SCHOOLS APPEAR TO BENEFIT MIDDLE- CLASS PUPIL'S MORE THAN WORKING-CLASS PUPILS

The Ways In Which Schools Appear To Benefit Middle-Class Pupil's More Than Working-Class Pupils



The Ways In Which Schools Appear To Benefit Middle-Class Pupil's More Than Working-Class Pupils

Introduction

During the 1960s and 1970s, UK reorganised its educational system along comprehensive lines. Selective schooling was replaced by a system in which a single type of school served all pupils in designated catchment areas. In 1982, when the 1981 Education (UK) Act became operational, over 95% of British pupils attended comprehensive schools. Also, because of the dominant role played by the central Government, and the national system of certificate examinations, there was considerable uniformity of school goals, curricula and principles of organisation. Thus, UK's schooling system was arguably more uniform than most schooling systems in Europe and North America. Because many factors associated with the quality of schooling were constant across schools, the British system was an ideal setting for the study of the effects of parental choice. The 1981 Education (UK) Act gives parents the statutory right to request that their child attend a school outside of their designated attendance areas. The Act requires Education Authorities to take these requests into account, and restricts the circumstances in which local authorities can reject a request. To assist parents in their choice, the legislation also requires Education Authorities to publish brochures for each school that report examination results and other pertinent information. The first five years of the reform saw a rapid increase in the incidence of placement requests for non-local schools. As the incidence of requests increased, the proportion of requests refused also increased. Many refusals stemmed from popular schools reaching their maximum capacity.

Background

It is well known that children growing up in poorer families emerge from school with substantially lower levels of educational attainment. Such 'achievement gaps' are a major contributing factor to patterns of social mobility.

The ways that affluence and disadvantage can influence educational attainment are potentially very broad. This study focused on 'aspirations, attitudes and behaviours' and used a number of rich large-scale longitudinal sources of data capturing groups of children growing up in the UK today, from early childhood, through to late adolescence.

The research showed that educational deficits emerge early in children's lives, even before entry into school, and widen throughout childhood. Even by the age of three there is a considerable gap in cognitive test scores between children in the poorest fifth of the population compared with those from better-off backgrounds. This gap widens as children enter and move through the schooling system, especially during primary school years.

The selection process

Willms and Echols (1992) later examined survey data from the 1989 British School Leavers' Survey, which described the cohort that entered secondary school in the autumn of 1984. The authors were able to match some of the pupils' responses with the interview data collected by Adler et al. (1989) from the pupils' parents. They found that parents who exercised choice chose schools with higher mean socio-economic status and higher ...