Working Class Girls, Education and Post-Industrial Britain

Aspirations and Reality in an Ex-Coalmining Community

Gill Richards

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9783319608990
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319609003
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice
• Index: Social Sciences

Explores the hopes and fears of girls within ex-coalmining communities using their own voices

Highlights how the groups of girls balanced their own aspirations with the educational opportunities perceived to be available to them

Suggests how schools should plan provisions to support aspirations and raise achievement

© The Author(s) 2018

Gill RichardsWorking Class Girls, Education and Post-Industrial BritainPalgrave Studies in Gender and Educationhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60900-3_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Gill Richards¹

(1)

Nottingham Institute of Education, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

Gill Richards

Email: [email protected]

Abstract

This chapter introduces the book by briefly introducing a general context for the research study, the aims of the book and the scope of each chapter’s contents.

Keywords

IntroductionContextAims

End Abstract

This book is about girls, their dreams and fears for the future and how their lives evolved into young adulthood. These girls lived in an ex-mining community that is now one of the 10% most deprived districts in England. They represent a wider group of girls who are often identified in government reports as coming from ‘working-class backgrounds’, vulnerable to underachievement and disadvantaged by low expectations. The research study on which this book is based gives a voice to eighty-nine girls, offering insight into the experiences at school that affected their aspirations and influenced their decision-making. In it, I aim to offer academics and practitioners a unique appreciation of how a group of girls balanced their own aspirations with the educational opportunities perceived to be available to them. Their experiences of navigating a way through school and community expectations into work provide us all with important messages to consider when seeking to tailor education provision that supports individual aspirations into successful achievement.

The wider education context of the research study is one where student achievement can be dependent upon the quality of school and other external experiences, rather than academic ability . Such educational inequality is a matter of international concern (Beatriz 2013) . It occurs in different manifestations across the world, but within the UK, despite successive governments’ attempts to address inequality and disadvantage , schools still have one of the widest attainment gaps in education within the developed world. One in five students has been identified as underachieving in an environment where ‘educational inequality starts early, widens throughout school and the effects can last a lifetime in terms of job prospects, health and overall contribution to society’ (AfA 2016: 11). This starts in primary school where the gap between children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and their advantaged peers grows quickly and extends in secondary school (Hutchinson et al. 2016; Sutton Trust 2011; Goodman and Gregg 2010), resulting in what Ofsted (2013a: 24) describes as a ‘long tail of underachievement that limits progress towards becoming a world class education system’.

Who is viewed as ‘disadvantaged’ and potentially vulnerable to educational underachievement was originally described within Ofsted’s report on ‘Closing the Gap ’ (2007) as a wide group of young people that included: those with special educational needs or disabilities; those who have been excluded from school or have poor attendance ; those at risk from harm or who live with ‘vulnerable’ adults; and those who are from some minority ethnic groups , in care, asylum seekers, refugees, young offenders and young carers. While students with any of these characteristics may underachieve in school, more recent research studies have shown that this is not inevitable and individuals will not all be affected in the same way (Khatabb 2015; St Clair et al. 2013; EEF 2013; Kirk et al. 2012) .

The UK Department for Education and the schools’ inspectorate, Ofsted , have long expressed concern that despite a significant number of equality initiatives in education, many young people have not benefited. Students from working-class backgrounds are still the lowest achieving group in schools, often becoming less visible as they progress through the system. This even occurs when they attend schools within prosperous communities, where their lack of achievement may become ‘lost’ within the positive data recorded from the majority group of more successful students (Hutchinson 2016; Sharpe et al. 2015; Ofsted 2013b) . Government-funded national developments that focus on ‘Closing the Gap ’ to increase the attainment of all students vulnerable to underachievement have broadened to include any schools where there is an identified need. Although the recent focus has been on ‘White working-class’ male students, wider national reports (Ofsted 2016; Khattab 2015; Centre for Social Justice 2014) have now accepted that working-class students from any identified group are more likely to struggle to achieve in UK schools when compared with their peers from the same group. This, in addition to the education sector’s increased acceptance of Hattie’s work (2009) that identified students received significantly different experiences within the same teaching environment, has sharpened the focus of attention and accountability within all schools.

Despite ‘working class’ being included within many current education debates about aspirations, disadvantage and underachievement , understanding who is included within this group may be unclear because education reports apply different definitions. Some use government criteria adopted from the National Statistics Socio-economic Classification (2010) or broader sociological definitions (Ward 2015) . Others use a range of terms and proxies associated with education initiatives such as free school meals (FSM) . This approach is frequently criticised: without an established definition to consistently identify who is ‘working class’, comparisons are not robust and result in education developments informed by ‘crude data’ which ‘dangerously misrepresent the true situation’ (House of Commons 2014: 9). An example of this can be seen when ‘FSM’ is used as shorthand for working-class and economic deprivation , because the number of young people identified in the school system as eligible for FSM is significantly fewer than those who self-identify as working class. Similarly, ‘White working class’ often means ‘White British working class’, so this, like other loosely applied definitions, misses the nuances of wider experiences and contributes towards misleading predictions that damage public perceptions (Baars et al. 2016). Solutions to overcome this inconsistency acknowledge the diversity of working-class groups’ lives and the range of characteristics that affect achievement (House of Commons 2014; Ofsted 2013a, b) . It is this combination of identifiers that placed the girls’ community for my research within the country’s lowest of deprivation and provided the context for which I have used the term working class throughout this book. While many living in the area self-identify as working class, I know that others do not and accept that in common with applying any generic label, there is a danger of oversimplification and stereotyping. I have endeavoured to offset this by also using the term ‘disadvantage’ instead where appropriate, because it was this factor that affected the girls’ lives in significant ways. More importantly, I have sought to portray the girls as individuals whose different experiences contribute towards a greater understanding about their lives and how schools can enhance these.

The community in which the research took place had a long tradition in coal mining and quarrying as the centre of employment for local families . When the mines were closed, significant unemployment affected family roles and work expectations within the tight-knit community that quickly became one of the most deprived districts in England. Post-industrial developments were often low-paid and part-time, creating a challenge for those holding strongly conventional views of what constituted men and women’s work. Travel outside of the locality was unusual, even for social events. A wariness of ‘outsiders’ and for seeking experiences in ‘unknown territory’ created cultural restrictions on accessing employment available in nearby towns. As a result, a majority of men and women seeking work had to settle for something very different to their original expectations. Government funding was allocated to target unemployment and address disadvantage, but then withdrawn during the recession . This exacerbated a growing divide between those who remained within the local area and those who had broken with tradition to find a job further afield. The divide became greater as new housing estates were built which were outside the financial reach of many who sought work locally and so physically separated families . People who moved into these were often described by the rest of the community as living at the ‘top end’, and it was noted that the children from this part were starting to follow their parents’ lead by attending school outside of the area.

The girls within the research study came from families living in all sections of the community. The schools they attended had students whose ethnicity would be described as predominately ‘White British’, although a minority were from other ethnic backgrounds. Ofsted inspections identified significant differences in the ways that each school met their students’ educational needs, and some of this was easily identifiable from the girls’ experiences explored during interviews . Over the period of the research, the schools had been inspected several times with Ofsted ratings for the primary schools moving from ‘Inadequate’ or ‘Satisfactory’ at the start to ‘Good’ at the end. In contrast, one secondary school moved down from ‘Good’ to receiving several judgements of’Inadequate’, while the other moved up from ‘Good’ to ‘Outstanding’.

The first stage of the study was carried out after a County Council’s Education Department had expressed concerns about Year 6 girls’ achievement in two primary schools located in the ex-coal mining community. In both schools, the boys were achieving to national standards , and there was no apparent reason for the girls’ underachievement. The research focus then expanded to include the experiences of Year 6 girls from another pr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. What Do We Know About Girls’ Aspirations and Achievement?
• 3. Methodology
• 4. Aspirations and Expectations
• 5. Achieving Aspirations: What Did the Girls Do?
• 6. What Else Can Schools Do?
• Backmatter