Social influences
on learning
Durham Teaching & Learning Conference
Key Note Lecture
Robert Coe
8th 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
32
Routine
35
Lower supervisory
52
Intermediate
64
Lower professional
77
Higher professional
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
Percentage gaining 5+A*-C
Source: Youth Cohort Study, Department for Education and Skills, 2002
90
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
Reading performance
SES & Reading: Individuals
Socioeconomic status
Reading performance
SES & Reading: Countries
Socioeconomic status
High
Low
Income inequality
High
SES vs Achievement gradient
Low
SES & attainment: pupil level
8
7
Maths GCSE grade
6
5
4
3
2
r = 0.3
1
0
0
1
2
3
4
SES (parents' educational level and occupation)
5
6
SES & attainment: school level
8
School average GCSE grade
7
6
5
4
3
2
r = 0.8
1
0
0
1
2
3
4
5
School average SES (parents' educational level and occupation)
6
Ability and attainment
8
7
Maths GCSE grade
6
5
4
3
2
r = 0.8
1
0
0
10
20
30
40
50
Aptitude (YELLIS test score)
60
70
80
90
SES generally explains less than
10% of variation in attainment
What variables explain the
variance in GCSE Maths
performance?
0
Explained
SES
0.1
0.2
Proportion of variance accounted for
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.10
Unexplained
YELLIS test
0.54
YELLIS test and SES
0.55
YELLIS test, SES and
HOME
0.55
YELLIS test, SES,
HOME and ETHNIC
0.56
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
1
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
Neighbourhood
2%
LEA
Primary school
1%
9%
Secondary
school
10%
Individual
38%
Family
40%
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
100%
90%
80%
70%
Feinstein's data: High SES
60%
Feinstein's data: Low SES
50%
Predicted data: High SES
40%
Predicted data: Low SES
30%
20%
10%
Reliability = 0.15
0%
22 months
120 months
“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
not fsm
fsm
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Maths KS2 score
Coe et al (2008)
Tails
Take two distributions with a modest difference:
0.500
0.400
0.300
0.200
0.100
0.020
0.015
0.010
0.005
0.000
-4
-3
-2
-1
0.000
3
0
1
2
3.1
3.2
3.3
3.4
3.5
3.6
3.7
3.8
3.9
4
3
4
Enlarge the extreme tail
0.020
0.015
0.010
0.005
0.000
3
3.1
3.2
3.3
3.4
3.5
3.6
3.7
3.8
3.9
4
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
WorkingProfessional
class
Parents
parents
No of words
heard by age 3
Ratio of
encouraging
comments:
reprimands
Unemployed
AfricanAmerican
parents
30 million
20 million
10 million
6:1
2:1
1:2
From Hart & Risley (1995), cited in Nisbett et al (2012)
Seasonal gains in achievement
Total gains in Reading over 5 years
High SES
Rest of year
Summer holiday
Low SES
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
Total gains in Maths over 5 years
High SES
Rest of year
Summer holiday
Low SES
-50
0
50
100
150
200
250
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
What can we do?
• IQ
• Nothing
• Cultural deprivation
• Support for parents,
Environmental/cultural
enhancement
• Cultural hegemony
• Revolution
• Material
circumstances
• Economic redistribution
• Worse schooling
• School improvement
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