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Social influences on learning
Durham Teaching & Learning ConferenceKey Note Lecture
Robert Coe8th January 2013
Three questions
1. What is the relationship between social class and educational attainment?
2. How can we explain this relationship?
3. What can we do to change it?
Three questions
1. What is the relationship between social class and educational attainment?
2. How can we explain this relationship?
3. What can we do to change it?
“… a school's success is based not on its teachers, the way it is run, or what type of school it is, but, overwhelmingly, on the class background of its pupils.”
“Many recent statistical studies have highlighted that social class is the strongest predictor of educational attainment in Britain (Cassen and Kingdon, 2007; Dyson et al., 2010; National Equality Panel, 2010; Sodha and Margo, 2010; Kerr and West, 2010). It is increasingly recognised as a problem by policy makers, featuring prominently in the manifestos of the three main parties, and is also a popular topic in the media. However, despite the extensive attention that the topic has received, and a variety of initiatives (including Excellence in Cities, Aimhigher, and Extra Mile) that have been developed over the last 13 years under a Labour government, the yawning gap between the educational achievement of poor children and their more affluent peers remains a complex and seemingly intractable problem.”
Perry & Francis (2010)
GCSE attainment by parental occupation
77
64
52
35
32
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
Higher professional
Lower professional
Intermediate
Lower supervisory
Routine
Percentage gaining 5+A*-C
Source: Youth Cohort Study, Department for Education and Skills, 2002
What is social class?• PISA defines its index of economic, social and cultural
status in terms of– occupational status of the father or mother, whichever is
higher;– level of education of the father or mother, whichever is higher,
converted into years of schooling;– wealth: an index of home possessions, obtained by asking
students whether they had • a desk at which they studied at home, a room of their own, a quiet
place to study, • educational software, a link to the Internet, their own calculator, • classic literature, books of poetry, works of art (e.g. paintings), • books to help them with their school work, a dictionary, • a dishwasher, a DVD player or VCR, • three other country-specific items• and the number of cellular phones, televisions, computers, cars and
books at home
SES & Reading: IndividualsR
eadi
ng p
erfo
rman
ce
Socioeconomic status
SES & Reading: CountriesR
eadi
ng p
erfo
rman
ce
Socioeconomic status
Income inequalityHigh Low
SE
S v
s A
chie
vem
ent
grad
ient
Hig
hLo
w
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
SES (parents' educational level and occupation)
Mat
hs G
CS
E g
rade
SES & attainment: pupil level
r = 0.3
SES & attainment: school level
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
School average SES (parents' educational level and occupation)
Sc
ho
ol
av
era
ge
GC
SE
gra
de
r = 0.8
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
Aptitude (YELLIS test score)
Mat
hs
GC
SE
gra
deAbility and attainment
r = 0.8
0.10
0.54
0.55
0.55
0.56
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
SES
YELLIS test
YELLIS test and SES
YELLIS test, SES andHOME
YELLIS test, SES,HOME and ETHNIC
Proportion of variance accounted for
Explained
Unexplained
What variables explain the variance in GCSE Maths performance?
SES generally explains less than 10% of variation in attainment
Ability / Prior
attainment explains over half
the variation
Adding SES
makes little difference
IPPR 2012: A Long Division
← 8 x A*
←5xC+3xD
←2xD+1xE
Relative importance of different influences on progress in secondary school
Proportion of variance accounted for
Individual38%
Family40%
LEA1%
Neighbourhood2%
Primary school9%
Secondary school10%
Rasbash et al (2010)
Is social class more important than early ability?
Feinstein (2003)
Or is it just regression to the mean?Comparison of the apparent effect of social class with the effect of
unreliable initial ability measures
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
22 months 120 months
Feinstein's data: High SES
Feinstein's data: Low SES
Predicted data: High SES
Predicted data: Low SES
Reliability = 0.15
“In the last year for which we have figures, only 45 boys and girls eligible for free school meals got into Oxbridge even though in any given year there are 80,000 …”
Michael Gove, interviewed on The Andrew Marr Show, 14 Feb 2010
• “Recent quantitative studies (for example, Gorard 2008; Chowdry et al. 2008; Davies, Mangan, and Hughes 2009) find that once students’ attainment is included in an analysis of decisions of students who have continued with their education into 16–19 education, there is no significant association between participation in higher education and variation in parental education or occupation.”
Noble & Davies (2009)
Distributions of KS2 maths scores
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Maths KS2 score
not fsm
fsm
Coe et al (2008)
Tails
0.000
0.100
0.200
0.300
0.400
0.500
-4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4
0.000
0.005
0.010
0.015
0.020
3 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 4
Take two distributions with a modest difference:
0.000
0.005
0.010
0.015
0.020
3 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 4
Enlarge the extreme tail
Individuals in the higher group are nearly five times as likely to be in this top end
Paradoxes of social influence on education (1):
The Ecological Fallacy
• For typical individuals, social background is a weak predictor of educational achievement
• For some groups (eg schools, LAs, neighbourhoods, parental occupation types) the relationship between average SES and achievement can be very strong
Paradoxes of social influence on education (2):
Social vs cognitive
• Social factors sometimes appear to strongly influence educational outcomes and even outweigh ability and prior attainment
• Where good cognitive measures are available they are always much better predictors than social measures
• For individuals, adding social measures to a model that already includes good cognitive measures hardly changes the prediction
• But note that prior attainment or ability measures will already have been influenced by SES
Paradoxes of social influence on education (3):
‘Tail’ effects
• Two groups largely overlap with similar ranges, and the two means are not very different
• At the extreme tails there can be large differences in the proportion above (or below) a given threshold
Three questions
1. What is the relationship between social class and educational attainment?
2. How can we explain this relationship?
3. What can we do to change it?
Why do working class children do less well in school?
• IQ: determines parents’ occupation and inherited by children, so determines their attainment
• Cultural deprivation: limited language and intellectual stimulation, less effective parenting, and more disordered environments, less pressure/support to succeed in school and have less knowledge and social resources to ‘work the system’
• Cultural hegemony: Schools favour the kinds of norms, values, behaviours and knowledge (ie culture) of the middle class and education reproduces existing capitalist class structures
• Material circumstances: health (poorer diet, low birthweight, higher chance of maternal depression) and economic (fewer books, trips, tutors, pre-school care, the need to work or care for siblings, lack of space to work and inability to afford housing near effective schools) factors
• Worse schooling: worse schools & teachers, high levels of disruption, negative peer pressure and other challenges, unjustified lower expectations which become self-fulfilling
Professional Parents
Working-class parents
Unemployed African-American parents
No of words heard by age 3
30 million 20 million 10 million
Ratio of encouraging comments: reprimands
6:1 2:1 1:2
From Hart & Risley (1995), cited in Nisbett et al (2012)
Seasonal gains in achievementTotal gains in Reading over 5 years
0 50 100 150 200 250 300
Low SES
High SES
Rest of year
Summer holiday
Total gains in Maths over 5 years
-50 0 50 100 150 200 250
Low SES
High SES
Rest of year
Summer holiday
Adapted from Alexander et al, 2001
Three questions
1. What is the relationship between social class and educational attainment?
2. How can we explain this relationship?
3. What can we do to change it?
Reason for class differences
• IQ
• Cultural deprivation
• Cultural hegemony
• Material circumstances
• Worse schooling
• Nothing
• Support for parents,Environmental/cultural enhancement
• Revolution
• Economic redistribution
• School improvement
What can we do?
Examples
• Surestart
• Excellence in Cities
• Aimhigher, Extra Mile
• Every Child a Reader, Every Child Counts
• Academies (under Labour)
• Teach First
• Pupil Premium
• Education Endowment Foundation
