Class report cardsHow are we ‘assessed’? Equity and educational attainment

Dr Rachel Buchanan

Rachel.Buchanan@newcastle.edu.au

Ja’mie Revisted

Australia - Class Free?

Introducing Ja’mie Watch the clip on Backboardhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkdY6_ul-gk

Class markers?

Today we will be looking at the intersection of class and educational outcomes

Key concepts

Social classKnowledge construction Planning for social justice

Resistance to the idea of class in AustraliaSocial class a fundamental determinant of social participation and success – the different kinds of schooling the social classes received helped maintain social class divisions There are many more social phenomena than just class relations that produce inequality

Historical overview

As schools were established in Australia, different types of schools were different to serve different groups.Schools serving the working class provided basic education to help students secure employment and bring order to their “chaotic” livesSchools designed to serve to elite were designed to educate students in preparation for higher education.

Middle class students have used schools as means of securing employment in middle class occupations.

For the working class education as served as a springboard for work – used to be easily obtained without the completion of secondary school. Changing economic trends have resulted in less blue-collar jobs being available. Tension between the needs of students wishing to leave school into vocations and the subjects taught in schools that are based around tertiary education preparation.

Being born into a particular social class in contemporary Australia does not necessarily determine the kind of life a person is likely to lead. Nevertheless, a person’s social class origin usually has a great deal to do with how easy it is to do certain things in the making of a life.

To what degree are educational resources and processes, and their life-transforming potential, equally or unequally made available to different social classes?

To what degree does social class remain a significant factor in explaining the way that Australian society works, and who gets what in terms of opportunity, wealth and social power?

What is the actual and potential role of teachers as they deal with different families from different social classes during the course of their work?

For Australian schooling to promote equity and excellence, governments and all school sectors must improve educational outcomes for Indigenous youth and disadvantaged young Australians and encourage them, their families and their communities to hold high expectations for their education.

[...]

Students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, those from remote areas, refugees, homeless young people, and students with disabilities often experience educational disadvantage. Targeted support can help disadvantaged young Australians to achieve better educational outcomes. Australian governments must support all young Australians to achieve not only equality of opportunity but also more equitable outcomes.

By comparisonwith the world’s highest performingschool systems, Australianstudents from low socioeconomicbackgrounds are under-representedamong high achievers and overrepresentedamong low achievers.

(MCEETYA, 2008, p. 5, p. 15)

The Melbourne Declaration

Low SES is determined using a postcode methodology. Students from low SES backgrounds are those whosepermanent home address postcode falls within the lowest 25 per cent of postcodes as coded by the ABS SEIFAIndex of Education and Occupation (Census 2006)

Higher Education: The Bradley Review

“Major socioeconomic differences remain in the rate at which young Australians attend university. Despite decades of access and equity policies, the son or daughter of a professional is more than twice as likely as the son or daughter of a tradesperson to go to university after leaving school” (2008, p. 17).

The very high academic entry requirements for high-prestige courses such as law and medicine advantages applicants from professional families who went to private or government selective schools.

As of 2006 Students with a low SES background comprised 14.63% of the whole domestic student population and 15.39% of the domestic commencing student population.

A student from a high socio-economic background is about three times more likely to attend university than a student from a low socio-economic background. The current access rate for this latter group is about 16 per cent, and has remained relatively unchanged since 2002. If students from this group were adequately represented, their access rate would be 25 per cent.

However, these rates are not uniform across the sector. Quite distinct differences exist in low socio-economic status participation by type of institution, course level and field of study. Low socio-economic status students are poorly represented in Group of Eight universities; most highly represented in agriculture and education; and poorly represented in architecture, law and creative arts. They are particularly under-represented in medicine, dentistry and economics. Low socio-economic status students also comprise the majority of students in enabling courses.

High pass and retention rates show that those from low socio-economic backgrounds succeed in higher education. More of these students could participate in higher education without any detrimental impact on overall academic quality. A study conducted by the Australian Council for Educational Research as part of the Longitudinal Survey of Australian Youth (LSAY) Research series found that ‘if students from a low socio-economic background get to university, their background does not negatively affect their chances of completing the course’.

The imbalances by socio-economic status group have remained virtually unchanged since 1991: ‘the fact thatwith typical variations of only tenths of percentage points annually, and no discernible overall trend – during a period of significant expansion in the number of domestic studentsin Australian higher education is amazing.

…It is tempting to conclude that university admission/selection processes are quite resilient in reproducing a certain social order.’

Source: http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/08/10/lifetime-earnings-gaps-by-sex-and-raceethnicity/

A recently-released study calculates that ‘over the working lifetime of a university graduate the financial gain generated from income is more than $1.5 million or70 per cent more than those whose highest qualification is Year 12’

Recommendation 4 of the Bradley Review was that a national target be set for 20 per cent of higher education enrolments at undergraduate level to be comprised of people from low socio- economic backgrounds by 2020 (Bradley et al., 2008).

Report Card : Higher Education

Decades of equity policy has not resulted in significant increases in the participation of students from a low SES background – good efforts have not translated into meaningful results.Access from school can be a barrier, but alternative pathways available and well utilised by those from low SES backgroundsStudents with low SES background still under-represented in high prestige degreesTargets set at 20% low SES participation – still underrepresents low SES population by 5%.Australian Higher Education sector comparable to similar sectors worldwide.

B-

SES and Schooling outcomesThere are massive achievement gaps between students from different social groups in Australia. Indeed, there is some evidence that it has increased over the last decade.Students from high SES families have much higher education outcomes than students from low SES families:• 41% of students from low SES families fail to complete Year 12 compared to22% of students from high SES families;• On average, 15 year-old students from low SES families are over two years behind high SES students in reading, mathematics and science;• 22-23% of students from low SES families do not achieve expected international proficiency standards in reading, mathematics and science.

(Source: Save Our Schools, 2008, http://soscanberra.com/file_download/14)

The newly formed NSW Department of Education and Communities has recently investigated the relationship between NAPLAN results and individual and school SES levels. Between 60 – 70 of Australian students are educated in public schools. Such state schools educate the majority of students with disabilities, rural and remote students, and students from low SES backgrounds.

In their report SES is more complicated and derived from a combination of students’ parental occupations, school and non-school achievement levels. School SES levels are calculated on the average of student’s family SES levels.

Dr Rachel Buchanan EDUC2103

Year 3 DEC students – average performance in literacy and numeracy by student and school SES quartiles

(NSW DET, 2011, p. 10)

Year 9 DEC students – average performance in literacy and numeracy bystudent and school SES quartiles

(NSW DET, 2011, p. 12)

From the DEC Report

While an individual student’s SES has an impact on their outcomes, this varies depending in the average SES of the other students in the school.The results indicate thatIrrespective of which SES quartile a student belongs to, their score (on average) improves if they enrol in a higher SES schoolA low SES student (Q1) will, on average, achieve a higher score that that the average of all Q2 students if the Q1 students are enrolled in a Q4 schoolStudents’ scores improve by between one-third and one-half of a standard deviation if they are enrolled in a high SES school (Q4) rather than a low SES school

The effect of school SES on student performance is profound and exists across the SES spectrum. These findings point to the strong independent effect of concentrations of disadvantage at the school-level, over and above the SES of an individual student.

Why is there a school-level SES effect?

Anyon: Social class-based constructions of knowledge

Social Class and School Knowledge (1981)Describes school-level sociological processes of social class reproduction in curriculum and instruction.

It drew attention to interactional practices of the curriculum-in-use (enacted curriculum) and the persistent issues of authority, sources and uses of knowledge – classroom practices of unequal education.

Anyon described the explicit ideological messages about agency, power, political economy and class position. Although Anyon gives no data on student outcomes she observes how dispositional configurations of knowledge and power relations are shaped in classroom interactions.

Four social-class differentiated versions of the curriculum-in-use in primary schools (Anyon, 1981)

Each school has a homogenous socioeconomic and cultural background and she simply asks students “What knowledge is”“Where knowledge come from”And whether you can “make knowledge”

And she records the classroom talk and practice

In the working class school, knowledge is presented as fragmented bits. The focus is on rule recognition and basic skills.

In the working class school less emphasis on practice and basic skills and more emphasis on rule recognition. She contends middle class child given more agency – they need to “study”, “learn” “remember” and exercise their brains. But the sources of knowledge remain beyond criticism.

In the affluent progressive schools speculative thinking is invited – students envision and discuss worlds beyond their experience and background knowledge. Sources of knowledge include books, tradition and oneself – “in the brain”.

Elite schools, Anyon classifies as striving for excellence. Here students talk more – extended exchanges between students and teachers and students are invited to envision different scenarios.

In effect, different social classes of speaking and hearing, reading and writing “selves” are produced.

Yet students are tested and assessed in ways that assume common constructions of knowledge, i.e. NAPLAN, HSC etc.

DEC Report Card

Efforts are being made to address the relationship between educational outcomes and SES.

DEC educates the students with the greatest needs across all areas of the state.

Selective government schools remove certain students from certain areas – arguably entrenching the disadvantage in those areas.

Good effort, but uses counter-productive strategies

B-

Anyon provides “an account of how school philosophy, the official curriculum and affiliated resources, staffroom and teacher understandings of the students’ communities and lives, and an enacted classroom curriculum together contribute to stratified versions of knowledge, with ramifications for students’ cultural capital” (Luke, 2010, p. 170).

Case study: Scotch College, Melbourne

‘ … to deliver an education which, secure in the traditions of our past and our Christian belief, opens boys’ minds to the rich diversity of the world in which they live and challenges them to question and explore everything they find, with integrity, humour and compassion. And to do this in an exciting, intimate environment which nurtures self-expression and self-worth while promoting the uniqueness of each boy’s journey.’

From the “my school” Website:www.myschool.edu.au

Per student net recurrent income $20,182Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) School ICSEA value 1207 Average ICSEA value 1000

Schooling that segregates by SES is most likely to benefit students who are advantaged, and most likely to harm those who are already disadvantaged by a low SES background.

Perry and McConney (2010) argue that educational policies that work against the segregation of students and schools based on SES could be pursued on the basis that they are likely to achieve better and more equitable educational outcomes for all. They give the example of Canada and Finland which outperform Australia on PISA and where the relationship between SES and student achievement is lower.

“We know that class is not a not a stand-alone determinant, but works in relationship to gender, ethnicity/race, affiliated culture and sub-cultural context, linguistic disposition, and sexual preference of student”

(Luke, 2010, p. 176).

ReferencesCampbell, C. (2010). Class and competition. In R. Connell, C. Campbell, A. Welch, D. Foley, & N. Bagnel,

(Ed.s). Education, Change & Society (2nd Ed.) (pp. 93 - 129). Sydney: Oxford University Press.

Carnevale, A.P., Rose, S.J., & Cheah, B. (2011). The College Payoff: Education, Occupations, Lifetime Earnings. Washington: Georgetown University. http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/collegepayoff-complete.pdf

Luke, A. (2010). Documenting Reproduction and Inequality: Revisiting Jean Anyon’s “Social Class and School Knowledge”. Curriculum Inquiry, 40(1), 167 - 182.

Maiztegui-Oñate, C. & Santibáñez_Gruber, R. (2008). Access to education and equity in plural societies. Intercultural Education 19(5), 373 – 381.

Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA). (2008). Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians. Melbourne: MCEETYA.

NSW DEC. (2011). NSW Department of Education and Communities Discussion Paper: Australian School Funding Arrangements. https://www.det.nsw.edu.au/media/downloads/about-us/news-at-det/announcements/discussion-paper.pdf.

Perry, L. & McConney, A. (2010). School socio-economic composition and student outcomes in Australia: Implications for educational policy. Australian Journal of Education, 54(1), 72-85.