Factors Affecting Achievement: Class, Ethnicity and Gender

Why Do Some Groups Achieve More Than Others?

The previous lesson described the patterns: working-class pupils perform below average, girls outperform boys since the 1990s, and ethnic groups show varied attainment. This lesson asks why. Sociologists organise explanations at two levels: factors outside school (home background, material resources, cultural attitudes) and factors inside school (labelling, streaming, curriculum content). No single perspective has the complete answer — competing explanations offer different mechanisms.

Key Fact

Outside-school factors include material deprivation and cultural capital. Inside-school factors include labelling, streaming, the ethnocentric curriculum, and catchment area effects linked to school type.

Social Class: Material and Cultural Factors

Material deprivation describes the economic disadvantages working-class pupils face: overcrowded housing with no quiet study space, inability to afford uniform or equipment, needing part-time jobs that reduce study time, and parents unable to pay for private tuition. These material conditions constrain performance regardless of ability or effort.

The concept of cultural capital was developed by Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu argued that middle-class families possess cultural capital — familiarity with the language, values and behaviours that schools reward. Middle-class children enter school already knowing how to address teachers, how to present written work and which cultural references carry currency. Working-class children often lack this, putting them at a systematic disadvantage even when equally able. The concept of cultural deprivation takes a related but different approach: it argues that some working-class family cultures transmit values that are misaligned with school expectations, such as short-term thinking over long-term academic investment. Critics argue this explanation “blames the victim” rather than addressing structural disadvantage.

Halsey: Class Barriers and Origins and Destinations

A.H. Halsey’s study Origins and Destinations (with Heath and Ridge, 1980) investigated the relationship between social class and educational achievement in Britain. Halsey found that despite the expansion of state education and the introduction of comprehensive schooling, class remained a powerful barrier to educational opportunity. Even when pupils of similar measured ability were compared, those from working-class backgrounds were significantly less likely to gain high-level qualifications or attend university. Halsey’s research is a direct challenge to the functionalist meritocracy claim: it demonstrates that achieved status in education reflects social background as much as individual talent.

Ball: Parental Choice, Catchment Areas and Marketisation

Stephen Ball’s research on marketisation and parental choice examined how league tables, Ofsted inspections and open enrolment reshaped inequality. Ball argued that middle-class families with cultural capital can navigate the system — reading league tables, visiting multiple schools and moving into desirable catchment areas. Working-class parents care equally about their children’s education but lack the same information and resources to act on their preferences. Counter-school cultures (Willis, 1977) also contribute: working-class boys who develop anti-school peer cultures limit their own qualifications, reproducing their class position through apparent free choice rather than coercion.

Explanations for ethnic attainment gaps divide into two broad camps. The cultural deprivation thesis argues that some minority ethnic families transmit cultural values misaligned with school expectations, such as different language practices or lower emphasis on formal academic qualifications. Critics regard this as “victim-blaming” and prefer structural explanations located in the school itself.

The ethnocentric curriculum describes a school curriculum that predominantly reflects White European culture and knowledge, potentially alienating minority ethnic pupils whose heritage and experience is not represented. Institutional racism refers to discrimination embedded in school policies and practices rather than in individual teacher attitudes — for example, disproportionate exclusion of Black Caribbean boys, or lower teacher expectations. The Macpherson Report (1999), following the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, introduced institutional racism into mainstream British public debate and prompted reviews of school practices.

Feminist sociologists explain girls’ improved performance since the 1990s through changes in female aspirations, growth in service-sector employment for women, and curriculum reforms that moved away from male-dominated content. Girls have benefited from a broader expectation that academic qualifications lead to careers, rather than preparation for domestic roles.

The feminisation of schools refers to the claim that schools have become dominated by female teachers, coursework-based assessment and cooperative learning styles that suit girls more than boys, whose socialised learning behaviour differs. This remains a contested explanation among sociologists — some argue it pathologises boys rather than addressing wider structural inequality.

The crisis of masculinity describes the impact of de-industrialisation on working-class boys: as traditional male manual industries such as steel, coal and manufacturing declined from the 1980s onwards, some working-class boys came to see academic success as incompatible with masculine identity. With no clear vocational destination on the horizon, academic effort became associated with femininity and passivity. This explanation connects to Willis’s (1977) observation that “the lads” valued manual labour above academic work, anticipating futures in the factory rather than the classroom.