Variations on a middle class theme: English primary schools in socially advantaged contexts

Abstract

Multiple contexts interact to position any school on a spectrum from cumulatively advantaged to cumulatively disadvantaged. This article discusses a study of the contextual advantages and disadvantages experienced by primary schools in the south east of England, concentrating especially on schools in the least deprived 5% of schools nationally. The research highlights the central influence of advantaged socioeconomic contexts on day‐to‐day school processes and on the related perspectives and beliefs of head teachers as well as variations on this theme related to other external and internal contextual variables. It illustrates that England’s most socially advantaged primary schools are likely to have much in common including a high level of parent involvement, a strong focus on student learning and progress, considerable ability to raise funds, very good reputations and only a handful of students with serious learning or behavioural problems. They also have in common middle class forms of transience and profiles of special needs. The article concludes that while contextual variations amongst socially advantaged schools do exist and are talked up by head teachers, they usually have an impact that can be managed.

Keywords:

• research
• middle class
• primary schools
• school context
• England

Notes

1. Some intake characteristics and other local contexts may be able to be changed over an extended timeframe. But certainly in the short term they can rarely be changed.

2. ‘Primary School Composition and Student Progress’, ESRC reference number RES‐000‐23‐0784‐A.

3. The complete dataset includes both primary and secondary schools.

4. School markets are of course an important institutional factor affecting the neighbourhood/school relationship.

5. SEN was based on a three‐year average for 2003–2004, 2004–2005 and 2005–2006, EAL and prior attainment on the characteristics of pupils in Year 3 in 2004–2005. Prior attainment is measured at age 5 (entry to primary school).

6. The disadvantages of this dataset are that it was based on 2006 data (one year after the study) and that it does not measure benefits claims at the individual level but ascribes to each pupil in a school the benefit‐claiming attributes of the small neighbourhood in which they live.

7. This was designed to support quantitative analysis of relationships between school composition and pupil performance in the wider study, focusing on the cohort of children in Year 3 in 2004–2005. This is also the reason that some of the other variables in our dataset were only gathered for Year 3 while others were collected on a school‐wide basis.

8. In this area electoral ward is the geography whose population most closely matches than needed to generate a two form entry for a primary school. While basing neighbourhood variables on the location of the school is in some respects problematic (because pupils travel to school), it is relatively robust in this context, where most children travel short distances to primary school and the local authority’s admissions criteria are based on catchment areas. Our qualitative data enables us to identify cases of out‐of‐catchment admissions and their implications.

9. The neighbourhood variables tend to have less variation than the school ones, partly because some of the schools fall in the same wards.

10. All quotes are from the head of the school being discussed.