Does Social Class Affect Educational Achievement?
             For my essay, I will answer the above question, 'Does Social Class Affect Educational Achievement?' I have done a lot of extensive reading and feel that I am able to answer this question as best as I can using my own opinions and quotes from certain texts to back-up my points. I will mainly be discussing the affects social class has on the educational achievement of Higher Education pupils. I will begin by giving a brief history of education and social class.
             Education is something that we all take for granted, we presume that we will leave school after the majority of our childhood lives and get jobs, but schooling is not as simple as this. Education as we know it is a very modern commodity. Formal education has been around for less than 170 years. It all began in 1833 when grants first became available to voluntary societies for the provision of education in the form of schools.
             At this time there were only two main providers, The National Society (CofE), and The British and Foreign School Society (Non-denominational/Non- conformist). In 1870 The Elementary Education Act was passed, legislating that school boards should be appointed, but it wasn't until 1880 that school attendance became compulsory. The 1902 Education Act was later passed, setting up Education Authorities that were responsible for elementary and secondary education.
             However, it wasn't until 42 years later that The Butler Act (1944) caused sweeping changes. It raised the school leaving age to 15 and also abolished fees in maintained schools. This created three levels of education; Primary (5-11 years) Secondary (11-15 years), and Further/Higher education (15-19 years). It was only in 1988 that the National Curriculum was introduced.
             In our society there are many groups and cultures that are then segregated into separate social classes. There are however a growing number of people not m...