Student Name: Mohamed Deif

Student Number: 19066686

Although it is commonly acknowledged that societal issues in Australia can have

lasting impacts on many members in society, it is also important to understand that

the prevalence of various issues can also directly impact the education and schooling

of children in Australian schools. This essay will take a close look at the issue of social

stratification in schools and how social stratification via biased funding and resourcing

in schools negatively effects students with low socioeconomic status since these

students are the most susceptible to suffering the impacts of social stratification. This

essay will also take a look at the issue of social stratification through the lens of the

Marxist theoretical framework as well as the ideas of Bourdieu in order to help provide

a useful insight into how this issue can be addressed in school classrooms through the

formation of school policy and promoting healthy critical discussion on the issue.

Ultimately, it is important to study the issue of social stratification in schools in order

to ensure equity of access for children in schools regardless of the socioeconomic

status so as to prevent student alienation and the wider impacts that student

alienation has on Australian schooling culture.

Social class or social stratification as a term refers to the rating or classification of

various social groups on the basis of wealth and power. Some scholars agree that

social stratification also functions by creating “mobility mechanisms that link

individuals to roles or occupations and thereby generate unequal control over valued

goods (Grusky, 2007). Although it is a topic that remains debated today, social

stratification is definitely one of the most impactful social injustice issues in Australia

as its effects are widely felt by many students and children in Australian schools with

low Socioeconomic status. The unequal distribution of school funding can be

discovered via a study of data from the ABS and the 2006 census which reveals that
Students from low SES backgrounds are those whose permanent home address

postcode falls within the lowest 25 per cent of postcodes as coded by the ABS SEIFA

Index of Education and Occupation (Census 2006).

The main impact of social stratification on low socioeconomic schooling contexts is the

fact that the lack of funding for schools in these low SES contexts means that children

are subjected to unequal access to education. Ultimately, the impact that unequal

funding and resourcing on low SES students was exacerbated from 2007-2009 when

the government began to prioritise funding for independent schools instead of public

schools as the Howard government prioritised funding for independent non-

government schools for 1.9 million to 6.6 million (Ho, 2011). This exacerbated the

issue of social stratification for low SES students as these non-government

independent schools which received much more funding had an extremely low

distribution of SES students, which meant that the majority of SES students who were

in government schools were subject to a lesser quality of education as a result of

receiving much less funding.

Much of the research surrounding this topic has confirmed this hypothesis. The Gonski

review revealed that this disparity of funding had created a segregation in the

education of students in Australia and that “students from disadvantaged backgrounds

were consistently achieving educational outcomes much lower than their peers”

(Kenway, 2013). The Gonski review also further revealed that as a result of this many

of the predominantly white students who were still in public schools began to move to

private schools, which meant that the educational system had become more lopsided

and unbalanced than ever (Kenway, 2013). Other research revealed that these

students who were behind their peers in terms of education were as far behind as two
and a half years in maths, English and science (Thomson, 2017). Sue Thomson, who is

the Director of the Educational Monitoring and Research Division and Research

Director of the Australian Surveys research program at the Australian Council for

Educational Research also argues that base on PISA and OECD statistics, it is

ultimately true that the place where one goes to school significantly effects the

students’ performance (Thomson, 2017). Thomson further argues that the fact that

the place where a student attends school can heavily influence their performance

means that Australian education is definitely inequitable as it means that a students

achievement is heavily influenced by the family’s ability to afford a good school, thus

leaving low SES students with an unfair disadvantage when it comes to their schooling

since they probably cannot afford such schooling (Thomson, 2017).

According to Karl Marx the school is an institution which proliferates the education of

the future as an anti-capitalist education (Rikowski, 2004). Marx argues that education

is an essential part of ‘abolishing the social classes’, hence Marx’s relevance to the

issue of social stratification. Marx’s educational model consists of three key parts;

critique, addressing human needs and freedom (Rikowski, 2004). Marx argues that a

teaching pedagogy which consists of labour and education which is run by the state is

essential to facilitate a critical discussion on the ideologies of the ruling class and how

to establish a classless society. This focus on class is ultimately therefore the

dominant discourse.

In addition to this Marxist framework, the issue of social stratification can be

understood through the theories of habitus and cultural capital that are espoused by

Bourdieu. Bourdieu asserts that effective teaching pedagogies are tied to the

dominant discourse of social and cultural capital, which Bourdieu ultimately believed
functioned to disadvantage lower and working class children in school. Bourdieu’s

views on social stratification are further explained in Shim’s study which explains,

“dominant social structures (i.e. cultural capital) are privileged and valued in

education , whereas other forms of those properties are excluded and devalued”

(Shim, 2012). Whereas cultural capital relates to the ability to understand andoperate

successfully within the cultural norms and expectations of dominant society, social

capital on the other hand refers to social relationships and support networks which put

middle class children at an unfair advantage. This can be linked to the concept of

Habitus which is a concept that refers to a “durable set of dispositions that people

carry within them that shapes their attitudes, behaviours and responses to given

situations” (Webb, Shirato & Danaher, 2003, p. 27). According to Shim, Habitus

ultimately functions as a connection between the power structure and the individual

which can have consequences on the student’s education as well as the teacher’s

pedagogy as it facilitates the internalisation of the dominant discourse in the student’s

educational approach (Shim, 2012).

When discussing social issues which effect schooling such as social stratification it is

inevitable that the topic of teaching pedagogy comes into question and investigating

some possible actions or techniques a teacher might take in the classroom to address

the issue. A specific example of how a teacher mould help students who are

considered as low SES students such as refugees and migrants is by undergoing

diversity training and trying to understand the different cultural teachings of their

students so that they can find a common ground in which they can communicate with

their students and maintain their interest during school times (Taylor & Sidhu, 2012).
Taylor & Sidhu in their paper on supporting refugee students in Australian schools also

advocate for an approach of ‘inclusive schooling’ which they interpolated from the

Tasmanian education department. According to Taylor and Sidhu, inclusive schooling

refers to the inclusion of “all students in a school, regardless of their differences, as

part of the school community … ensure access, participation and achievement for

every student” (Taylor & Sidhu, 2012).

The employment of Taylor and Sidhu’s inclusive schooling approach by teachers in

classrooms could prove to be an effective tool in addressing the issue of social

stratification as it provides teachers wth tools such as; “providing a curriculum that is

accessible to all students working together, providing a safe and supportive school

community where all students are genuinely valued and respected, providing a safe

and supportive school community where all students are genuinely valued and

respected and proposing a systematic approach to ensuring that the practices of

inclusive education are embedded, sustained and evaluated’ (Taylor & Sidhu, 2012).

The increasing recognition of the Australian education system’s failure to address the

issue of refugee students in schools has resulted in increasing studies on the possible

techniques that can be used to address the issue. Scholars such as Karen Block have

proposed methods such as “targeted support, parental involvement, multi-agency

approach and community involvement” as ways to help build an inclusive holistic

model to “address learning …the celebration of cultural diversity” (Block et al., 2014).

Unfortunately, in terms of government policy, the issue of social stratification is yet to

be resolved. Contrarily, the government has increased funding for private schools with
higher SES students as mentioned earlier in the essay. In terms of possible ways in

which the issue could be resolved at the policy level, there are two main ways which

could address the issue according to Professor Laura Perry. The first is to prioritise

needs based funding from state governments to provide resources to schools in order

to promote “early, targeted and intensive support to students as soon as they start to

fall behind” (Perry, 2018).

Therefore, it is important to study how the issue of social stratification affects schools

in order to ensure equity of access for children in schools regardless of the

socioeconomic status so as to prevent student alienation and the wider impacts that

student alienation has on Australian schooling culture.

Reference List

Grusky, D.B. (2007). Stratification and Inequality, Theories of. In The Blackwell
Encyclopedia of Sociology, G. Ritzer (Ed.). doi:10.1002/9781405165518.wbeoss273

Ho, C. (2011) Respecting the Presence of Others: School Micro publics and Everyday
Multiculturalism. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 32(6), 603-619, DOI:
10.1080/07256868.2011.618106

Kenway, J. (2013) Challenging inequality in Australian schools: Gonski and beyond.

Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 34(2), 286-308. DOI:
10.1080/01596306.2013.770254

Thomson, S. (2017) The effects of inequity in Australian schools. Professional Voice, 12

(1), 29-40.

Rikowski, G. (2004) Marx and the Education of the Future. Policy Futures in Education,
2(3), 565-577.

Shim, J. (2012). Pierre Bourdieu and intercultural education: It is not just about lack of
knowledge about others. Intercultural Education. 23(1). 209-220.
10.1080/14675986.2012.701987.

Taylor, S & Sidhu, R (2012) Supporting refugee students in schools: what constitutes
inclusive education? International Journal of Inclusive Education, 16(1), 39-56, DOI:
10.1080/13603110903560085

Block, K., Cross, S., Riggs, E., & Gibbs, L (2014) Supporting schools to create an
inclusive environment for refugee students. International Journal of Inclusive
Education, 18(12), 1337-1355, DOI: 10.1080/13603116.2014.899636

Perry, L. (2018) To reduce inequality in Australian schools, make them less

socially segregated. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/to-reduce-
inequality-in-australian-schools-make-them-less-socially-segregated-95034