The Experience of a Lifetime

Inequality within Education

Equality of Educational Opportunity: The principle that every child should have an equal chance of doing as well in education as his or her ability will allow (an introduction to sociology Browne, K 1992) A principle that was the core of the 1944 Education Act, and although the act was replaced by the comprehensive system at a later date, the heart of it was to ensure all children had an equal opportunity regardless of their sex, ethnic background or even social class. However, despite the original hopes that were placed upon it, the education system seems to fail in this area, as not all children of the same ability achieve the same success. The failure is often seen as an underachievement by the pupil, and that their social class origin, ethnicity and gender have an influence on how they progress through education.

Such children often face disadvantages in their social conditions such as poor-quality housing, high unemployment in their homes, contributing to difficulties in coping with their school work. For instance it is generally thought that the higher the social class of the parents, the more successful the child will be in education, this could mean that children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds will have the “worse” schools, while in contrast, the middle and upper class children will probably have less problems and result in a better learning environment. Additionally, school’s in predominately middle-class areas have been found to have a more active parent-teacher associations to enable the extra help needed to ensure the children’s success(National Confederation of Parent Teacher associations 1991). While parents in poorer areas may find it harder to make such contributions, meaning the schools lacks support, having a knock-on effect within the pupils. Perhaps the working-class children are at a disadvantage from the beginning as schools are, and have always been as that is how they began, middle-class institutions, they teach predominately middle-class values of ‘the right form of dress’, behaviour, good language, etc. This may mean that the middle-class children could just treat school as an extension of their home life, appearing to the teachers to be tuned-in, while viewing the lower-class pupils as trouble-makers because they take a bit longer to ‘tune-in’.

The working-class child may see the atmosphere and values of school as unfamiliar, as they may differ from their home life. However what is unseen is the double journey working-class pupils are thrust upon in education - in addition to the academic hurdles they will have to face they do it while facing a wider range of problems outside of school. Their disadvantages are seen in the primary school and become more and more emphasized as they grow older and pass through each school in turn. They, some may say inevitably, fall behind as such becoming disillusioned along the way, is it no wonder that those who leave school with few or no qualifications are from working-class backgrounds. More often than not, a child’s background plays more of a part in their schooling than their raw I.Q. Perhaps though this is because we live in an unequal society, where the associated effects of home life, class background and the middle-class culture of school means the dream of total equal opportunities for all in education are just that, a dream.

A lot of the cause can also be attributed to some teachers as negative labels of the working class child are construed by middle class teachers which are in turn communicated to pupils who take all this on and become self fulfilling prophecies of failure. Positive labels are communicated to the middle class child as they are seen as ideal pupils who work hard and keep quiet, because their integration is easier – and so they too become self fulfilling prophecies, but this time successful ones. You can, of course, form a debate for those teachers who do spot and nurture some children’s talents. The sad thing about the debate against the last sentence is that it is only some, there a far more leaving education having never had their chance to enhance their abilities, to have their talent flourish and be commended for it.

The class inequalities are now branching into higher education since the cost of going to university has, more or less, passed from the state to the student. So the gap started in school is now going to impact on university life as well. Those less likely to be able to comfortably afford to go to university - the working classes - are, straight away, working on a handicap compared to those who can afford to do so comfortably, the middle and upper classes. The reason for the handicap in higher education is the need for the working-class students to have to work in order to ‘survive’ university life. This considerably cuts into research/studying time, due to longer days than others, and therefore increases the likeliness of lower grades. But this is how it has been for many, many years and how it will inevitably continue to be, as there will always be class divides and the differences that they bring.