Category: blog

Life was fairly predictable for young people in the past. They would attend school and then follow one of a number of options upon leaving school. What they did at this point depended on a combination of their social class and educational achievement. Many went into a range of differently paid and differently statused jobs while others pursued further or higher education. But the situation has radically changed during the past few decades. Getting a job upon leaving school is no longer a certainty. And if they do get one, unlike before, they are more likely to have to leave it and seek another. The process may continue at a regular frequency as there are few jobs for life. In between work, the person may have to cope with periods of unemployment, work flexibly, work part-time etc.

The modern life journey young people are increasingly likely to pursue requires them to have certain personal and social skills. Those who have such skills are at an advantage in the competitive world around them. “Our basic needs are ones for sustenance and care. But we also need capabilities- skills, knowledge, and wisdom- to help us navigate through life. These capabilities are the means through which we meet our other needs – finding a job, earning a living and coping with challenges.” The report goes onto refer to Amartya Sen who talks of “capability as a kind of freedom”.

The capabilities concerned are developed in early life but they have long lasting impact for the individual. Many are also developed through activities and learning beyond school. This has particular implications for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

According to Lexmond and Reeves “a substantial research literature shows that the development of … skills is influenced by socio-economic background with children from poorer families faring worse that children from middle class families” (2009).

According to Phil Parker, a senior teacher with many years of experience in White working class schools, “this is reinforced by the findings in our PASS survey, though not against these criteria explicitly. Our findings in 2005 showed self esteem, self confidence, readiness to learn (and to some extent attitudes to teachers) featured heavily”.

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“…(disadvantaged) children may not experience the benefits at home which more advantaged children take for granted, for example access to a wide range of books or educational software” (DCSF 2009a)

In the second half of the last century, our schools began to develop strategies on multicultural education. There was recognition that home and school for some of the ethnic minority were two separate worlds. The Bullock Report (1975) was perhaps the most well known document in this respect. It pointed out that home and school should not be separate worlds for children and that efforts should be made, by schools and others in education, to reflect the child’s life at home. Although, the focus of this report was ethnic minority pupils and their needs, it equally applies to White working class children for whom home and school are two separate worlds as the academic Gillian Evans has shown. In her research into the lives of working class families she found a world very different from that which middle class people are used to. Talking about one family she visits, she writes:

“..The contrast between Sharon’s household and my own is revealing. I become self-consciously aware that, at least on school days, my daughters have to make sense of all the prohibitions and special routines to do with the cultivation of self-discipline: learning how to eat healthily, happily do homework and music practice (not so happily), before relaxing and doing as they please. I realise that this is also what probably makes the transition from home to school easier for middle-class children: they are already used to following instructions, doing as they are told, and may have some awareness that those rules and regulations are for their own good”. (Evans 2006)

Demie and Lewis (2010) spoke of assumptions made by the education system about different groups of pupils. It is expected that immigrants will not understand the education system and the wider services available in a given area around them and that White working class pupils will have such knowledge. So everyone sets out to work with the former while ignoring the latter and yet it is they who need bit of an ‘immigrant treatment’- to be pointed out where services are; what their purpose is, how they can benefit the user etc.

According to the DCSF, cultural and social factors are implicated in the association between deprivation and poor educational outcomes. They have acknowledged the possibility that working class children may have “different background knowledge, skills and interest which are not reflected in the school curriculum and are less likely to have the kinds of social connections which offer inspiration and opportunities” (2009b).

It has been shown that the way middle class children are parented, both before and during their school life, has greater continuity with what they experience at school. According to Lareau (2003), through their upbringing they develop a ‘sense of entitlement’. They expect the world and its systems to revolve around them and when it doesn’t they know they can complain. This is often not the case for working class children (Evans 2007, Lareau 2003). For them home and school are two separate worlds, given the “middle class values” of the education system (Evans 2007).

Reay (2006) talks about working class pupils feeling worthless within the ‘classed’ environment education is. They can feel “..not really valued and respected within education” and there was a feeling of inadequacy – “inadequate cultural backgrounds, looked down for their ‘stupidity’ and ..positioned as less than human”. On the other hand, there are numerous schools who give respect to such working class young people and their parents and get respect back.

Thrup also talks about social class discrimination in the education system. He points out: “..research has indicated that teachers and principals can advantage the middle class in lots of ways in the day to day life of schools: in their use of language, in what they choose to teach about and assess, in their support for segregated and stratified school programmes, in their assumptions about student behaviours and world views, the so called ’hidden curriculum’ and so on” (2007). This sounds like ‘classism’(ala institutional racism)

According to Lupton (2003a), middle class teachers do not always recognise class differences between themselves and their working class pupils in the same that they recognise ethnic and cultural differences. They were also less likely to adapt their practice to accommodate the needs of white working class students in the way they were for ethnic minority students. Of course, their ability to adapt is also limited, given the constraints of school organisation and the curriculum as well as unavailability of training and resources.

Becky Francis, RSA Director of Education, was quoted as making a similar point when she said: “Academic research…has shown that there is often a huge gulf between the values that working-class children grow up with and those they encounter at school. Middle-class children, by contrast, face far less dissonance… . Already, working-class kids feel like fish out of water,” she says. “Those differences come into play even at a very young age. If you’re told you’re a failure, why would you bother?” (Bloom 2010)

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“Parents, even if their income is low, can help young people to stay in school and gain some qualifications if they are interested in their child’s progress, show that they believe their child is capable of succeeding and wish her/him to do so” (Bartley 2006)

“Parents in deprived families are less likely to be involved in their children’s education. Of particular importance is the provision of a stimulating home learning environment, which is found less often in deprived contexts” (DCSF 2009b)

“Young people who perceived their parents to be monitoring their activities had higher levels of achievement” (Wilson 2009)

It has been pointed out that parents can make a major difference to their children’s education (Desforges and Abouchaar 2003). Firstly, this can involve ‘at home’ parenting i.e. provision of a secure and stable environment, parent-child discussion, good models of constructive social and educational values and high aspirations. Secondly, in relation to home-school links, this can involve contact with school to share information, participation in school events and participation in the work of the school including governance.

White working class parental involvement is not rocket science. There is plenty of good practice which needs to be replicated. For example, government’s own National Strategies has produced case studies (2009) which recorded that “all the schools worked hard to develop positive relationships with parents/carers”. Desforges and Abouchaar have also pointed out that:

According to Strand (2007), White young people were the least likely to have paid-for private tuition and least likely for their parents to know their child’s whereabouts. He also points out that parents were most likely to report quarrels with their child more than once a week which meant that whatever social capital the parents had was not transferred to the children (Coleman (1988).

Evans (2007) agrees that working class parents are committed to education of their children and want them to do well but don’t always know how to help in the process. “For example, children may regularly be told to ‘go and pick up a book!’ but parents aren’t necessarily likely to sit down with their children to show them how to read and enjoy it ..”. They often also lack the confidence to critically engage with the school if they disagree with something the school is doing. Unlike middle class parents they are more likely to look up the teachers as having superior knowledge. “Many parents left the child’s education to the school “(Demie and Lewis 2010)

Lott (2001) presents a depressing picture about how poorer parents are treated by the education system and the barriers they face in relation to their contact with schools.

Lareau (1989) also reported that schools established home-school liaison arrangements based on middle class norms, knowledge and expectations, and interpreted parental non-participation as a lack of interest in education rather than as a deficit of cultural capital.

Both Lott and Lareau based their research on American schools. It is tempting to think the picture is a lot better in the UK though I have my doubts. What is the situation in your school? Are there hard-to-reach parents or is yours a hard-to-reach school for working class parents? Are there working class parents in your school community who face some of the barriers and problems highlighted above?

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A recent study from Bristol University (Burgess and Greaves 2009) into teacher assessment outlined how young people are disadvantaged by teacher stereotyping. Although the focus of the study was mainly on ethnic minority young people, it also found the White working class young people equally suffer from low teacher expectations. Reay found teachers treating students very differently on the basis of their social class. “For example, over the course of four weeks’ observation the middle class students were given almost twice the amount of positive feedback provided to working class students” (2006).

This confirmed previous research which had pointed out that teacher attitudes, assumptions and behaviours which were influenced by pupils’ socioeconomic background were disadvantageous for pupils from deprived backgrounds” (DCSF 2009b). This compounded the disadvantage for these pupils which resulted from being placed in low ability groups which had poor quality teaching (DCSF 2009a).

The above was also confirmed by Gazeley and Dunne whose research pointed out that “teachers hold stereotypical views and attitudes about pupils and their parents which favoured the middle class …and blame underachievement on the pupils’ social class”.

They also found when teachers referred to a pupil’s home; they made greater proportion of positive references about pupils identified as middle class:

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But the White families, nothing binds them, some are cousins I suppose but they are not seeking anybody out, I can’t think of anything that would bind them together (Demie and Lewis 2010)

In the Caribbean community there is an ethos of hard work, with Church and music providing a strong focal point for families. Whereas the White I probably have nothing but the pub…there is no pride in the White community, no strong sense of a cultural identity. (Demie and Lewis 2010)

There has been on-going debate about whether neighbourhood disadvantages have an adverse effect on educational achievement. A number of area based policy initiatives were implemented in the recent past which were based on the assumption that this was indeed the case: Health, Education and Employment Action Zones, Excellence in Cities, Sure Start and New Deal for Communities. Also in recognition of this, it has been argued that “both school-level and wider interventions are needed to close the gap in educational attainment” (Lupton 2003).

In explaining how the ‘neighbourhood effect’ works, Ainsworth (2002) has pointed to collective socialisation as a process which has by far the most significant impact on young people. Children living in advantaged areas are more likely to have modelled for them value for education, adherence to school norms and hard work. On the other hand in neighbourhoods (and families) where many adults do not work life can become “incoherent” for young people because what they see in their community outside of school does not complement what school may talk about in terms of values such as ‘work for a living’ or hard work leading to success. Instead, the ‘oppositional’ nature of the messages they get in the outside world may actually undermine what the school says.

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A study of internet access amongst children, by Ofcom, pointed out the important role such access plays in children’s education. It pointed out that by far the highest category of internet usage (75%) amongst 12-15 year olds was for school related work. The study also pointed out the disadvantage suffered by poorer children as only 31% of such children i.e. those in C2DE socioeconomic groups do not have internet access at home and rely on schools and friends for such access, while only 12% of children in ABC1 socioeconomic group do so (2007).

A recent report from Becta (2008) highlighted some of the benefits for children of having home internet access which goes beyond simply being able to do their homework.

Social exclusion caused by lack of internet access

According to Communities and Local Government (2008), those most deprived socially are also most likely to lack access to internet access. “Three out of four of those ‘broadly’ socially excluded lack a meaningful engagement with the internet”. In addition, they were the group categorised as ‘deeply socially excluded’ whose lack of internet access is even greater. They account for some 10 % of the UK population.

Another study into broadband adoption acknowledged that while such access was increasingly a prerequisite for social and economic inclusion, “limited availability, poor quality service, hardware costs, hidden fees and billing transparency” were major issues for low income communities (SSRC 2010). The report went onto point out the critical role played by ‘third spaces’ such as libraries who provide a safety net for access and as providers of training and task based assistance for their communities.

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