Factors affecting educational achievement, including social class, gender and ethnicity, and the role of material deprivation, cultural deprivation and cultural capital.

What this dot point is asking

AQA wants you to explain why achievement differs by social class, gender and ethnicity, using the concepts of material deprivation, cultural deprivation and cultural capital, and to distinguish factors that operate outside school (home factors) from those that operate inside school. The strongest answers connect a named cause to lower achievement.

Social class: the home factors

Social class is the strongest single predictor of achievement, and sociologists explain the working-class gap partly through factors that operate before and outside the school.

Material deprivation works in concrete ways: a pupil without a desk, a computer or a quiet room cannot complete coursework as easily, and poverty may force part-time work or poor diet and housing that affect concentration. Cultural deprivation is more contested: it claims that some working-class families place less value on education, use a more restricted language code, or provide less intellectual stimulation. Critics argue this risks blaming families rather than recognising the resources they lack, which is why the material and cultural explanations are often debated against each other.

Cultural capital

Bourdieu's idea is powerful because it explains the class gap without blaming working-class families for lacking effort. The school is not neutral: it rewards a particular culture, so pupils who already share that culture succeed more easily. This turns inherited advantage into qualifications, reproducing class inequality, an idea that links closely to the Marxist view of education.

Gender and ethnicity

Girls now outperform boys at GCSE overall. The explanations are social, not natural: the impact of feminism and equal opportunities raised girls' ambitions, there are more female role models in work and the media, and boys are more likely to form anti-school subcultures that reject academic effort. Achievement also varies by ethnicity: some minority ethnic groups outperform the average while others underachieve. Explanations include material deprivation (some ethnic groups are more likely to be in poverty), language barriers for some pupils, and in-school factors such as racism or low teacher expectations that label some pupils unfairly.