outline 2 factors that influence educational attainment

Material deprivation is one factor that affects the educational attainment as it means that the working class are unable to provide better conditions and resources for their children. Douglas identifies the key factors affecting educational success include diet – as the w/c students unable to focus for long; housing- cramped and inadequate housing leads to illness which leads to absence from school and in turn lowers the educational attainment of the working class; locality- the working class can’t afford a car to drive their children to the better schools so have to take their children to the local schools; leisure time- w/c parents have less capital to spend on educational trips for their children. Although this data may be out of date, it is still relevant as Free school meals have been introduced in an attempt to raise educational attainment. The middle class on the other hand can afford to go to the best schools if they are far away and they can afford private tutors and revision books or to go on educational trips because they have the capital so they are not restricted in any way. Waldfogel and Washbrook identified that by the age of 3, students from poor backgrounds were already a year behind average income backgrounds and that the gap widens during school. These factors make it difficult for the working class to access learning which gives them an immediate disadvantage when it comes to educational attainment.Setting and streaming is an internal factor that contributes to the difference in educational attainment. One of the consequences of setting and streaming is that not all children are given access to the same knowledge. Evidence from the Sutton trust suggest that the higher a students social class, the greater chance they have of being placed in a top stream. Smyth et al (2006) found that students in lower stream classes had more negative attitudes towards school, find the teaching pace too slow and spend less time on homework. Keddie found that teachers taught those in higher stream classes differently than those in lower stream classes. The pupils were expected to do more work and the teachers gave different types of educational knowledge which gave them greater opportunities for educational success. Because the middle class tend to be in the higher streams, they have greater opportunity at educational success whereas the lower stream groups underachieve partly because they have not been given access to the knowledge required for educational success