If there’s something we’ve learnt from the ever so long chronicles of human history, it’s that that we can’t set boundaries to the benefits of knowledge/ education. And how far humanity has come in light of this realization is irrefutable. In the UK, for example there are currently 32,418 schools; among which 3,714 are nurseries, 20,832 are primary schools, 19 are middle schools, 4,188 are secondary schools, 2,408 are independent schools and 1,257 are special schools. These schools accommodate about 10,320,811 full and part time students, with 8,819,765 in England, 468,838 in Wales, 693,251 in Scotland, 338,957 in Northern Ireland.
According to the Department for Education, in 2016/2017 the average primary school budget in the UK was reported to be £1,048,000. And the average secondary school budget was £4,617,000. This report also stated that the average primary school spends about £41,780 on school resources. And the average secondary school spends about £172,560 on resources.
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Considering the aforementioned, it’s quite fair to say that almost everyone in the UK has access to education, regardless of one’s social class. So the problem in question is not access to education but access to resources/ guidance required to increase a student’s educational achievements/ attainment.
As stated in the statistics the Department for Education published, there are only 2,408 independent schools and 1,257 are special schools in the UK which, compared to the remaining 28,753 public schools, is quite small. But the discrepancy between the educational achievements of students in public schools and private schools is evidently massive.
Diane Reay, a professor at University of Cambridge published a book ‘Miseducation: Inequality, Education and the Working Classes', that shed light on this discrepancy and how the gap in social class is making an impact on widening the gap in students’ achievement level. In this book she writes about the research she conducted in two private schools; and after interviewing several students attending these schools and their parents, she came to a rather interesting conclusion.
“What was striking ...was the certainty and confidence with which these privileged parents approached their children’s schooling. There was neither the hyper-anxiety of many middle-class parents sending their children to state schools nor the doubts and lack of confidence of working-class parents. In their place was an almost unassailable belief that their children were, and would continue to be, educational successes. I was told that their children were ‘incredibly bright’, ‘destined for academic heights’, ‘bound for Oxbridge’ and ‘simply brilliant at sciences'.
There’s no denying the fact that one of the elements fueling the inequality in educational achievement/ attainment in the UK is the widening gap in social class. “The working classes have never had a fair chance in education... and they definitely do not have one in a 21st-century England that is scarred by growing inequalities” - Diane articulates her view. “The damage is now very different in appearance and texture to that suffered by my generation, but its scale and intensity has not diminished. The way class works in education has shifted and changed, but the gross inequalities that are generated through its workings do not change” - she added.
Multiple reports have been published on how disadvantaged pupils, or ones who are eligible for Free School Meals (FSM), have a different educational experience than those with better socio-economic status- those with parents who are able to use financial, social and cultural resources to boost their child’s school performance and life chances.
So why do the most advantaged pupils achieve the highest test scores while those living in the most disadvantaged conditions achieve the lowest?There are two elements playing a role in instigating and widening this gap - cognitive and non-cognitive factors. Scholars have stated that children feel their deprivation/disadvantage in their family and community at a very young age. Their physical environment, stress level in their family, material deprivation and so forth add up to affect a child’s psychological and physical health, ability to retain information and perform under pressure.
Epidemiological studies have also linked a child’s e
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