As we continue our campaign for socio-economic background to be made a protected characteristic under the Equality Act, Take a Break explores classism in our schools…
Studying for her A-level exams, Rebecca spoke to a teacher about her plans for university.
She was a straight-A student, but received some surprising advice.
‘He told me not to apply
to Oxbridge, that I wasn’t
the right kind of person,’
she remembers.
Rebecca still wonders why this teacher tried to dissuade her from applying to two of the most prestigious universities in
the UK.
But she feels certain someone with her attainment level from a higher socio-economic background would not have been discouraged from aiming high.
Dr Bridgette Rickett, from the British Psychological Society’s Senate campaign group on tackling class-based inequality, says, ‘Lots of teachers actively work to support students from working-class backgrounds. However, at the same time, teachers are susceptible to absorbing society’s stereotypes in the same way as everyone else. When this happens, on occasion, some teachers are liable to hold negative stereotypes about students from low socio-economic backgrounds.
‘This then has the knock-on effect of fuelling direct instances of classism and can influence teachers’ implicit evaluations of and interactions with working-class students in ways that reinforce those stereotypes.
‘Teachers
may be less encouraging towards working-class students, less likely to encourage them to engage in extra-curricular activities or encourage students from a lower socio-economic status to speak in class.’
Take a Break has teamed up with the British Psychological Society to reignite the #Makeit10 campaign, calling for a renewed focus on making socio-economic background a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010, alongside the nine other protected characteristics – age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation.
'Barriers start right at the beginning'
We’ve been speaking to professionals from lower socio-economic backgrounds about their experiences of classism in higher education and professional work environments.
But gaps between children from poorer and better-off families open up early – just 51.5% of children eligible for free school meals meet a ‘good level of development’ by age five, compared to 72% of other pupils, according to last year’s annual statistics report on teacher assessments of children’s development at the end of the early years foundation stage (EYFS).
Rebecca went on to become Dr Rebecca Montacute, after studying molecular biology at Sheffield University, before attaining a PhD.
She’s now passionate in her role as head of research and policy at the Sutton Trust – a charity that champions social mobility through research and influencing policy and running programmes to support high-attaining students from lower-income homes across the UK.
Dr Rebecca, 33, says, ‘Barriers start right at the beginning. Before children from a lower socio-economic background even turn up at the school gates, they are not on a level playing field, and this gap continues to widen as they move through the school system.’
A 2022 study published in the British Psychological Society’s Journal of Educational Psychology found that children from lower socio-economic backgrounds receive lower grades due to unconscious bias. More than 400 in-service and trainee teachers took part in the study, which found that teachers judged an identical piece of work as being of poorer quality if it was presented as being written by a student of lower, rather than higher, socio-economic status.
As well as grading the piece of work, teachers were also asked to place the child in an English set based on their ability and potential, with students of lower socio-economic status allocated to lower ability groups than those of higher socio-economic status backgrounds.
Dr Bridgette Rickett, who led the British Psychological Society’s #Makeit10 campaign when it first launched, says, ‘These biases are argued to be part of the reason why low socio-economic backgrounds lag behind their peers by five months at the age of five and by at least 18 months at GCSE level. At A-level, students from lower socio-economic backgrounds have attainment averages three full grades lower than their peers.’
But, alongside the barriers of unconscious bias, the Sutton Trust is concerned about the systemic barriers created through current Government policy.
Research by the Sutton Trust found that just 20% of families in the bottom third of the earnings distribution are eligible for the offer of 30 hours of early education and childcare for three- and four-
year-olds, and all parents in full-time education or training are ineligible, whereas 70% of those who are eligible for the support are from homes in the top half of earners.
Meanwhile, recent research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that Sure Start (England’s first large-scale programme to provide holistic support to families with children under the age of five) generated big improvements in the educational outcomes of children from low-income backgrounds.
The research also found that children eligible for free school meals living near a Sure Start centre increased their performance at GCSE by three grades relative to similarly poor children
who were not able to access Sure Start.
But more than 1400 Sure Start children’s centres have closed since 2010.
Dr Rebecca says, ‘We’re very worried that support is no longer there. The Government risks widening inequalities.’
Alongside this, a poll conducted by the Sutton Trust in schools found that 47% of senior leaders have to use Pupil Premium (the funding designed to support lower-income students) to plug gaps elsewhere in their budgets.
The National Tutoring Programme (NTP), which was set up during the pandemic to support students who had fallen behind, went some way towards addressing the two-tier system of wealthier families being able to pay for private tuition and therefore secure their children advantages that poorer families cannot afford.
But the NTP was cancelled by the last Government, and the new Government has not replaced it.
For those who do manage to succeed academically, going to university now presents greater challenges, as maintenance loans for student living costs aren’t going up in line with inflation.
Dr Rebecca, whose mum worked in a call centre and whose stepdad was a builder and decorator, says, ‘No one in my family had been to university when I went in 2009. The full maintenance loan was high enough that
I could afford day-to-day necessities, and I had a maintenance grant and scholarship too. But the situation now means many people from my kind of background struggle to
afford university, and that’s heartbreaking.’
The Sutton Trust is calling on the Government to enact the ‘socio-economic duty clause’ of the Equality Act, obliging public bodies to give due regard to how they can reduce the impact of socio-economic disadvantage, and set up a review to examine adding socio-economic background as a protected characteristic.
It’s also calling on the Government to make reporting of socio-economic background (measured by parental occupational class) mandatory for businesses with over 250 employees, and require larger employers to measure and publish their class pay gaps.
Lending support to students facing obstacles to their potential through being from a low socio-economic background, Dr Rebecca says, ‘It’s not always about how clever you are or how hard you work, there can be broader things outside of your control. But look into all the support available, including from organisations like the Sutton Trust, who help young people from less advantaged backgrounds to access leading universities and careers.’
Photos: Children posed by models Shutterstock