Explaining Differences in Attainment - Inputs

OK, today, a bit of revision on explaining differences in educational attainment. I’m just going to sketch over some of the detail, (I’ll look at race and gender in more detail later on) but the organisation and thinking is important because it clarifies - or should do, and should therefore provide you with a strong framework to apply to questions. I’m covering one half today, the other half tomorrow. Differences in attainment are a key issue in the specification and while there is a mass of detail in the textbooks, you do need to be able to organise it. I suggest you organise it as follows:

divide all those studies into two broad categories - input factors and school factors.

So, to start with Input Factors - what does that mean?

It means that one key way of explaining differences in educational attainment is to argue that its all about what goes into the educational system. Obviously that means the pupils, but in respect -usually - of these factors.

IQ/Intelligence
Class
Material Explanations
Cultural Explanations

IQ - there are lots of studies and debates about intelligence as a causal factor. Key issues centre around the validity and reliability of intelligence testing and the difficulty of getting a culturally neutral test.

Class

Rather out of fashion now, as politicians side-step or obfuscate the issue by posing rhetorical questions such as ‘why should the poorest children have to tolerate poor quality schools’ - which of course begs the question of whether it is in fact the schools which are worse, or some other factor.

Class as an explanation though is still important to sociologists, but it subdivides into two sub-explanations - a material, or economic version, and a cultural explanation.

The material/economic explanation argues that class differences in educational attainment arise from inequalities in wealth. The wealthier segments of the population can buy - computers, music lessons, extra tuition, or even private education with small classes and better facilities, have better homes more conducive to studying and so on. Children from such backgrounds therefore do better.

The cultural explanation can vary, but broadly it suggests that the middle classes have values and attitudes which put more value on the importance of doing well in education and which in fact make education easier, e.g. parents who listen to classical music, parents with professional occupations who can encourage and help with homework, and so on. Key study here is JWB Douglas and Herbert Hyman. Both old, but good to criticise and evaluate.

Of course, one solution is to argue that both the cultural and the material/economic factors are important - and they can often overlap.

So those are the input factors. Some would say these are the key causes of differences in attainment - and they might argue about which of the above are most important.

Of course, an alternative explanation, as I said in passing above, is that it’s not what goes into the system which is important, but rather, what happens to it once it is in the school - if I can put it so crudely - sorry about those impersonal pronouns. That raises the issue of the influence of schools and school factors. But I’ll tackle that tomorrow.