Factors outside school affecting achievement in school
- Despite numerous forms of social policy interventions by the state, significant class differences in educational achievement continue.
- Some sociologists focus on factors outside school as the primary cause for social class differences in educational achievement
- while others focus on factors inside school as the primary cause for social class differences in educational achievement
Outside school factors you need to know and understand are:
- Material explanations and
- Cultural explanations
Cultural factors outside of school are distinct from material factors outside of school:
- Cultural deprivation (not material deprivation) emphasises home and family background as the cause of underachievement at school
- Failures of socialisation, pre-school learning, weak language skills combined with the wrong values and attitudes lead to underachievement
- Sociologists have identified the following 5 causes of working-class underachievement:
- speech and language codes – Bernstein
- amount of social capital – Bourdieu – habitus
- parents’ attitudes and interest in education- Douglas cultural deprivation
- class based attitudes and values which form subcultures – Sugerman and Hyman
sociologytwynham.com 
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