Abstract
New funding has been approved to tackle educational underachievement in Northern Ireland. While many schools and communities were joyous upon hearing about the £20 million investment into the education of local children and young people, the eligibility criteria left some schools perplexed. One primary school teacher was particularly disappointed upon hearing that of the 400 plus schools identified as eligible to receive this funding, his school, despite being in one of the most deprived areas of Northern Ireland, was not eligible. Yet, 40 grammar schools including a prep school, i.e. a fee-paying school, were identified as eligible for this funding. This sparks a wider discussion regarding classism and educational inequality.
The article, ‘School scheme is “punishing poverty”, says principal’ was published on the BBC news website (Meredith, 2024) and discusses the impact of the Department of Education's new scheme, RAISE.
Raise achievement to reduce educational disadvantage (RAISE) is a new initiative set out to tackle the low educational success of Northern Ireland's most underachieving schools (DoE, 2024). The two-year, £20 million investment hopes to reduce barriers to education for children within low socioeconomic areas while, addressing educational underachievement across all areas of Northern Ireland. However, the article goes on to state that over 400 schools in Northern Ireland have been identified as being eligible for receiving funding including 40 grammar schools and a ‘prep’ school (Meredith, 2024). The inclusion of schools of higher prestige could add a level of ‘meritocracy’ (Young, 1958) as the initiative was supposedly set out to tackle underachievement which one would infer would exclude schools of a certain pedigree. The idea of a £20 million investment being divided fairly among all those in need has facetious undertones, as the levels of need range from parents paying fees for the child to attend a prestigious school to a mother who cannot afford the school uniform. The concept of fairness has always been in the favour and control of those in higher classes, with ‘educated working class’ individuals consistently being challenged due to the incompatibility between education and working-classness (Loveday, 2015). The most interesting aspects of the news article is the openness of the Department of Education when making these statements and comparing schools from the most deprived areas of Northern Ireland with schools in higher socioeconomic areas. It is an indication of just how out of touch those implementing policies and strategies are in the education sector within Northern Ireland. This may be due to their higher socioeconomic status and lack of understanding of working-class communities.
Classism and educational attainment have been interlinked for decades, with the notion that working-class people are incompetent while middle-class people are seen as intelligent (Durante and Fiske, 2017), continuing to be the general consensus even today. For example, teacher and parental expectations of a child's educational abilities directly impacts the academic success of the child, i.e. if a teacher feels the child will not excel in school, then the child is less likely to perform well (De Boer, Timmermans and Van Der Werf, 2018). Teachers have higher academic expectations for middle-class children increasing the likelihood of academic success while also making higher education seem like the natural next step (Thomsen, 2023). For working-class children, expectations were not as high, and continuing to pursue education was seen as risky (Thomsen, 2023). Parents of low socioeconomic status also undervalue the importance of education or feel that higher education was not for their children as they were not like them
Schooling inequalities as discussed by Abrahams (2024), highlights how aspirations and work ethics for working-class children were high and that the issues with their educational attainment stemmed from the education system itself. Abrahams used the example of how working-class secondary schools offered limited opportunities regarding subject choice, getting more restrictive as the children got older, therefore placing them at a disadvantage when it came to applying for universities. Middle-class schools, however, encouraged and made available subjects that were highly sought after by Russell Group Universities. Article 28 of the UNCRC (1989), states that every child has the right to education. However, the evidence provided by Abrahams (2024) review and reinforced by the BBC article depicts how high-quality education may only be for selected schools within the middle-class arena, while working-class children are simply pacified by the pretence of inclusion and equality. This is further emphasised by Marxist's theory of the State being the instrument of the ruling class (Bloc, 1987) which indicates that the State and the ruling class are one.
Schooling inequalities are very much prevalent in the BBC article which serves, as an excellent example of classism in education. The article mentions that the schools selected for the investment were decided based on factors such as ‘GCSE grades’. The minister of education has defended the selection criteria and stated that decisions were made specific to underachievement and thus, any school with high levels of underachievement would be considered (McGonagle, 2024). The pupils of the prep school in question, as of 2024, achieved 97% A*-C at GCSE levels and 91% A*-C at A-level. The school website also offers careers advice to the students and provides information on job opportunities at competitive companies such as Deloitte to help their students’ career development. It could, therefore, be inferred that this is anything but a struggling, academically underachieving school and yet it has met the criteria for the RAISE fund. While the article states that these schools are merely being considered and have not yet received any funding as of yet, it does raise the question of how this prep school was able to become eligible for funding while struggling schools were not?
Perhaps, poverty really is being punished.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
Dr Paul McCafferty, Professor Davy Hayes, PhD supervisors.
Department for the Economy (DfE) for fully funding my PhD studies.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
