1. Education Differential Achievement By Female student - 2003

2. What is differential achievement? Differential achievement is a phrase to describe differences in levels of achievement and results that is caused by factors such as religion, class and ethnicity. One such example of this differential achievement is that it has been shown that Asian children tend to do better than other ethnic groups because of the strict regime that their parents tend to follow with disciplining them.

3. Identify three groups that have been studied to establish reasons for their differential achievement. What reasons have been offered? Three groups that have been continuously researched to establish reasons for differential achievement are Girls VS Boys, Management of learning and IQ Testing. For the Girls VS Boys issue research has been carried out to see what can be done to make boys achievement levels rise. This is due to a change in the levels of achievement, where it was once found that boys achieved higher than girls and now the gap between them is growing increasingly large in favour of girls achieving more and more girls going onto further education. Management of learning refers to the system of Streaming, Setting and Mixed Ability groups within year groups. Some key research with regard to this was carried out by Jeannie Oakes in 1985 and she showed, contrary to earlier popular belief, that children who were considered to be higher achievers within mixed ability groups did not achieve any less by being in a group with people of less ability.

4. IQ Testing refers to tests such as the 11+ entry for public schools as it once was and is still by some perceived by some to be an official, efficient selection process. They were introduced in the late 50s to 60s. This type of testing is considered to be scientific and objective and has been known to have been referred to as A way of explaining differentials in education achievement. However there are also problems that come with this form of testing as it is only a test for certain skills and is culture bound, therefore it may only truly relate to the type of background that White Western people come from.

5. Explain what feminism is and how it relates to differential achievement. Feminism is the name for the ideological position of seeing women in their own right rather than being seen as appendages to men. There are many different types of Feminist. In relation to differential achievement Feminists argue that female success has been frequently prevented by a society that is patriarchal in its structure and its ideology.

6. What is the thinking about class and parenting? There is strong evidence to suggest that Britain's class divide starts even before nursery school. It was discovered that children from parents of middle class, professional backgrounds were far better at completing the tasks than children of working class parents. A difference in income of £100 a week was equal to a three percentage point improvement in the ability to do the tasks. This research is linked to work that suggests children of working class parents tend to be more passive, less engaged in the world around them and have a more limited vocabulary. This is in comparison with children from middle class households who have a wider vocabulary, better understanding of how to converse with other people and are more skilled at manipulating objects. Education officials said that parents willingness to spend time with their children, how much they spoke to them and the amount of reading they did with them all produced differences in their later attainment, and varied across classes…with the lower classes spending least time with their children, the higher class spending slightly more and the middle class being most supportive to their children.

7. Explain carefully all of the issues surrounding class and achievement. Explain how this links to Stratification Stratification is the theory to do with class and achievement. This theory says that people who come from higher social classes are more likely to do better in the long term due to this class difference. To support this theory I have found work done by an American sociologist in 1979. The sociologist studied two male students who had almost identical IQs and both worked to a very high standard within their year group. However, despite their academic similarities, Bobby's dad is a successful higher middle class lawyer, whereas Jimmys dad is a working class cleaner for an office company, making Bobby 27 times more likely to have a job by the time hes 40 that pays him in the top tenth of all the incomes in the country, and giving Jimmy and eight of a chance of earning even a median income

8. What are the findings regarding differential achievement amongst ethnic groups. Identify the groups and the explanations offered Males

9. What are the findings regarding differential achievement amongst ethnic groups. Identify the groups and explanations offered. females

10. What are the findings regarding differential achievement amongst ethnic groups. Identify the groups and the explanations offered In both of the bar charts that I have plotted from data I found in relation to differential achievement amongst ethnic groups, we can see that the Indian ethnic group has a higher success rate for both genders in achieving grades A*-C. This may be due to the stricter regime that Indian parents tend to follow with their children.