Labelling And Social Class Differences In Achievement In Schools

Register to read the introduction… Typically teachers label students as, bright, thick or hardworking. This usually affects working class students as they are labelled ‘thick’. This is backed up from item A “some sociologists explain social class differences in achievement in terms of school processes such as labelling” According to Cicourel and Kitsuse teachers judge students according to their ability, social class and race. Labelling can lead to self fulfilling prophecy where the student will accept the label and do what is expected of that particular label. However, this can advantage working class children to work against their label and achieve the best possible grades. According to the Sutton Trust 80% of ethnic minority pupils aspire to go to university. This goes on to show that labelling working class children can affect their final grade.

Another process that school use that affect educational achievement is streaming. This process is when students are put into groups according to capability. “These processes include the self-fulfilling prophecy, streaming and the formation of pupil subcultures” (Item A). Becker begins to believe that the capability groups are those who will pass, those who might pass and those who will not pass. However, Stephen Ball takes the …show more content…
Being labelled tends to be based on your social class, where you will be labelled between smart and dumb. Streaming is typically based on your ability on whether you’re smart or dumb. Also, sub cultures and self-fulfilling prophecy is known to go under all social class, gender and race as it is a group of people who tend to go against the norms, beliefs and values of mean stream sub culture. However education underachievement cannot just be a social class difference, it has internal factors as well as external