External factors (material deprivation, cultural deprivation, cultural capital) and internal factors (labelling, streaming, pupil subcultures) explaining social-class differences in educational achievement.

What this dot point is asking

AQA wants you to explain social-class differences in achievement using both external factors (things in the home and wider society) and internal factors (things inside the school), and to evaluate which matters more. The strongest answers show the two interacting rather than choosing one side.

External factors

External factors come from outside the school, in the home and wider society.

• Material deprivation. Poverty means poorer diet and health (Howard), overcrowded or temporary housing with no space to study, fewer educational resources, and the pull of part-time work. Smith and Noble link low income directly to lower attainment, and Tanner shows the hidden costs of "free" schooling (uniform, equipment, trips) hit poorer families hardest.
• Cultural deprivation. Some pupils are said to lack the values, language and skills for success. Bernstein distinguishes the restricted speech code (context-bound, used more by the working class) from the elaborated code (context-free, used by schools and the middle class), so working-class pupils are at a disadvantage in exams and lessons. Douglas stressed parental interest, and Sugarman described working-class subcultural values (fatalism, immediate gratification, present-time orientation) as obstacles.
• Cultural capital. Bourdieu argues the middle class possess cultural capital (the knowledge, tastes and language valued by schools) alongside economic and social capital, which schools reward, so privilege is converted into qualifications. Ball, Bowe and Gewirtz show middle-class parents also use this capital to work the admissions market.

Internal factors

Internal factors are processes inside the school that produce class differences.

• Labelling. Becker found teachers judge pupils against an image of the "ideal pupil", often based on class and conduct. Negative labels can trigger a self-fulfilling prophecy (Rosenthal and Jacobson's "Pygmalion in the Classroom", where randomly chosen "spurters" made more progress).
• Streaming and setting. Placing pupils in ability groups can lock in labels and limit opportunity. Gillborn and Youdell describe educational triage, where marketisation pushes schools to focus on borderline (C/D) pupils to boost league-table results, neglecting those labelled hopeless.
• Pupil subcultures. Lacey describes differentiation and polarisation: labelling and streaming push pupils towards a pro-school or an anti-school subculture, the latter gaining status by rejecting school values. Willis's "lads" show this counter-school culture channelling working-class pupils into low-skilled work.

Evaluation

Marxists (Bowles and Gintis, Bourdieu) treat class inequality as built into the system, not the fault of pupils. Critics of cultural deprivation, especially Keddie, call it "victim-blaming" that ignores how schools are biased against working-class culture (the working class are "culturally different", not "culturally deprived"). Most accounts conclude home and school factors interact: deprivation shapes the labels schools apply, and the school then amplifies the disadvantage, so neither external nor internal factors work alone.