Parental social class and GCSE attainment: Re-reading the role of ‘cultural capital’

Key takeaways

content: "@stopforthParentalSocialClass2022" -file:@stopforthParentalSocialClass2022

Reading notes

Imported on 2024-06-26 11:24

⭐ Important

• & This paper is a novel investigation using data from Understanding Society and linked administrative education records from the National Pupil Database. The central empirical findings do not support the Bourdiuesian position, and there is no evidence that the substantial parental social class inequalities that are observed in school GCSE outcomes can be explained by inequalities in cultural capital. E (p. 680)
• & The qualifications that British young people gain at school are consequential and affect their futures in both education and employment (Babb 2005, Banks et al. 1992, Furlong and Cartmel 2007, Jones, Joyce, and Thomas 2003, Raffe et al. 1998, Payne 2000, Sammons et al. 2014). (p. 680)
• & Studies of the relationship between parental social class and young people’s outcomes in school qualifications report the overall finding that pupils from families in more advantaged social classes, on average, have more favourable outcomes (Connolly 2006, Demack, Drew, and Grimsley 2000, Drew, Gray, and Sime 1992, Drew 1995, Gayle, Berridge, and Davies 2003, Gayle, Murray, and Connelly 2016b, Gayle, Playford, and Connelly 2020, Playford and Gayle 2016, Playford et al. 2016, Stopforth, Gayle, and Boeren 2021, Strand 2014, Sullivan 2001). (p. 680)
• & The General Certificates of Secondary Education (GCSEs) are the main qualifications undertaken by pupils in England in school Year 11 (age 15-16). Outcomes in school GCSEs are investigated in this study. Despite the general trend of improvement in school GCSE outcomes in more recent cohorts, there are persistent parental social class inequalities (see Connelly, Murray, and Gayle 2013, Connolly 2006, Demack, Drew, and Grimsley 2000, Gayle, Murray, and Connelly 2016b, Playford and Gayle 2016, Strand 2014, Stopforth, Gayle, and Boeren 2021). (p. 681)
• & The British birth cohort studies 1946, 1958, and 1970 all pre-date the introduction of modern school qualifications (see Wadsworth et al. 2006, Power and Elliott 2006, Elliott and Shepherd 2006). (p. 681)
• & GCSEs were introduced in the 1980s, and remain the standard qualifications that are undertaken by pupils in England and Wales in school Year 11 (aged 15-16) (Department for Education 1985, Mobley et al. 1986, North 1987).5 GCSEs have historically been a mixture of assessed coursework and examinations (see Ashford, Gray, and Tranmer 1993). It is usual for pupils to study about nine GCSE subjects (Carroll and Gill 2017). The diet of subjects will include core subjects (e.g. English, Maths and Science) and a subset from a range of non-core subjects (e.g. History and French) (Jin, Muriel, and Sibieta 2011). Generally, each subject is assessed separately and a subject-specific GCSE is awarded. Grades are alphabetical, with the highest grade A* and the lowest grade G (Yang and Woodhouse 2001).6 (p. 684)
• & The persistence of social class inequalities in school GCSE outcomes is disturbing because qualifications gained at school are consequential, and affect individual young people’s futures in both education and employment. Using multivariate statistical analyses, we investigated the role of both occupation-based social class and cultural capital, and conclude that measures of cultural capital provide little additional explanation of inequalities in school GCSE outcomes. A priori, it was theoretically plausible that the occupation-based social class inequalities that were observed in earlier studies may be attenuated when appropriate measures of cultural capital are included in multivariate analyses. This conjecture is not supported in these empirical analyses. The family’s location in the occupational class structure remains salient. As Bihagen and Lambert (2018) remind us, the occupations that are located in more advantaged social classes tend to be more highly skilled and tend to have more highly educated incumbents. (p. 692)
• & The empirical analyses convey the important message that engagement in highbrow cultural activities is not important, but reading activities are influential. This finding chimes with other results on the effects of cultural capital on educational outcomes (Crook 1997, De Graaf, De Graaf, and Kraaykamp 2000, Mikus, Tieben, and Schober 2020, Sullivan 2001). (p. 692)