by Sarah Dickinson

Created on: August 03, 2009

There is a very close relationship between social class and educational performance, this has been the case throughout the 20th century regardless of how the education system has been organised.

Pupils from professional backgrounds are significantly more likely to enter higher education than those from unskilled backgrounds.

Pupils from middle class are more likely to study for A levels(If your American A levels are qualifications that students study for between ages of 16-18 in college) Where as working class students are more likely to study vocational subjects this is because some working class parents place less emphasis on education as a means to get on in life. The undervaluing of education by adults combined with more limited career aspiration results in working class pupils viewing schooling as merely a prelude to getting a manual job.

Moreover, pupils from disadvantage backgrounds are more likely to leave school at 16, some sociologists believe that this is because working class culture is fatalistic- parents passed on the idea that their lower status was relatively fixed. the impact of this was working class children don't see much point in investing time and effort into something which will have no effect on their lives, working class children were also more likely to start school unable to read as working class parents seem to put less emphasis on education and the importance of it this could also be the reason why pupils from unskilled backgrounds on average achieve lower scores IN EXAMS and are more likely to be put into lower streams or bands.

A sociologist called Bourdieu stated that: Middle class are at an advantage because they have right kind of cultural capital- the right language, skills, knowledge and attitudes. So basically the more cultural capital you have, the more successful you'll be in education- working class don't have access to cultural capital so they have less chance of becoming successful in education.

Middle class families pass on culture and expectations from parents to children this is called cultural reproduction, and due to this because the parents from a middle class family have high expectations this pushes their children to work hard at school and to carry on onto further education as they emphasise that you need education in order to succeed.

There are other factors to do with social class that affect educational attainment such as material deprivation.

Some working class families are material deprived

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