Social justice, race and class in education in England: competing perspectives

Abstract

Narrowing the gap' and addressing low educational achievement of specific social class and ethnic groups has long been an expressed government concern. This paper considers the links between poverty, ethnicity and gender and school attainment and the inter-relations of these factors using national data sets and other quantitative data.The limitations of single theme analyses and their potentially misleading implications are explored. Related to this, the failures of social and educational policies to bring about greater equality are examined.Competing perspectives on low attainment and their positions are critiqued. The paper argues that ethnic and class discrimination stems from the same structural arrangements contrived for the advantage of more affluent sectors of society.Theoretical development is needed to bring together class, race and other discriminatory features and construct more sophisticated causal analyses which relate to the web of economic, status and power regimes and the negative processes of 'racialisation'. Dorling and Tomlinson, 2016;Reay, 2017) would draw attention to power relations and the political mechanisms which create and sustain poverty, discrimination and inequalities. Potentially, such consolidated analyses encompassing allocation of funding and class-based decision-making in education would provide a basis for more sustained and effective action than we have seen hitherto. The paper draws on two sources of quantitative data: publicly available First StatisticalReleases from the Department for Education (DfE) which give attainment results for the year for all key stages (2017 publications used); and two longitudinal national datasets of around 500,000 pupils reaching 16 in 2012 and 2015 through requested access to the DfE's National Pupil Database 1 (NPD). The work of Strand (2008Strand ( , 2011Strand ( , 2014a provides key reference points in considering quantitative data and the findings related to the relative power of the demographic factors statistically related to attainment. Social justice and the education offerSocial justice in relation to education is a unique case where a young person's future can be hugely influenced, if not determined, by factors such as socio-economic background, race and gender over which they have no control, for which they can bear no responsibility but contribute, on average, significantly and measurably, to effects which last through life. The sub-sections here examine poverty, ethnicity and gender and their enduring, relatively stable association with measures of achievement. It is important to grasp the various dimensions of inequality, how they combine, how the same range of factors impact on education and other areas of life and the ineffective policy responses, which arise from blinkered perspectives on the attribution of causes. Poverty and educational attainment

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