The Effect of Socio-Economic Background on Post Compulsory Educational Attainment
Research Aims:
This proposed research attempts to achieve the following objectives:
1. To determine the effects of the educational attainment of parents (father and mother) on post compulsory educational attainment of their children
2. To analyze the relationship of socio-economic background and post compulsory education in the United Kingdom
3. To evaluate the effects of socio-economic background (monthly income, occupation of parents and parents’ educational attainment) on post compulsory education in the UK
Research Questions:
In accordance with the research aims of this proposed study, the following will be asked:
1. What are the effects of parents’ educational attainment on the post compulsory education of children in UK?
2. What are the effects of parent occupation, monthly income and class position (mother and father) on the post compulsory education of their children?
3. Is there a significant difference in the post compulsory educational attainment of UK youths (16 years old and above) and their family’s socio-economic background?
Introduction
As McLanahan and Sandefur (1994) have argued, income has important direct and indirect consequences for children’s educational outcomes. Although family income is correlated with parents education and occupational status, income has been shown to have significant independent effects on educational outcomes (Hauser and Phang, 1993; Powell and Steelman, 1993). Past studies of sibling resemblance, have also found income to have a significant positive effect on the common family factor (Kuo and Hauser, 1993, 1994).
The parents in higher socio-economic classes are better able to: a) provide expensive higher education and enroll their children in private schools (Robinson and Garnier, 1985); b) ensure contact with children of similar background, and in similar curricula (Colclough and Beck, 1986); and c) foster personality traits, values, expectations, cognitive skills and attitudes in the family which are congruent with the educational curriculum (Richer, 1988). Each of these factors is believed to pay off in better educational attainment for children (Curtis and Nakhaie, 1998).
Guppy and Arai (1993) studied data from the 1986 General Social Survey and showed that parental education had a substantial effect on the offspring’s chances of attaining post-secondary education (Guppy and Pendakur, 1989). They, too, found that mothers’ educational attainment had more effect on daughters’ attainment of post-secondary education and fathers’ education had more effect on sons’ attainment. Also, they reported that fathers’ occupational status had a weaker positive effect on the offspring’s educational attainment than parental education.
The significant effects that father’s occupational status and father’s educational attainment has on children’s post compulsory education have been clearly established in the research on intergenerational mobility and educational attainment (Blau and Duncan, 1967; Featherman and Hauser, 1978). Mare (1991) have shown mother’s educational attainment to have significant effects on children’s education independent of the effect of father’s educational attainment (Kalmijn, 1994).
Furthermore, several of these studies have shown the effect of mother’s education on the common family factor to be equal to the effect of father’s education (Kuo and Hauser, 1993, 1995). Fort instance, Kalmijn (1994) sought to uncover the effect of mother’s occupational status on children’s schooling transitions. He found mother’s occupational status to have a significant positive effect on the likelihood of the three schooling transitions he studied (high school graduation, college entrance, college graduation). In fact, among dual-earner families, he found the effect of mother’s occupational status to be larger than that of father’s occupational status for the first two transitions.
In sum, research on educational attainment shows a strong but possibly declining positive effect of occupational status of parents – particularly the occupational status of fathers – on the offspring’s education, stronger effects of parent’s education compared with effects of parents’ occupational status, and some evidence of patterns of same-sex effects for parental occupational status and parental education.
Significance of the Study
This proposed study seeks to investigate the effects of the class positions of fathers and mothers upon the educational attainment of offspring in terms of their post compulsory educational attainment. At the same time, the international literature suggests that class origins, at least for fathers’ class positions, are important determinants of the educational attainment of children in some other countries (Curtis and Nakhaie, 1998). My purpose in this paper is to provide analyses bearing on this issue of effects of class categories of parents upon post compulsory educational attainment in the United Kingdom.
Conceptual Framework
This proposed study shall use the human capital theory in explaining the decision of families to send their children sixteen years and above to school. Human capital theory provides the framework to study human capital investments and returns (Mincer, 1958; Shultz, 1960; 1988). Like other investments, educational investments have costs and benefits. It is assumed that individuals (or parents on their behalf) maximize present discounted value of wealth from schooling prior to making the schooling decision. This optimization problem may be set out as follows Individuals or their families make educational investments.
If markets work perfectly and education is purely an investment, the optimal level of schooling investment will prevail. The models by Becker and Tomes (1976, 1979) assume in addition to perfect markets, that parents are altruistic. That is, they care about the welfare of their children. Everyone invests in schooling up to the optimal level irrespective of socio-economic background.
Methodology This proposed study will use the descriptive approach- utilization of interview, observation and questionnaires in the study. The purpose is to describe the situation as observed by the researcher.
The primary source of data will come from the research-conducted questionnaire. Secondary data will consist of interviews, published articles from journals, theses and related studies on education and sociology books and articles.
Educational attainment will be measured by years of education. Respondents will be asked, “In total, how many years of elementary and secondary education did your father (or father substitute) complete?” Then respondents will be asked to indicate whether their fathers had any further schooling beyond elementary and secondary school, and if so, “What was the highest level he attained?” They were asked to provide answers to the latter question in a structured format, of some community college, community college completed, some university, university completed, or master’s degree or doctorate completed. Similar questions will be asked about respondent’s mother’s and the respondent’s own education. In some supplemental analyses I will also check on whether the same patterns of results obtained for two dichotomous education measures: attainment of a university degree (or more) versus not, and attainment of a post-secondary diploma (or more) versus not.
Class positions of fathers and mothers will be measured by questions which asked respondents to identify their mothers’ and fathers’ types of work, and whether their mothers or fathers were self-employed or working for others, when the respondents were 16 years of age. If the respondents’ mothers or fathers were self-employed and had managerial, supervisory and foreman/woman positions they were placed in the bourgeoisie.
Fathers’ and mothers’ occupational status will also be measured, for some of the analyses. The procedure that will be used will include the identification of the types of occupational status where it will be divided into five categories of upper white-collar (owners, managers and professionals), middle white-collar (mid-management, semi-professionals and technicians), lower white-collar (supervisors, foremen/women, clerical and sales), blue-collar (skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled laborers) and others (Jones, 1985: 116; Greese et al., 1991: 36 for use of this measure).
For this research design, the researcher will gather data, collate published studies from different local and foreign universities and articles from social science journals, distribute sampling questionnaires; arrange interviews; and make a content analysis of the collected documentary and verbal material. Afterwards, the researcher will summarize all the information, make a conclusion based on the null hypotheses posited and provide insightful recommendations on learning English as a second language for Asians.
References
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