Education has done little to improve social mobility. To what extent does this statement provide an accurate reflection of the role of education in contemporary Britain?
Introduction
The impact of education on equal opportunities and social mobility has been an important concern thoroughly explored in the field of sociology. An early British sociologist of education, Olive Banks, systematically tackled the issue of how an educational institution that establish hierarchy in schools in accordance to a hierarchical labour market could bring about 'parity of prestige' or, in simple term, equal opportunity (Irvin, 2008). There are conclusive sociological findings which reveal how stratification and social mobility are closely associated with educational systems and policies. The contribution of education to social mobility is indeed among the major topics in modern-day political and sociological discourses. Nowadays, education is a crucial determining factor of a person's chances of getting a good job and moving upward the social ladder (Goldthorpe, 2013). This has encouraged several scholars to rely on the emergence of merit-based societies, yet empirical findings have uncovered the contrary. This paper discusses the assumption that education has contributed little to the improvement of social mobility and analyses its factuality within the perspective of education in contemporary Britain.
Overview: Correlation between Education and Social Mobility
In numerous societies the correlation between educational opportunity and family background remains significant-- individuals from more privileged or upper social classes have greater opportunities to pursue a life-changing educational vocation and achieving greater qualifications or credentials than individuals from lower or less privileged classes. The achievement of higher levels of education generates definite advantage once they become a part of the labour market. By and large, education has been discovered to be a significant mediator between a person's social origins or background and their future social class, and thus could weaken social mobility and widen social inequalities.
Children inherit several of their attributes from their parents, not only genetic traits, but economic and social features as well. At least partly due to the cultural, economic, and social capital passed on to children, those of higher-earning or well-educated parents are more expected to achieve higher educational levels and acquire higher paying jobs in comparison to children of other parents (Papademetriou et al., 2008). A society is confronting this so-called 'intergenerational continuity' when the future or life opportunities of children are linked to, or reliant on, their parents' outcomes. In evaluating intergenerational continuity, scholars generally examine continuity in levels of education, social class, and income. The transmission mechanism that brings about intergenerational continuity is multifaceted. Parents have a various effects on their children, for instance by transmitting hereditary skills and traits, by means of time and effort invested in children, and by means of actual monetary investment for the educational career of the children (Iannelli & Paterson, 2005). All of these intervening aspects work together and the totality of all of these forms a groundwork for a child's economic and social outcome.
As explained by Haveman and Wolfe (1995), “given their abilities parents make a wide variety of decisions-- including parental schooling, work effort, consumption, time allocation, and bequests-- that are expected to be related to children's schooling and labour market attainments” (as cited in Altzinger et al., 2015, p. 3). In other words, parents strongly affect the future life opportunities of their children. In both the U.S. and Britain, parents are still the major determining factor of their children's outcomes. The U.S. and Britain are highly industrialized nations, but they are still stuck at the lowermost rungs of the global social mobility scale, at least with regard to earnings or income. The most recent studies show that the British or American people are low in social mobility, which implies that children are likely to remain within their parents' socioeconomic status when they reach adulthood (Altzinger et al., 2015). Income mobility in Britain and the U.S. is also substantially lower compared to countries they have numerous similarities with in terms of cultural diversity and economic performance (Papademetriou et al., 2008), such as Australia and Canada.
Public policies can reduce the disparities in the amount of resources that lower and upper class parents can invest in their children. These public policies contribute to the counterbalancing of the inequitable resource distribution from families by providing premium care, supplementary financial investments, and education for the less privileged children, thus trimming down social disparities and undermining intergenerational continuity and inequality (Papademetriou et al., 2008). In societies with increased intergenerational persistence levels, the children's outcomes are determined by their social origins or family background; future life opportunities and outcomes are anchored not in individual skills and investments, but rather are largely influenced by a person's social or family background. The outcomes of intergenerational continuity can be serious or damaging, as it results in an inefficient use of individual talent, hurting not just the individual but the economy and society in general (Ainsworth, 2013). The presence of an intense degree of intergenerational continuity is worrying not simply because it automatically implies that a society fails to provide equal opportunity to every citizen, but also due to the fact that it is economically unproductive.
With a great extent of intergenerational continuity, children from less privileged and low-income families will have a less likelihood to perform between in school and in the workplace, even though the person is talented, skilled, and knowledgeable. These current realities challenge one of the core ideals of Britain and the United States-- that significant socioeconomic inequalities among social groups or individuals are tolerable provided that everybody has an equality opportunity to improve and move up the social ladder, by means of their own skills and perseverance (Altzinger et al., 2015). However, low levels of social mobility imply that children at the lowest rung of the income hierarchy have a lower chance of earning bigger as adults in comparison to children from more affluent families.
In Marx's societal perspective, education is a component of a 'superstructure' that comprises political and legal structures, cultural ideals, religion, and family system. Education, alongside the other different components of the superstructure, is operating in a multifaceted, diverse, and mutually instrumental connection with the society's economic core, which in a capitalistic structure is tantamount to the basic class relations of exploitation, production, and labor (Ainsworth, 2013). Generally, the Marxist perspective of education in highly industrialized Western countries is that they perpetuate and strengthen social inequalities by means of forcing individuals to accept and fufill their functions in an asymmetric capitalist structure. Educational institutions are not viewed as objective, unbiased entities but are regarded as being a contributory force in the perpetuation of social classes and thus the circumstances needed for bolstering the broader capitalist system.
Through their preparation and implementation of the official curriculum, educators are viewed as contributors to the perpetuation of capitalism's exploitative, oppressive relations, as their task requires classifying young individuals into a ranking of different kinds of students and, thus, partly determining a student's future in the labour market. Furthermore, educational institutions subtly teach the younger generation to submissively or unquestioningly accept the status quo, which is characterized by widening social inequalities and weak social mobility (Holsinger & Jacob, 2009). Bourdieu's cultural production theory supports this Marxist view of education. Bourdieu argues that the educational institutions of advanced societies operate in such a manner as to preserve and normalize social inequalities (Sullivan, 2002). Successful outcomes in the education system are made possible by the ownership of a higher socioeconomic standing and cultural capital.
On the whole, lower-class students do not have these attributes, thus the unsuccessful outcomes of most of these students are expected. This sheds light on class disparities in educational achievement. Nevertheless, successful and unsuccessful outcomes in the education system are believed to be determined by individual abilities, or the absence of such. Thus, according to Bourdieu, educational qualifications are instrumental to the reproduction and legitimacy of social inequalities (Sullivan, 2002), as those belonging to the upper class are believed to be deserving of their position in the social hierarchy.
Education and Social Mobility in Contemporary Britain
As already stated, studies show that both Britain and the U.S. perform poorly in social mobility as regards education; in a current study conducted by the LSE Center for Economic Performance, the U.S. and Britain were discovered to have the poorest social mobility. Social mobility in the UK is poorer compared to Finland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany, and Canada; furthermore, social mobility in the UK has dropped while in the U.S. it is steady (Irvin, 2008). One of the reasons for this downturn has been that the more affluent have gained immensely from greater educational opportunities. A complicated image of mobility surfaces, with various categories used to assess mobility resulting in diverse comparative statuses.
The period between the conclusion of World War II and the advent of the 1970s witnessed the drastic transformation of the university context. There were only 15 universities in Britain during World War I. They were blatantly high-and-mighty, allowing only the privileged groups with women barred from numerous courses and colleges. For instance, Cambridge prohibits women from graduating until the latter part of the 1940s, even though they were allowed to take specific courses (Furlong et al., 2009, p. 10). In numerous regards, before 1945, higher education in Britain was clearly not suitable for goals intended to supply the labor force for economic development and/or to create the circumstances for a more democratic and fair society (Furlong et al., 2009). A higher education in Britain was practically the privilege of the wealthy, numerous of whom were not actually intelligent.
One must be cautious of supposing that education constantly works as an instrument for facilitating equal opportunity or improving social mobility. In fact, current findings from Britain have revealed the considerable influence of growing educational achievement on the weakening of social mobility. Britain is positioned at the lowest level of the income mobility scale for individuals born in the 1960s yet it seems that social mobility is higher when standing is assessed in terms of social class (Irvin, 2008). The American society seems somewhat low in mobility by education and income indicators while being much more mobile in terms of social standing and class. Scholars explain that these clearly conflicting findings are incongruent-- British citizens could have comparatively low chances of moving up in the income distribution ladder, while simultaneously encountering improved prospects of transforming social class conditions (Papademetriou et al., 2008). This is somewhat understandable since the discrepancy between the disadvantaged and the privileged have expanded within given social class categories in Britain.
Comparing individuals born in the 1970s with those in 1958, studies reported that for people born in the 1970s, their income at 30 years of age were more intricately connected to the income of their parents during their early years compared to that of people born in the 1950s (Hudson et al., 2015). Simply put, their status in the income ladder was more significantly determined by the socioeconomic status of their parents than had been for those born in the earlier period. In a newer research comparing individuals born between the 1950s and 1970s with people born after the 1990s, the study also discovered that the level of educational achievement-- determined in terms of the number of students moving to Key Stage 2 in maths and English-- progressed at a more rapid pace for low-income individuals born after the 1980s in comparison to people from high-earning families (Hudson et al., 2015, pp. 87-88). This phenomenon, according to Hudson and colleagues (2015), resulted in an observable diminution of the discrepancy in educational achievement at 16 years of age.
Nevertheless, when taking into consideration greater forms of educational achievement-- like pursuing higher education or acquiring a higher academic score-- the studies still discover no equivalent drop in educational inequality between individuals from high- and low-income families (Hudson et al., 2015, p. 88):
The share of the most deprived participating in higher education remained firmly at below 3% compared to 22% for the least deprived; considering the attainment of A*-B in three or more A-level subjects, the share of the most deprived remained firmly at around 7% compared to 20-22% for those from high income households.
Education is a mechanism of social mobility. Unfortunately, educational attainment is seriously unbalanced. Parental outcomes still largely determine the level of educational achievement of children in Britain, particularly in comparison to other nations (Rogers, 2012). In truth, according to Rogers (2012), parental influence in Britain is as valuable as the school's quality.
The drastic rise in Britain's income inequality that started in the latter part of the 1970s is at times defended by the idea that society is currently more merit-based or meritocratic hence it is more effortless for the lower class to move up in the social ladder if they are eager and capable of working hard (Furlong et al., 2009). Indeed, as numerous studies reveal, the contrary has taken place-- there has in fact been a drop in the level of social mobility over time. Children of low-income families are currently less able to detach themselves from their family background and realize their potentials than children in the earlier times (Altzinger et al., 2015). This clearly implies that the growth of the educational system, especially higher education, in Britain has favoured people from more affluent backgrounds over individuals from low-income households.
Well-established causal reports about the patterns in higher education outcomes by family background must be moderated with the fact that family economic situations are probably associated with college preparation. Students from low-income households are extremely likely to have encountered comparatively poor quality of secondary and elementary education, alongside fewer resources in the household (Holsinger & Jacob, 2009). In Britain, outcome inequalities by family background broaden significantly between secondary and higher education (Hudson et al., 2015). Disparities by family background in the preparation for college in secondary education, including disparities in college options highlight the obstacles to university participation for economically and socially disadvantaged students.
Although educational achievement has been advancing extensively, researchers claim that equal opportunity is still beyond the horizon for the British society. Supporting individuals from socially and economically disadvantaged families to attain higher levels of educational performance, especially in the core subjects (e.g English and maths), is still a vital goal for education policy (Iannelli & Paterson, 2005). Expanding core financial subsidy could be an essential part of national policies to help poor students pursue higher education. Moreover, putting resources into programmes that support low-income students has the potential of enhancing social mobility in Britain more comprehensively.
Conclusions
The correlation between education and social mobility has been one of the most widely studied topics in sociology. Critical theories, like those of Marx and Bourdieu, claim that education does not improve social mobility, but instead widen the prevailing social inequality. This is true in the case of Britain. Britain is one of the countries in the world that has the lowest level of social mobility despite expansion of education opportunities for both the low- and upper-income classes. This simply shows that education does not necessarily guarantee a smooth and easy climb to the top of the social ladder.
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