Basil Fawlty famously suggested to Sybil that she’d do well on Mastermind if she chose as her specialist subject “Stating The Bleeding Obvious”. One of the questions would surely be concerned with the link between educational achievement and social class.

 

Despite studies, surveys, investigations and replicated research going back over the last half century - showing conclusively that the major determinant of educational achievement is the social class background of pupils – it still makes relatively good headlines when the same thing is proved yet again by new research.

 

As I write this – another example of “new old news”.  The TES (14.9.07) reveals again, “Social class and poverty are much greater causes of academic underachievement than gender… according to the Government’s Equality watchdog, the Equal Opportunities Commission”

 

Let’s not go back too far, or even attempt a complete list.

 

I’m now in my mid 50s. While I was at Primary School, I was blissfully unaware of Hoggart and Jackson’s work “The Uses of Literacy”. When I was preparing for life at my Grammar School in 1962, Jackson teamed up with Marsden to produce “Education and the Working Class”, and the Newsom Report “Half Our Future” was noting the conditions and social problems of slum areas that were leading to under-stimulation and underachievement of children.

 

As I started GCE “O” level studies, J W Douglas was reporting the effects of social class on education in “The Home And School”, reinforced by his work “All Our Future”, which coincided with my entry to the VIth form. Part of my “A” level Sociology was to understand the National Child Development Study – a longitudinal study, tracking individuals born in 1958… again demonstrating the determining factor of class in educational progress and attainment. Hargreaves’ “Social Relations in a Secondary School” came to similar conclusions based on observations in a boys’ Secondary Modern school in Salford.

 

As I went to Central London Poly to further study Sociology, Basil Bernstein was working on “Class, Codes and Control” in which he made clear the devastating linguistic disadvantages faced by many working class children.

 

And just after I started teaching in a Secondary Modern in 1975, Bourdieu published “Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction” – a Marxist analysis of stratification in schools and society as a whole, and the determining factor of class on educational progress and attainment – which matched very closely my experiences as a new teacher. This was followed in the same year by Sharp and Green’s “Education and Social Control” which proposed that even well intentioned “progressive” developments – such as child-centred education - in fact could not overcome conditions external to the school.

 

Five years into my teaching, Halsey, Heath and Ridge published “Origins and Destinations” clearly identifying social class background as the major determinant of individuals’ access to educational institutions. As my career developed there were many, many more investigations, studies and published research… and each time the conclusions – though differing in emphasis and focus – were much the same. The division of society on class lines, and consequent deprivation, material and social, has had, is continuing to have, and will continue to have devastating effects on the progress and attainment of working class children.

 

Let’s come up to date. Consider this, published towards the end of 2006, referring to the work of Leon Fernstein of University College, London – published in 2003

 

“The research shows how it is possible to combine socio-economic classification of the household with the child’s overall developmental score at age 22 months to accurately predict educational qualifications at the age of 26 years…. By the age of 22 months, children’s developmental score is already stratified by social class, and this stratification has increased significantly by the age of 10 years”.

 “Educational Failure & Working Class White Children In Britain” Gillian Evans       2006

 

The following is an extract from work by Brunel University undertaken in 2004 at the request of the then Education Secretary, Charles Clarke, considering University admissions policies

 

"Educational and socio-economic disadvantage affect pre-entry achievement

 B5. In the UK, students from skilled manual, partly skilled or unskilled family backgrounds are far less likely to achieve high grades at A level or equivalent examnations than those from professional intermediate or skilled non-manual backgrounds. The effect of social background on attainment begins to appear by the age of two. DfES analysis shows that lower income pupils are over-represented in schools that add the least value to pupils' performance. It also shows that lower income and higher income pupils alike all make greater progress in schools with a low percentage of pupil with free school meals. This means that some applicants will have grades lower than might have been achieved had they attended a different school, or had their families been wealthier. Clearly, much work is needed to address this disadvantage earlier in children's lives, but this is outside the remit of this review. The Steering Group does not believe that the higher education admissions system should have responsibility for compensating for social disadvantage or for shortcomings in other parts of the education system."

 

 

And how about this from The Guardian, February 2006

“A study by academics at University College London (UCL) and Kings College London has given statistical backbone to the view that the overwhelming factor in how well children do is not what type of school they attend- but social class. This unprecedented project has revealed that a child's social background is the crucial factor in academic performance, and that a school's success is based not on its teachers, the way it is run, or what type of school it is, but, overwhelmingly, on the class background of its pupils.

 

"These are very important findings, which should change the way parents, pupils and politicians think about schools," says Richard Webber, professor at UCL. "This is the first time we have been able to measure the precise impact of a child's social background on their educational performance, as well as the importance of a school's intake on its standing in the league tables."

 

The work commissioned by the Rowntree Trust and published in 2007 as “Poverty, Wealth and Place in Britain” was undertaken by a team led by Professor Danny Dorling of Sheffield University, and explored the situation in Britain between 1968 and 2005. The research team summed up their conclusions like this.

 

“It is clear that the last two and a half decades have witnessed substantial increases in the spatial segregation and concentration of poverty and wealth in Britain. The overall decline and slight spatial deconcentration in core poor households in the 1990s are hopeful signs. However, the 1990s also saw relative poverty levels climb to unprecedented levels of more than one in four households by 2000, and for the first time there were some areas where more than half of all households were poor. Wealthy households have become more segregated, and increasingly concentrated in the south east of England.”

 

Similar work, undertaken by Professor Richard Wilkinson of Nottingham University, looking at the effect of such a widening “wealth/poverty gap”, concluded that the effects were damaging to social cohesion, that growing class inequality… not simply poverty… creates conditions which lead increasingly to social breakdown – in terms of education, crime, “gang culture” etc. The consequences for schools and education – and particularly educational attainment of working class children are obvious.

 

So are we all agreed then? It might appear so if we consider the following two statements, which clearly reflect the research.

 

“We also fail our most disadvantaged children and young people… internationally, our rate of child poverty is still high, as our the rates of worklessness in one-parent families, the rate of teenage pregnancy and the level of poor diet amongst children. The links between poor health, disadvantage and low education outcomes are stark.”

‘Putting People at the Heart of Public Services - The DfES 5 year strategy for Children & Learners’ July 2004

 

 

 

"All the independent evidence shows overall standards to be rising. But the bad news is that when it comes to the link between educational achievement and social class, Britain is at the bottom of the league for industrialised countries…We continue to have one of the greatest class divides in education in the industrialised world, with a socio-economic attainment gap evident in children as young as 22 months…. Today, three-quarters of young people born into the top social class get five or more good GCSEs, but the figure for those born at the bottom is less than one-third. We have one of the highest university entry rates in the developed world, but also one of the highest drop-out rates at 16.

"Four factors are key to this depressing pattern. First the simple fact of growing up in poverty, with the restrictions it places on housing, diet and lifestyle. Second, family factors - critically parental interest and support, which itself is driven by parental experience of education. Third, neighbourhood factors. The fourth is the quality of schooling.

"The first three require long-term change in social and economic life. But the great power of schooling is that it is in our power to change it now and change it for the better."

-          David Miliband,  the schools minister to an IPPR conference on social mobility (Independent, 8 September 2003)

 

But we have to ask, if “the first three require long-term change in social and economic life”… where is the action on this? In fact, as the Rowntree report shows, the situation has worsened considerably since Miliband’s statement – with 100,000 more children living in poverty last year – bringing the total to 3.8 million. That's one child in every three. In addition to this growth in poverty, the wealth gap has widened.

 

Continuing Government demands for “pay discipline” for the lowest paid workers, while taking no action on the 30 - 40% annual income rises that employers have been giving themselves, indicates that the Government has little intention of tackling that widening gap. The attitude towards the inadequate minimum wage, and the paucity of state benefits all suggest that such “long-term change in social and economic life” is very far from their agenda.

 

The sad fact is that Governments – Tory and Labour – have attempted to turn the issue on its head, and – far from attacking class disadvantage, prioritising anti-poverty measures, pursuing a redistribution of wealth, simply seek to ‘blame’ the education system, teachers and other public sector workers for continuing inequalities, for lack of “social mobility” and social cohesion!

 

They ‘recognise’ the link between class and education, but – flying in the face of the research -  maintain it is poor education, and lack of skills that create class inequality and disadvantage rather than vice versa.

 

We remember the outspoken David Blunkett, then Secretary of State, alleging that teachers, “Use the question of class disadvantage to justify failing our children”.  This is like recognising the devastating effects of poor housing and sanitation on people’s health, and then blaming hospitals and doctors, struggling against the effects, for the continued existence of such ills!  It is not schools, good, bad or indifferent that create class inequality – it is class inequalities in terms of wealth and power  that lead to the disaffection of pupils. This is the reality shown by decades of research.

 

If the research is so conclusive – and if teachers’ experiences in the classroom bear it out every day… why is there no action against poverty and class disadvantage?

 

Consider these statistics from the UK Government Office of National Statistics

The richest 1% of the UK population own 34% of the total wealth

The richest 5% own 58%

The richest 10% own 71%

...and the poorest 50% of the population own just 1% of the total wealth

 

As we have already seen, this gap is widening, and the process is accelerating.

 

This is no accident. It is a lasting and defining characteristic of our economic system. The fact that there is a bigger overall economic “cake” in Britain than in countries of the developing world means that many more “ordinary people” can get by on their tiny slice. But there are also many in Britain who can’t "get by". And many of those who currently can would be quickly reduced to poverty through unemployment. Nearly all of us live just a couple of salary payments away from serious problems.

 

The daily direct and devastating effects of social and economic inequality in Britain are not just on the pages of the research reports – they are in front of us daily in our classrooms, in our hospitals, in our jails and on the streets of our cities, and amongst those subject to rural poverty too.

 

Teachers have a responsibility here. What can we do?

 Firstly, we have to do away with the notion that education in itself can put the matter right. Of course we can and must do all we can professionally as teachers and school managers to raise pupils aspirations, motivation and achievement. But the problem at root is in our wider society. In a system which relies on the existence of ‘have-nots’ in order that the ‘haves’ can have more than their share – a LOT more than their share! – education structures continue to mirror this. How would society work if every child had the sort of education that the economic elite of the nation buys for their children? From where would come those who build their homes, deliver their post, tarmac their roads, load their lorries, stack their shelves, staff their offices, and fight their wars?

 

So the unpalatable and politically unpopular fact is, in my view, that educational underachievement, far from being an economic problem for our free-market, dog-eat-dog society, is, in fact, an economic necessity that Government feels unable or unwilling to challenge. If it's money that makes the world go round, it is inequality in wealth and power that keeps it turning in the way we have come to accept as "normal". Yet the word and concept of “underachievement” is politically damaging to government. So it must be continually cloaked in new words and "spun" concepts – while the cause continues to go unchallenged

 

Now, the Government strategy – including the Education & Inspections Act - will impose on us new ‘legitimacy’ in terms of social engineering and division. We’ll see “Skills Academies” and Specialist Vocational Schools for what they call “disaffected” pupils, and Academic schools for those more “motivated” by such education. And of course it will be the latter that are populated by the children of those at the top of the social and economic pyramid – and it will be the qualifications that they offer that will keep their offspring there.

 

Meanwhile, working class children will be encouraged to succeed at other challenges – challenges which even if tackled successfully will never equip them to move into that elite. The much vaunted increase in numbers in Higher Education has seen a promotion of 'vocational' routes largely for working class students - and student fees and postgraduate debt are again discouraging working class young people from staying on.

 

Of course there are exceptions, many exceptions, every year. But against the general story, these are small numbers indeed. And the idea that as as the rich become super-rich, wealth "trickles down" to enrich the poor is just... an idea. It doesn't work like that.

 

The fact is that we teachers need to be part of a wider movement that rejects the fundamental inequalities of society, rejects the social mechanisms that sustain that inequality, and works strategically against these. And we are part of that movement already. At TUC 2007 teacher unions worked together and with organisations such as End Child Poverty and the Unemployed Workers Centres to highlight the issue. We need to build on this as a keystone of our education policy, Bringing Down The Barriers

 

 Unemployment? We must challenge why it exists. Inner-city decay? We must fight it alongside those who live in it. Poverty wages and exploitation? We must expose those who pay them, no matter how far up society’s tree they may be. 

 

Let’s approach all teachers’ unions to commission a definitive work on social class and education, not to repeat what has already been done, but to build on it. What is the nature of our class system today? What is the condition of the English and Welsh working class? How do these conditions impact on education? What steps could be taken to put an end to the class system, and to the social and economic inequality it represents? What and who might prevent these steps being taken? How can we overcome these?

 

 There will be many Union members who would regard this sort of endeavour as being too political. But it is often these very members who work long and hard – often too long and hard for their own health – to raise the aspirations and achievement of the underachieving children in their classroom. Their commitment and work is a very fine thing, but despite generations of such teachers, the problems remain.

 

All the evidence is that the solution is very largely outside of the classroom. The solution is one based on social progress, on progressive policies that challenge the “global market”, the power of money and privilege – and such policies do not come about without a bit of a struggle.

 

My view is that we teachers owe it to ourselves, the children and the communities we serve to be at the forefront of that struggle. Though the solution lies outside of our classrooms and schools, our schools are at the hearts of our communities – and it is our communities that need to be inspired to believe that “another world is possible” and that it can be achieved. We can be an important part of that social process of change. Without it, the fundamental problem, and the research mapping its effects, will continue. 

 

 

back to homepage

 

back to contents