Socio-economic

Socio economic considerations are an important influencing factor on pupils’ achievement and attainment at school and beyond. The substantial gap between high and low socio economic status (SES) is an important equity issue for all ethnic groups.

SES proxy measures include:

• Mother’s highest educational qualification
• Family poverty (free school meals)
• Rented versus owner occupation
• Family composition (single parent households)
• Neighbourhood disadvantage (income deprivation affecting children index)

A recent DCSF report[1] highlights that pronounced low attainment is observed in:

• White British boys and girls, Black Caribbean boys from low SEC: lowest attaining groups of all
• Black Caribbean pupils, particularly but not exclusively boys, from medium and high socio economic classification (SEC) homes, underachieve relative to their White British peers

The same report shows that taking SEC into consideration:

• There is a significant correlation for White British pupils and SEC
• For most BME groups, the SEC of the home exerts a smaller influence on attainment than for White British pupils
• For Bangladeshi, Black Caribbean and Black African groups, there is relatively little difference in the attainment of pupils from high SEC and low SEC homes after adjusting for all SES factors
• For White British and Indian pupils, there was a strong divide between high SEC and low SEC homes
• Indian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani groups are extremely disadvantaged on many of the SES measures of mother’s educational qualification; entitlement to FSM; family composition, rented housing and neighbourhood deprivation. Taking these into account their attainment is even further above that of White British
• When only the SEC of the home is considered, Black Caribbean pupils, in particular boys, underachieve relative to their White British peers in medium and high SEC homes.

The relative effects of socio-economic class and ethnicity on A-level and undergraduate subject choices

The report on the participation of ethnic minority groups in chemistry and physics (this is available to download from the ‘publications’ page) considered the progress of various ethnic groups along the educational pipeline. Significant differences were observed between ethnic groups, and the IOP and The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) have commissioned a follow-up piece of research, which looks at the issue from a qualitative angle via focus group work.

However, social class considerations were not addressed in the original report, and it is not known how much of the behaviour of different ethnic groups is due to the ethnic/cultural background and how much is due to the socio-economic characteristics of particular groups.  The RSC and the IOP plan to examine the relative effects of social class and ethnicity along the educational pipeline for chemistry and physics students in order to unravel the entanglement of ethnicity and SEC.

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