How well can we predict educational outcomes? Examining the roles of cognitive ability and social position in educational attainment

Tim Morris,Danny Dorling,George Davey Smith

doi:10.1080/21582041.2016.1138502

Abstract

Social inequalities in UK educational outcomes continue to persist despite improvements in recent years. However, studies that examine these inequalities fail to account for differences in prior cognitive ability. We seek to determine the influence of cognitive ability on educational outcomes and the extent of socio-economic disparities in education across a wide range of indicators while accounting for cognitive ability. Social inequalities exist whereby children from disadvantaged backgrounds systematically underperform compared to their advantaged peers regardless of cognitive ability; high ability children from disadvantaged backgrounds are disproportionately less likely to attain good grades compared to children from advantaged backgrounds. In addition, school effects operate to add to this inequality as children in fee-paying secondary schools outperform their state secondary school counterparts regardless of ability. Future UK policies should focus on reducing social inequality in education to ensure that all children are offered the same life chances regardless of background.

Highlights

Social inequalities in education have long been documented in great detail in many modern societies, with social forces acting directly to increase or maintain them through lack of material resources or non-alleviation of developmental problems (McLoyd, 1998), or indirectly through parental attitudes to education, to children and parents’ ability to help (Phillips, Brooks-Gunn, Duncan, Klebanov, & Crane, 1998)
The results indicate that children who come from more deprived family backgrounds are less likely to fulfil their intellectual potential when it comes to GCSE attainment
These findings should still be interpreted with a certain degree of caution because observed socio-economic position (SEP) differences in educational outcome may in part be influenced by differences in maternal cognitive ability

Summary

Introduction

Social inequalities in education have long been documented in great detail in many modern societies, with social forces acting directly to increase or maintain them through lack of material resources or non-alleviation of developmental problems (McLoyd, 1998), or indirectly through parental attitudes to education, to children and parents’ ability to help (Phillips, Brooks-Gunn, Duncan, Klebanov, & Crane, 1998). Research into social inequalities in education has demonstrated that are disadvantaged children far less likely to become high academic attainers at any stage (Crawford, Macmillan, & Vignoles, 2014) but that high-attaining socio-economically disadvantaged children are academically overtaken by their average-attaining, more economically advantaged peers (Goodman & Gregg, 2010). In 2011 data from the Department for Education (DFE, 2012) revealed that of children eligible for free school meals (FSM), a proxy for low income, only 35% attained 5 or more A*–C grades (including English and Maths) compared to 62% of non-FSM children. Social differences in attainment exist, but are greater than gender or ethnicity differences; around six times larger than gender differences and three times larger than ethnicity differences (Strand, 2011)

Results

Discussion

Conclusion