AQA A-Level Sociology: Education

Read Item A below and answer the question that follows.

Item A — written for this exercise

Sociologists continue to debate why pupils from working-class backgrounds, on average, achieve less in education than their middle-class peers. Some emphasise factors operating outside the school. A recent (invented) study of around 1,400 families reported that pupils eligible for free school meals were roughly twice as likely to lack a quiet space to study at home, and that their parents were far less likely to be confident in navigating school choice or in using the kind of formal, elaborated language valued by teachers. From this angle, achievement gaps are largely set before the school gates, in homes shaped by material hardship and differing cultural resources.

Others insist that what happens inside schools matters at least as much. The same study found that, even among pupils with identical prior attainment at age eleven, those from poorer homes were noticeably more likely to be placed in lower sets and to report that teachers "expected less" of them. For these researchers, processes such as labelling and setting can actively widen the gap that external factors merely begin.

Question: Applying material from Item A and your knowledge, evaluate the view that social class differences in educational achievement are mainly the result of factors outside the school. [30 marks]

Read Item B below and answer the question that follows.

Item B — written for this exercise

Not everything that shapes a pupil's results happens at home. Once inside the school, pupils are quickly sorted and interpreted by the people around them. Teachers form impressions of who is "able" and who is not, often within the first few weeks, and act on those impressions when they decide who to encourage and who to overlook. Schools also organise pupils into groups by perceived ability, placing some on demanding routes towards higher grades and others on narrower, less ambitious ones. These in-school arrangements can leave two pupils who started with very similar potential travelling in quite different directions.

Question: Applying material from Item B, analyse two ways in which factors within school may affect pupils' achievement. [10 marks]

Outline and explain two ways in which government education policies may have affected inequality between pupils. [10 marks]

Outline three functions that the education system performs, according to functionalists. [6 marks]

Outline two ways in which the hidden curriculum may shape pupils' attitudes or behaviour. [4 marks]

Outline two criticisms of the functionalist view of education. [4 marks]