This chapter looks in more detail at some of the patterns of attainment in Chapter 3, such as by sex and area of residence. I have assessed how these patterns change over time, over the lifetime of an individual and how they vary by level of education (Gorard, 2000c, 2001b). All of these factors give further clues as to why the patterns themselves exist and, as discussed in later chapters, what might usefully be done to improve attainment.

Background

There is a range of possible explanations for why individuals reach different levels of attainment at school. They include physical or physiological explanations such as differing maturity or diet, family and background characteristics such as variation in the stability of home life or the ability of parents to assist with education, differences in the quality of schools and teachers, and other reasons including chance. It is also possible that the differential attainment of boys and girls at school is linked to differences in their rate of maturation. While this book considers the role of poverty and other challenges in detail throughout, Chapter 6 focuses on the role of schools and teachers and Chapter 9 on the impact of parental involvement in their child's education, along with further factors influencing attainment that lie outside the control of schools. However, explanations such as the physiological one are mostly beyond the scope of this book.

There is a high correlation between the results of early cognitive ability tests and later social class, and between social class and qualification, and, of course, between qualification and HE participation (Bond and Saunders, 1999). Traditionally, studies based on twins and fostering have emphasised the role of inherited ‘talent’ in the reproduction of family educational attainment (Herrnstein and Murray, 1994). Children from high-SES families appear better at solving problems from a very young age, even though children from all families seem to use the same approaches to solving problems (Ginsburg and Pappas, 2004). But all such studies acknowledge that talent flourishes more in certain environmental conditions. Very early differences and progress in learning might be more to do with hereditary general ability and physiological growth or not, but as children grow older, the role of early ability appears to lessen (Gottfredson, 2004).