Factors Within School That Affect School Achievement

In school, class is considered the most important factor that affects educational achievement and is said to have five times the affect of gender and twice the effect of ethnicity. It can be through factors within school like labelling and use of language and outside of school like material deprivation and cultural disadvantages.

When at school many teachers instantly label students before they have either spoken to them or taught them. This can be through the student’s appearance, behaviour, attitude, ethnicity and class. Sometimes this is not the right label and students can find it hard to change it through how the teachers then treat them. If students start to believe this label then they will have created a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is where teacher’s expectations and thoughts on a student are translated into actual outcomes. In a study completed by Becker in 1971 teachers were asked about what they saw the ideal pupil to be like. They thought that they needed the right attitude to work, to be dressed smartly and that they address the teacher in a suitable manner. These characteristics are much easily come by in middle class students and so it shows that teachers see the ideal pupil as middle class. Ability was one of the last points to be remembered which means that teachers see students by class firstly and then on how well they work as second.

Across England many schools have been using banding as a form of separating the ability of students. This is considered to be a form of labelling and usually it is the middle class students with mainly professional based parents who a re in band 1. Bands 2 and 3 contain socially mixed and mainly manual backgrounds and working class respectively. When students come to school most of them want to learn and “warm up” to education. Those students placed in Bands 2 and 3 often “cool down” to education and so tend to underachieve. In 1983 a sociologist named Ramsey said that he “believed that knowledge is being used as a social control to keep students in line. There is a “hidden curriculum” which is trying to keep working class students in line.” The hidden curriculum is the invisible ways in which teachers make students conform to the rules of society.

Cultural disadvantages can also disadvantage working class students from higher educational achievement. This includes the way that they talk, the language they use and the fact that schools are run by middle class and so it is harder for working class to achieve grades. If students are interviewed two patterns of language can be found; restricted code which is used casually with limited vocabulary and simple grammar and elaborated code which is used in more formal situations with sophisticated grammar and vocabulary. It is said that middle class children can swap between the two using them each in the correct situation but that working class children can often only use the restricted code which then makes them disadvantaged in schools that are rune by middle class people. It makes it harder for them to learn and understand the teachers and they are often left behind in subjects where language is important for example in English lessons.