Parental socio-economic background and children’s school-level GCSE attainment
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Date
22/01/2020Item status
Restricted AccessEmbargo end date
06/07/2021Author
Stopforth, Sarah
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Abstract
The principal aim of this thesis is to better understand the contemporary relationship
between parental socio-economic background and children’s General Certificate of
Secondary Education (GCSE) attainment. Previous empirical research has
demonstrated that there is a strong, persisting association between parental socioeconomic
background and educational outcomes, and specifically school GCSE
attainment. This thesis directly contributes to the sociology of education in two main
ways. First, it presents new empirical evidence about the nature of socio-economic
inequalities in young people’s GCSE attainment in England over the course of the
1990s and early 2010s. Second, it builds on previous empirical work and develops a
more comprehensive understanding of the effects of socio-economic background on
educational outcomes. Developing a better understanding of why, or how, those from
more advantaged socio-economic backgrounds achieve more favourable educational
outcomes by the end of compulsory schooling is important to enable young people,
parents, teachers, schools, and policymakers to help to address the persisting
attainment gap observed in school-level qualifications.
The thesis is organised into two parts. Part 1 examines the nature of the relationship
between parental socio-economic background and children’s school GCSE
attainment for synthetic cohorts of English Year 12 pupils (i.e. aged 16 and 17). The
analyses examine the role of parental socio-economic background in GCSE
attainment using the British Household Panel Survey for young people taking their
GCSE examinations in the 1990s and 2000s. A key methodological aspect of this
work is sensitivity analyses of the independent variables (i.e. socio-economic
background measures) and the functional form of the outcome variable (i.e. GCSE
attainment). Particular attention is paid to checking the robustness of results using
alternative measures and alternative statistical model specifications. The analyses
are replicated using the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS, also known as
Understanding Society). Analyses of the UKHLS dataset represent more
contemporary cohorts of young people taking their GCSE examinations in the early
2010s. The final section of Part 1 addresses the methodological challenge of missing
data in social surveys. It takes a series of principled statistical approaches to help to
address the potential distortions caused by missing data in the synthetic cohort
analyses.
Part 2 of this thesis investigates the relationship between parental socio-economic
background and children’s school GCSE attainment in greater depth. The analyses
in Part 2 empirically explore three potential explanations for the enduring socioeconomic
inequalities observed in educational outcomes. The first set of analyses
examine the extent to which inequalities in GCSE attainment can be accounted for by
prior academic attainment, for example, attainment at age 11. Cognitive and
educational outcomes at earlier stages of schooling are stratified by parental socioeconomic
background, and therefore the inequalities observed at GCSE level may be
a continuation of inequalities observed at earlier stages of a young person’s
schooling. Path analysis models are used to decompose the effects of parental
education and parental social class on attainment at the end of compulsory secondary
school.
The next set of analyses investigate the role of cultural capital in educational
inequalities. The concept of cultural capital is a prominent sociological explanation for
persisting educational inequalities. Developing theoretically informed measures of
cultural capital using social survey data is especially challenging because there are
no clear prescriptions of how to operationalise these measures. A key aspect of this
work is the attention to sensitivity analyses of alternative measures. The candidate
measures are compared and contrasted within a series of analyses, with particular
attention paid to the effect such measures have on understanding the relationship
between parental socio-economic background and GCSE attainment.
The final set of analyses explore the role of educational aspirations in educational
inequalities. ‘Raising aspirations’ has been at the core of recent UK government
rhetoric to help to address the attainment gap between the most disadvantaged and
more advantaged young people. The overarching government position has been that
the attainment gap has been, in part, attributed to the ‘low’ aspirations held by young
people and their parents. The analyses explore the socio-economic gradient to young
people’s aspirations over the course of their secondary school years, before
examining the influence of the educational aspirations of young people and their
parents on GCSE attainment.