West Midlands.

regional inequality UK

4. This final infographic from the Office for National Statistics at least reminds us that taxation and benefits do help to reduce income inequality to an extent. Before tax and benefits the richest 20% of households are 14 times richer than the poorest, but after tax and benefits, the ratio reduces 4. NB1 – If you were comparing the richest 10% with the poorest 10% the difference would be larger. NB2 remember that most people who receive benefit are actually in work, and benefits (e.g. housing benefit) tops up their low wages.

tax benefits income inequality

 

Learning to Labour

The counter school culture resisted the school but ultimately limited working class kids to getting working class jobs

Learning to labour is an ethnographic study of 12 working class white boys who attended one boys only secondary school which Willis called ‘Hammertown Boys’ in the Midlands in the early 1970s. Willis used a mixture of overt participant observation and group interviews to describe and understand the counter-school culture which the boys formed while at school. 

learning-to-labour

Willis began his fieldwork in 1972 and followed the boys for six months in their second to last year of secondary school. He also interviewed them periodically up until 1976, by which time the boys had transitioned from school to work, most of them going into manual factory jobs. 

He applied a neo-marxist framework to explain why these working class lads went on to get working class jobs.

Wills recognised as legitimate the boys’ own interpretation of school as an institution which was irrelevant to their lives as 15-16 year olds because they didn’t need qualifications to move into the manual work they perceived as superior to academic work. 

However, while rational in one sense, the counter school culture they formed which resisted the power of the school in the end led to what he called their “self-damnation: their own choices to spend their time ‘having a laff’ by confronting school authority resulted in them achieving no qualifications and having no choice other than to move into working class jobs, which meant class inequality was reproduced despite their class consciousness. 

The Counter School Culture

In the first half of the book Willis mostly describes the Counter School Culture the Lads formed.

Willis used participant observation and group interviews to study the lads over several years, and he was thus able to produce a rich or thick description of their ‘antics’, their banter and their attitudes towards school and future wok, providing an in-depth account of their own interpretation of their lives within the counter school culture they formed.  

The counter school culture was one of rebellion against school rules and focused on disrupting school life, with status being gained within the group for ‘bad behaviour’ such as not doing homework, disrupting lessons, playing pranks on teachers, and harassing conformist students. 

The lads strongly identified against the school and the fact that it valued academic work and non-manual, or mental labour more highly than the manual labour they saw as real work and more appropriate for real men.

The lads identified against conformist students who they derided as feminine or gay and the lads were also homophobic. 

The lads smoked and had sex with girls, and being known to be sexually active was important in their culture which was patriarchal and sexist and excluded girls. The counter-school culture was also racist, as non-whites were excluded too and the lads made common usage of racial language against ethnic minorities. 

While the lads did truant they mostly preferred being at school because it was such a laff and the disruptive behaviours which confronted authority built a sense of shared identity and solidarity. In fact the lads could have left school at 15 but they chose to stay on for an extra year! 

By the end of the study in the autumn of 1976 most of the lads had gone into the manual jobs they wanted and perceived as empowering, including bricklaying, plumbing and machine work, and only one could not find a job. 

How working class kids get working class jobs

In the second half the book Willis develops a theoretical analysis of how working class kids go on to get working class jobs, and the role the counter school culture plays in this process.

Wills accepted the lads’ own interpretation of their counter-school culture as a form of resistance to school authority, but it also led to what he called their self-damnation, as it ultimately laid the foundation for their acceptance of their subordinate role in capitalist society in lower paid, manual work.

The counter school culture acted as a kind of ‘conscious bridge’ (author’s term) between the working class culture which it reflected and the shop-floor culture of many manual work environment, both of which it mirrored, and being part of the CSC played a role in the reproduction of class inequality, helping to explain why working class kids went on to working class jobs! 

Willis saw the Counter School Culture as a distorted version of class consciousness, it resisted the authorities of capitalism but was short lived and never amounted to anything that would help improve the lads’ subordinate position in the capitalist system. 

The Counter-School-Culture emerges from working class culture and helps the lads understand some of the injustices of capitalism, but it also offers a limited framework of understanding rooted in immediate gratification of having a laff which prevents them from developing effective resistance. 

Penetration and Limitation 

Two concepts Willis developed to understand the lad’s world view were penetration and limitation. 

He argued that the lads had legitimate insights into the truth of their own class position (‘penetrations’) such as recognising that the school was a middle class institution designed primarily to help middle class kids into middle class jobs in exchange for their conformity, of which they were having none! 

However their penetrations were limited and failed to fully blossom into a full, effective, radical class consciousness:

  • Their culture was more emotional than intellectual. It was all about the buzz of having a laugh, not serious resistance that was going to go any further. 
  • It was also a means to accomplish a masculine identity, and in embracing patriarchy and traditional gender divisions of labour, they also limited their capacity to build effective resistance. 

Schools play a role in ideological control 

Schools play a nuanced role in performing the function of ideological control in capitalist society. 

By operating as middle class institutions and serving the needs of middle class students by focusing on academic qualifications relevant to middle class jobs they make working class rebellion more likely, hence they are unintentionally complicit in the counter school culture emerging. 

The counter-school culture then does the rest – the lads ‘choose to fail’ and the school isn’t to blame, at least at the surface level of reality, but deeper down it is because it is failing to meet the needs of working class students who do not want middle class academic jobs. 

Policy suggestions 

Wills also made a number of policy suggestions for schools to help make them more relevant to working class kids and break the role they played in ideological control and the reproduction of class inequality

  • Recognising that schools have a middle class teaching paradigm which disadvantages working class students. 
  • Showing more respect for working class culture and perspectives. 
  • Ceasing to communicate to working class kids that their identities are inferior. 
  • Discussing the role of culture in students’ lives more, and actually showing an interest in the role of working class norms such as immediate gratification and having a laff. 

Criticisms

Angela Mcrobbie criticised Willis for being too forgiving and accepting of the patriarchy and sexism inherent in the counter school culture, however Wilis did recognise that this was a limitation of their culture. 

Willis’ methodology is not that clear which raises questions of reliability. It is unclear for much of the time the specific contexts Willis was in and the exact nature of the group interviews isn’t always specified. 

Teachers in other schools pointed out that there were no cultures of resistance in their schools, raising issues of representativeness. However Willis responded by saying such cultures may not be immediately obvious and that there may be weaker individual manifestations of what he found. 

This is a difficult study to repeat and validate given the amount of times it took, the depth of it and the special access Willis had. 

Focus on Research Methods

Learning to Labour by Paul Willis (1977) is an ethnographic study of twelve working class ‘lads’ from a school in Birmingham conducted between 1972 and 1975. He spent a total of 18 months observing the lads in school and then a further 6 months following them into work. The study aimed to uncover the question of how and why “working class kids get working class jobs” (1977: 1) using a wide range of qualitative research methodologies from interviews, group discussions to participant observation, aiming to understand participants’ actions from the participants’ point of view in everyday contexts.

Participant Observation in the Context of Education

Given the practical and ethical problems of conducting participant observation in a school setting, there are only a handful of such studies which have been carried out in the UK, and these are mainly historical, done a long time ago. They are, nonetheless interesting as examples of research. Below I consider one classic participant observation study in the context of education – Paul Willis‘  Learning to Labour (1977)

Sampling

Willis concentrated on a particular boy’s group in a non-selective secondary school in the Midlands, who called themselves ‘lads’. They were all white, although the school also contained many pupils from West Indian and Asian backgrounds. The school population was approximately 600, and the school was predominantly working class in intake. He states that the main reasons why he selected this school was because it was the typical type of school attended by working class pupils.

Data Collection

Willis attended all school classes, options (leisure activities) and career classes which took place at various times. He also spoke to parents of the 12 ‘lads’, senior masters of the school, and main junior teachers as well as careers officers in contact with the concerned ‘lads’. He also followed these 12 ‘lads’ into work for 6 months. NB He also made extensive use of unstructured interviews, but here we’re focusing on the observation aspects.

Participant observation allowed Willis to immerse himself into the social settings of the lads and gave him the opportunity to ask the lads (typically open) questions about their behaviour that day or the night before, encouraging them to explain themselves in their own words…which included detailed accounts of the lads fighting, getting into trouble with teachers, bunking lessons, setting off fire extinguishers for fun and vandalising a coach on a school trip.

Practical Issues with Learning to Labour

The research was very time consuming – 2 years of research and then a further 2 years to write up the results.

It would be very difficult to repeat this research today given that it would be harder to gain access to schools (also see reliability)

Funding would also probably be out of the question today given the time taken and small sample size.

Ethical Issues with Learning to Labour

An ethical strength of the research is that it is giving the lads a voice – these are lads who are normally ‘talked about’ as problems, and don’t effectively have a voice.

An ethical weakness is that Willis witnessed the lads getting into fights, their Racism and Homophobia, as well as them vandalising school property but did nothing about it.

A second ethical weakness is the issue of confidentiality – with such a small sample size, it would be relatively easy for people who knew them to guess which lads Willis had been focussing on

Theoretical Issues with Learning to Labour

Validity is widely regarded as being excellent because of the unstructured, open ended nature of the research allowing Willis to sensitively push the lads into giving in-depth explanations of their world view.

Critics have tried to argue that the fact he was obviously a researcher, and an adult, may have meant the lads played up, but he counters this by saying that no one can put on act for 2 years, at some point you have to relax and be yourself.

Something which may undermined the validity is Willis’ interpretation of the data – he could have selected aspects of the immense amount of data he had to support his biased opinion of the boys.

Representativeness is poor – because the sample size is only 12, and they are only white boys.

Reliability is low – It is very difficult to repeat this research for the reasons mentioned under practical factors.

Signposting and Related Posts

This post was written primarily for students of A-level sociology, specifically focussing on the problems of researching in schools using Participant observation, to get students thinking about the Methods in Context part of paper 1.

However the study is also relevant to the education topic more generally, and research methods.

You might also like this summary of more recent research on why the white working classes continue to underachieve in education.

Please click here to return to the homepage – ReviseSociology.com

Exploring the Experience of Poverty in the UK

some documentaries providing qualitative evidence on the experience of poverty in the U.K.

This post provides some qualitative sources of data which explore what it’s like to be poor in Britain today, follows on from a previous post on ‘defining and measuring material deprivation in the UK’ .

One of the things you need to look at for the AS Education module is the extent to which material deprivation is responsible for educational underachievement. While statistics give you an overview of the extent of poverty, and a little bit of information of the kind of things poor people can’t afford, they don’t give you much a feeling of what it’s like to actually live in poverty.

To get a feeling for day to day challenges of living in poverty you need more qualitative sources, and ‘thankfully’ we are blessed with a number of recent documentaries which look at the experience of living with material deprivation in the UK.

Watch the documentary sources below and then answer the questions/ contribute to the discussions below. The videos have all been selected because they focus on material deprivation and education in some way.

Poor Kids

This 2011 documentary from the BBC focuses mainly on the experience of younger children in the U.K.


Britain’s Hungry Children

(A Channel 4 Report, 2013)

Cites research drawn from 2500 food diaries kept by children in the UK – Some of whom live on less than half of the recommended calories. Also highlights the importance of lunch clubs to feed hungry children.


Finally watch this video – This shows you a case study of one girl from a poor background who actually made it into the best school in the area, against the odds. It’s a bit slow, but later on it gives an insight into the struggle her mum faces to raise enough cash to meet the ‘hidden costs’ of education (she has to resort to a ‘pay day loan’).

Questions/ tasks for discussion:

Q1: Draw an ‘ageline’ (like a timeline, I may have just invented the word) showing how material deprivation affects 3 year olds to 18 year olds in different ways.

Q2: From a broadly Marxist Perspective, the effects of material deprivation on children are structural, or objective if you like. Being brought up in poverty and having a poorer diet, and living in lower quality housing effectively cause poor children to do less well in education. This means that, all other (non material) things being equal (same school, same intelligence, same motivation etc) a poor kid will always do worse than a rich kid. Do you agree? Be prepared to explain your answer.

Signposting and Related Posts

This material is useful as part of an introductory module in sociology.

You might also like this related post: The effects of material deprivation on education

Class differences in education: the role of in-school factors

In school factors include labelling, subcultures and the hidden curriculum.

This post looks at how in school processes such as teacher-pupil relationships, subcultures, banding and streaming and the Hidden Curriculum all relate to class differences in educational achievement and the experience of education.

a mind map summarising the in school factors which explain social class inequalities in educational achievement, including teacher labelling and pupil subcultures.

This is a summary revision post, the more detailed posts are linked below.

Teacher pupil relationships

In the 1970s, Howard Becker argued that middle class teachers have an idea of an ‘ideal pupil’ that is middle class. This pupil speaks in elaborated speech code, is polite, and smartly dressed, He argued that middle class teachers are likely view middle class pupils more positively than working class pupils irrespective of their intelligence.

Rosenthal and Jacobsen argued that positive teacher labelling can lead to a self fulfilling prophecy in which the student believes the label given to them and the label becomes true in practise.

Many of the early studies discussed in this more in-depth post on teacher labelling are relevant to social class.

Pupil Subcultures

Willis’ (1977) research involved visiting one school and observing and interviewing 12 working class rebellious boys about their attitude to school during their last 18 months at school and during their first few months at work. Willis described the friendship between these 12 boys (or the lads) as a counter-school culture. Their value system was opposed to that of the school. They Lads attached no value to academic work, more to ‘having a laff’ because they thought that their future work roles in factories would not require them to have qualifications. They saw school as irrelevant.

Mac an Ghail’s study of Parnell School (1994) – Found that there was a greater variety of working class subcultures that Willis’ research suggested. He found three types of subculture.

  1. The Macho Lads – just like Willis’ Lads.
  2. The Academic Achievers – these were working class kids who were doing well and tended to come from the upper end of the working classes.
  3. The New Enterprisers – these focused on vocational subjects and were interested in business and technology – were still concerned with success rather than rejecting school.
  4. Class and gender- Boys from different class backgrounds experience school differently.

Working class boys are generally under pressure to express traditional anti-school masculinities.

Middle class boys are more likely to try hard at school, expressing their masculinity through being competitive in examinations. However, middle class boys still feel some pressure to be seen to not be making an effort in school.

This post on subcultures and educational achievement has more details on the studies above.

The organisation of teaching and learning

Banding and Streaming disadvantages the working classes and some minority groups – Stephen Ball (1980s) found that following comprehensivisation working class children were more likely to be put into lower sets.

The Hidden Curriculum

Bourdieu argued that schools are middle class environments full of teachers with middle class values and tastes, which could mean the hidden curriculum is subtly skewed in favour of middle class students, making it something they are more comfortable with because their tastes are more in sync with those of the teachers.

In contrast working class pupils may feel less at home at school, and more so since there are fewer working class teachers than middle class teachers.

This post on the Hidden Curriculum explores how this works in schools in more depth.

Signposting

This is one of the main topics within the sociology of education.

Cultural Capital and Social class differences in educational achievement

cultural capital refers to the skills, knowledge, attitudes and tastes through which typically middle class parents are able to give their children an advantage in life compared to working class children.

Cultural Capital refers to the skills and knowledge middle class parents have that they can use to give their children an advantage in the education system.

A closely related concept is Social Capital, which is the support and information provided by contacts and social networks which can be converted into educational success and material rewards.

cultural capital

Cultural capital theory is sometimes seen as the opposite of cultural deprivation theory which blames educational failure of the working classes on the inferior values of their parents.

In contrast cultural capital theory is about middle class advantage. It is about middle class parents being able to give more help to their children which means they do better in school compared to working class children.

Schools are seen as middle class institutions (teachers and managers are middle class) and so middle class kids tend to fit in with school norms more easily, and are less likely to clash with the school, which also helps with their education.

Three ways parents use their cultural capital

  1. Middle class parents are better educated and are more able to help their children with homework
  2. Middle class parents are more skilled in researching schools
  3. Middle class parents teach their children the value of deferred gratification.

Two ways parents use their social capital

  1. They speak to parents of children who already attend the best schools
  2. They are more likely to know professionals who work in the best schools

Supporting evidence for cultural capital theory

Diane Reay (1988) argued that mothers make cultural capital work for their children. Her research is based on the mothers of 33 children at two London primary schools. The mothers of working class children worked just as hard as the middle class mothers. But the cultural capital of the MC mothers gave their children an advantage.

Middle Class Mothers had more educational qualifications and more information about how the educational system operated. They used this cultural capital to help their children with homework, bolstering their confidence and sorting out their problems with teachers.

Stephen Ball (2006) has argued that government policies of choice and competition place the middle class at an advantage. Ball refers to middle class parents as ‘skilled choosers’. Compared to working class parents (disconnected choosers) they are more comfortable with dealing with public institutions like schools, they are more used to extracting and assessing information. They use social networks to talk to parents whose children are attending the schools on offer and they are more used to dealing with and negotiating with administrators and teachers. As a result, if entry to a school is limited, they are more likely to gain a place for their child.

Something else Ball referred to was the the school/ parent alliance: Middle class parents want middle class schools and schools want middle class pupils. In general the schools with more middle class students have better results.. Schools see middle class students as easy to teach and likely to perform well. They will maintain the schools position in the league tables and its status in the education market. 

Analysis point

For the sociologists in this section, the cause of lower class failure is the very existence of inequality itself in society and differences in power held by the working and middle classes.

The role of cultural capital: evaluations

  • Cultural capital has proved difficult to operationalise and measure
  • However, more and more research suggests this is important in explaining middle class success and working class failure
  • Helps to explain why the Middle classes always do better despite compensatory education
Sources/ Find out More

For a more in depth look at the concept of cultural capital please see Cultural Capital and Education (extended version)

Stephen Ball (2006) Education Markets, Choice and Social Class: the market as a class strategy in the UK and the USA

Signposting and related posts

Cultural capital theory is one of the main theories which explains social class differences in educational achievement along with

The effect of cultural deprivation on education

cultural deprivation refers to the inferior values of the working class, including immediate gratification and fatalism.

Cultural Deprivation theory holds that some groups, such as the lower social classes, have inferior norms, values, skills and knowledge which prevent them from achieving in education. Inferior language skills, and the fact that working class parents do not value education are largely to blame for working class underachievement, rather than material deprivation.

You might also hear ‘cultural deprivation’ theory referred to as ‘working class subculture theory‘ reflecting the fact that this theory has its origins in the 1960s, details of which I cover below.

Cultural Deprivation and education

Cultural deprivation and education

Five ways in which cultural deprivation can disadvantage children in education include:

  1. Working class parents may show a lack of interest in their children’s education
  2. Lower class parents are less able to help their children with homework
  3. Lower class children are more likely to speak in a restricted speech code. Rather than the elaborated speech code- Basil Bernstein argued this.
  4. Working class children are more concerned with Immediate Gratification rather than deferred gratification – Barry Sugarman argued this.
  5. The underclass has a higher than average percentage of single parent families. Melanie Philips argued this.

Class subcultures and education

Cultural deprivation theory has its origins in the 1960s when sociologists thought there was a clear class divide between the working and middle classes.

All of the studies below suggest that working class cultures are deficient and that working class children are deprived as a result. These explanations thus put the blame for working class underachievement on the working class families themselves. In these explanations, working class parents basically teach their children norms and values that do not equip them for education in later life.

The value system of different classes

In 1967 Herbert H Hyman authored an article (1) titled ‘The value system of different classes’ arguing that the value system of the lower classes created a self-imposed barrier to them improving themselves.

Compared to the middle classes, the working classes:

  1. placed a lower value on education
  2. placed a lower value on achieving high occupational status
  3. Believed there was less opportunity for social advancement.

Hyman thus concluded that the working classes were less motivated to achieve in school than the middle classes.

Immediate and Deferred Gratification

Barry Sugarman argued that there were two distinct working and middle class subcultures which had different value systems. He argued there were four main differences, but the one he is best know for is the distinction between immediate and deferred gratification.

Values of the working class subculture

Compared to the middle classes, the working classes are more likely to have….

  1. Immediate gratification: a focus on seeking pleasure in the moment, rather than delaying pleasure for future reward. This encouraged working class children to leave school early to earn money immediately rather than staying on when they were 16-19 to gain higher level qualifications which would get them a higher paying job a few years later.
  2. Fatalism: an acceptance of one’s situation and a belief that one’s lot in life could not be changed. This meant working class children didn’t believe education could help them in life, they just accepted they would go into working class jobs which required no qualifications.
  3. Present-time orientation: a focus on the present and lack of desire to plan for the future.
  4. Collectivism: loyalty to the group, rather than the individual aspiration which the education system demands. A good example of collectivism could be in the lads which Paul Willis studied in Learning to Labour.

These combined values meant that working class children were disadvantaged compared to middle class children as the middle classes benefited from deferred gratification, motivation to improve, future-time orientation and individualism, which fitted with the values of the education system.

cartoon explaining the difference between immediate and deferred gratification

Recent evidence for cultural deprivation theory

Connor et al (2001) conducted focus group interviews with 230 students from 4 different FE colleges from a range of class backgrounds, some of whom had chosen to go to university and some who had not chosen to go to University. The main findings were that working class pupils are discouraged from going to university for three main reasons:

  • Firstly, such candidates want ‘immediate gratification’. They want to earn money and be independent at an earlier age. This is because they are aware of their parents having struggled for money and wish to avoid debt themselves
  • Secondly, they realise that their parents cannot afford to support them during Higher Education and did not like the possibility of them getting into debt
  • Thirdly, they have less confidence in their ability to succeed in HE.

Research by Leon Fenstein (2003) found that low income was related to the restricted speech code. His research revealed that children of working-class parents tend to be more passive; less engaged in the world around them and have a more limited vocabulary. Children from middle-class households had a wider vocabulary, better understanding of how to talk to other people and were more skilled at manipulating objects.

These studies actually show that cultural and material deprivation are related

Evaluations of cultural deprivation theory

  • If we look at ethnicity and gender differences in achievement – to triangulate, it does seem that cultural factors play a role!
  • It seems that it isn’t just cultural deprivation but also material deprivation that explains underachievement
  • Marxists would argue that cultural deprivation theorists blame the working class parents for the underachievement of their children whereas these parents are really the victims of an unequal society in which schools are run by the middle classes for the middle classes.
  • Both Hyman and Sugarman may have exaggerated the differences between working class and middle class culture, and especially today the class structure is much more complex.
Signposting

This material is mainly relevant to the sociology of education, especially the topic of social class differences in educational achievement (home based factors).

Related Posts include:

The effects of material deprivation on education

The effects of cultural capital on educational achievement

Related External Posts – Useful 

Earlham’s Pages – do their usual ‘overwhelming for anyone but an A* students whose interested in Sociology approach’ (personally I like it though, then again I’m several levels above both of those criteria) – lots of contemporary links at the top (no summaries) and then a useful overview of ‘class subcultures’ below.

Factors influencing class based differences in educational achievement – probably written by a student but it’s quite a useful summary!

Sources

(1) Barry Sugarman (1970) Social Class, Values and Behaviour in Schools.

Part of this post was adapted from Haralambos and Holborn (2013) Sociology Themes and Perspectives 8th Edition.

The Effects of Material Deprivation on Education

material deprivation means poor kids are more likely go hungry and get sick from living in cold houses which harms their education.

Material deprivation can be defined as the inability to afford basic resources and services such as sufficient food and heating. Material deprivation generally has a negative effect on educational achievement.

Material deprivation is very strongly correlated with low income and poverty. The lower the wealth and income of a household the more likely that household is to suffer from material deprivation.

Material Deprivation and Educational Achievement

Material Deprivation and Education

Gibson and Asthana (1999) pointed out that there is a correlation between low household income and poor educational performance. There are a number of ways in which poverty can negatively affect the educational performance of children. For example –

  1. Children in poor homes are more likely to live in cold and even damp conditions which results in higher levels which in turn will mean more absence from school and falling behind with lessons. This is especially the case since the cost of living crisis and soaring energy bills.
  2. Worse diets. They are more likely to skip meals, for example, which means they will be unable to concentrate in school.
  3. Less able to afford ‘hidden costs’ of free state education: books and toys are not bought, and computers are not available in the home.
  4. Children from poorer backgrounds are more likely to be living in smaller homes and having to share a bedroom with a brother or sister. This means they will lack a private study space and not to be able to homework free from distractions.
  5. Tuition fees and loans would be a greater source of anxiety to those from poorer backgrounds.
  6. Poorer parents are less likely to have access to pre-school or nursery facilities.
  7. Young people from poorer families are more likely to have part-time jobs, such as paper rounds, baby sitting or shop work, creating a conflict between the competing demands of study and paid work.
  8. Poorer parents will only be able to afford houses in poorer areas which tend to have higher rates of crime and other social problems. Schools in those areas will have to devote more of their resources to tackling these social problems rather than teaching children, so results will suffer.

Analysis

Those households suffering from material deprivation in the United Kingdom today are likely to be in relative poverty rather than absolute poverty, but nonetheless some of the above factors can work together and combine to make the experience poverty worse.

For example low income can lead to debt which leads to lower income because of the interest payment on those debts.

Low income can lead to poor diet, which can lead to illness, which means time off work, which means lower income.

The flow chart below shows how multiple factors related to poverty can lead to reduced educational opportunities for children:

Material deprivation is not the only form of deprivation. In A-level sociology the term material deprivation refers to tangible, material things which can usually be bought with money, and is usually contrasted to cultural deprivation which refers to lack of appropriate norms and values. The two often work together.

Evidence for material deprivation

There are three classic pieces of sociological research which explored this issue:

  • Stephen Ball (2005) points out how the introduction of marketisation means that those who have more money have a greater choice of state schools because of selection by mortgage
  • Conner et al (2001) and Forsyth and Furlong (2003) both found that the introduction of tuition fees in HE puts working class children off going to university because of fear of debt
  • Leon Fenstein (2003) found that low income is related to low cognitive reasoning skills amongst children as young as two years old

There is also a lot of contemporary evidence from organizations such as the Sutton Trust which documents the continued impact of material deprivation on education….

Poor kids going hungry…

In 2019 the National Education Union conducted a survey of 8000 teachers and school leaders focusing on how poverty was affecting their children’s learning and achievement.

Among the findings were:

  • Over 75% reported their students had experienced hunger of fatigue and difficulty to concentrate on schoolwork due to poverty
  • Over 50% reported students had been ill and missed schoolwork due to poverty.
  • Over 30% reported their students had been bullied because of poverty.
  • Nearly all schools reported that the Pandemic harmed poor students more and that poor parents and parents relied on schools for support more during that time.
  • In general poverty has a negative affect on the mental health, well being and educational achievement of poor pupils.

There were 1.9 million pupils eligible for Free School Meals in 2022, but the Child Poverty Action Group estimates that there are an additional 800 000 pupils from working poor households who are going hungry but do not qualify for Free School Meals because their parents fall just above the threshold line and so do not qualify for them (1) . This situation has been accelerated with the Cost of Living Crisis.

Poor kids in cold houses

The Institute of Health Inequalities (3) estimated in 2022 that one in five households with children under five are in fuel poverty (see * below for a note on the definition), but projected that the numbers could easily treble into the winter of 2023.

Whatever way you look at it, there are increasing numbers of children living in households which are struggling to pay their gas and electric bills and thus struggling to keep their housing warm, which means more children living in cold and possibly damp houses.

The institute notes that 1.7 Million school days are lost in the EU due to illnesses related to damp and mold, and the UK has the highest rate of all member states, with a rate 80% above the average.

Living in a fuel poverty household can also mean it is more difficult for children to do homework as everyone is more likely to cram into one or two heated rooms (the ‘heat one room’ strategy).

Poverty and university students

The impacts of material deprivation are also felt by university students. According to a survey of 1000 students in January 2023 conducted by the Sutton Trust 33% of students from working class backgrounds reported skipping meals compared to only 24% of students from middle class backgrounds, and 10% (working class) compared to 4% (middle class) of students reported having moved back home with their parents to save money (5)

The Cost of Living Crisis

The recent rise in gas and electricity prices mean that many more households have been pushed into relative poverty in 2022 and 2023.

As a result hundreds of thousands, if not millions more children are experiencing some form of material deprivation, as families choose between heating or eating.

Evaluations of the role of material deprivation

  • To say that poverty causes poor educational performance is too deterministic as some students from poor backgrounds do well. Because of this, one must be cautious and rather than say there is a causal relationship between these two variables as the question suggests, it would be more accurate to say that poverty disadvantages working class students and makes it more difficult for them to succeed.
  • There are other differences between classes that may lead to working class underachievement. For example, those from working class backgrounds are not just materially deprived, they are also culturally deprived.
  • The Cultural Capital of the middle classes also advantages them in education.
  • In practise it is difficult to separate out material deprivation from these other factors.

Possible policy solutions

There are plenty of things governments can do to help those in poverty at the school level.

Most schools provide text books and basic education resources for free to students, and all schools have access to computers and schools staying open for longer in the evenings and homework clubs can help combat lack of computers at home and cold houses.

One thing being trialed in London now is Universal Free School Meals – the idea behind making them universal is that this removes the stigma behind claiming them.

Schools have also increasingly taken it upon themselves to combat child poverty through setting up foodbanks and breakfast clubs, for example, recognizing that hungry children don’t learn effectively.

The problem with all of the above is that these initiatives require money from central government, and funding has been cut in real terms by 14% since 2010 under the neoliberal Tories.

It is also unlikely that policies at the school level can do anything to combat the wider structural inequalities that ultimately result in poor kids doing worse than rich kids in state education. The government is not going to legislate to prevent ‘selection by mortgage’ for example, which gives a huge advantage to rich kids.

Signposting

This is relevant to the sociology of education module.

Related Posts

The Effects of Cultural Deprivation on Education

The Extent of Material Deprivation in the UK

Evaluating the extent of material deprivation in the UK

Sources

(1) The Guardian (September 2022) Hungry Children Miss Out on Free School Meals

(3) The Institute of Health Equity (2022) Fuel Poverty, Cold Homes and Health Inequalities in the UK.

(4) National Education Union (2021) Child Poverty the Facts

(5) The Sutton Trust (2023) A QUARTER OF STUDENTS AT RISK OF DROPPING OUT OF UNIVERSITY DUE TO COST OF LIVING CRISIS

Channel Four News Report (September 2022) Children coming to school hungry

The reproduction of class inequality in education

This video explores the role of social and cultural in the process of the reproduction of class inequality.

https://emb.d.tube/#!/revisesociology/dpf4yejg

This video shows a hypothetical dialogue in which two middle class parents discuss how they might translate their material and cultural capital into educational advantage for their offspring, thereby reproducing class inequality.

material capital is basically money and resources,

cultural capital refers to the store of skills and knowledges middle class parents might have which give their children an advantage in life over working class children.

The reproduction of class inequality through education may be defined as the process whereby middle class children succeed in education and go on to get well-paid middle class jobs, and vice versa for working class children. As a result class inequality is carried on across the generations.

This was one of the first educational videos I ever uploaded to YouTube, but since the company decided to demonetize my account I am deleting everything from YouTube and bringing it to Dtube – a decetralised, blockchain based social media platform – get on the chain, I say!

 

 

Related Posts

Cultural Capital and Education – Extended Version