Differential Educational Achievement

About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about which forms differential educational achievement can come in, focusing in particular on: (i) understanding social class as divided into working, middle and upper classes; (ii) free school meals eligibility as a measure of social class; (iii) the key stage three core subject indicator as a measure of educational achievement; (iv) data from the Welsh government, which shows a significant performance difference between students who are and are not eligible for free school meals; (v) issues with using free school meals as a measure of social class, including that not all families eligible apply for them, due to the attached stigma; (vi) differentiating between gender and sex, with sex referring to biological differences and gender referring to social differences; (vii) a graph showing core subject indicator achievement by gender, using Welsh government data; (viii) a table showing pupil achievement across subjects by gender, using Welsh government data; (ix) a graph showing university subject selections by gender; (x) the tendency for sociological researchers to use the term ethnicity, rather than race, due to the fact that ethnicity refers to social differences, rather than biological differences; (xi) a table showing core subject indicator achievement by ethnicity; (xii) Kimberlé Crenshaw’s term intersectionality, which can be applied here to describe how class, gender and ethnicity can interrelate to produce differing educational outcomes; (xiii) a table showing the differences in core subject indicator achievement by both free school meals eligibility and gender.

About the lecturer

Dr Siôn Llewelyn Jones is a lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University. Dr Jones’ research interests are in educational provision, social research and the Welsh language. One of Dr Jones’ recent publications is ‘Review of statutory school and community-based counselling services: Optimisation of services for children and young people aged 11 to 18 years and extension to younger primary school aged children.’ (2022).