HND Social Science

Research Report

Class and Educational Achievement

Researchers at the London school of Economics and the Institute of Education in London conducted longitudinal research on two groups of children, one born in 1958 and the second in 1970. They also referred to longitudinal research based on a birth cohort from 1946. Their research has important implications for the government, which has been attempting to make university education more open to those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

This report supports government aims in expanding university education claiming that it has real benefits for the individual and for society. There is concern, however that the growth of university education over the past 20 years has done little to benefit those from the poorest backgrounds. In fact some children have less chance of a university education than they would have done had they been born twenty years earlier.

A number of social factors have improved children’s chances of attaining a university education and obtaining a well paid job over the last fifty years or so.

The expansion of compulsory education following the 19944 Education Act and the growth of comprehensive education in the late 1960s and 1970s which were aimed at encouraging more able working class students to gain access to good education.
There has being an expansion of professional sector work due to changes in the structure of the UK economy, the growth of the welfare state, and the growth of education provision.
There was an expansion of Higher education in the 1960s and again in the 1980s providing more university places for students and more university posts for professional people.

Key Findings

To be a graduate for most people in the UK , gives a measurable social advantage. Graduates have higher employment rates, are also healthier, happier and less likely to experience depression. They are generally tolorant in the sense of rejecting racism and sexism. They are politically active and are more likely to vote. They give strong support to their children’s education.
Graduates are less likely to smoke or be obese. They are les prone to accident or assault from others.
Graduates live in homes with an average value of £153,000 compared with £101,000 for those who did not attend university. Graduates own cars to an average value of £6,200 compared with £1,700 for non-graduates.
Graduates children do better in school and are more likely to own 50 books. Those graduates from a working class background are able to give their children advantages that they themselves lacked.
Regardless of gender, and ability more people from middle class backgrounds in the 1970 cohort had attending university than from the 1958 group. 76% of middle class boys and 77% of girls attended university. For both genders , this was a rise of 17% from the 1958 cohort where the comparable figures were closer to 60% of middle class students attending university.
Working class boys had a 43% chance of attending university if they were born in the 1970 cohort, an increase of 8% from 35% of the 1958 cohort.
The greatest overall % increase in university attendance has been for women overall. Their chances of gaining a degree changed from 10% of those born in 1946, to 25% of those born in 1958 and 33% of those in the 1970 cohort of all classes. The improvement has not been the same for all social backgrounds.
It is claimed that the comprehensive education system has not so much failed children from the working classes as has been failed by politicians really never fully implemented it. In Scandinavian countries where comprehensive schools were introduced fully, selection was ended, there was no private education, and no privileged school system surviving. In these countries there is far less inequality

Reference : ‘Changing Britain, Changing Lives: Three generations at the Turn of the Century’. By Elisa Ferri, John Bynner and Michael Wandsworth; Institute of Education price £25