EducAtional Disadvantage
Educational Disadvantage:
Evidence from the two Growing Up in Ireland Cohorts PROFESSOR SELINA MCCOY ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE The Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) study has been ground-breaking in the insights provided on the lives of children and their families. With evidence now available for two cohorts, born in 1998 and 2008, we have a unique opportunity to consider the nature of socio-economic disadvantage over time. Given that Cohort ’08 were also surveyed at 3 and 5 years of age, it is possible to assess whether social gradients in cognitive performance widen as children move into the mid-primary years. Children’s school experience has been found to be associated with what they do outside school. Children from less advantaged families are less likely to engage in the kinds of structured outof-school activities, such as cultural activities like music and drama, which enhance academic performance. Analysis of GUI data has highlighted that children’s recreation patterns may serve to widen socio-economic gaps in achievement, highlighting the importance of all schools having the resources and infrastructure to offer a range of extracurricular programmes, for example involving drama, arts and crafts, organised sports, debating clubs, and ICT (McCoy et al., 2012).
Children from less advantaged families are less likely to engage in the kinds of structured out-of-school activities, such as cultural activities like music and drama, which enhance academic performance. One out-of-school activity; reading for pleasure, has long-standing importance in educational research, being repeatedly highlighted as a predictor of academic progress. The social gradient in reading for pleasure has remained prominent over the 10 16
years spanning the two GUI cohorts. While 24% of children whose mother was in the lowest category of educational attainment reported that s/he reads every day, the comparable figure for children of graduate mothers was 39% (Williams et al., 2009). In 2021 these gaps persist; a third of children whose parents had lower levels of education never read for pleasure at the weekend, compared to 10% of children from more highly educated families (McNamara et al., 2021). Cognitive scores continue to be closely linked with home learning environments, with children who were read to frequently at 3 and 5 years of age achieving significantly higher reading scores at 9 years (McNamara et al., p.75, 2021). Interestingly, while vocabulary test scores at 9 years were related to earlier scores, the strength of the relationship was moderate, indicating that significant numbers with lower initial scores improve over time. Children from highly educated families, who initially achieved low vocabulary scores at 3 years, subsequently achieve higher scores than high-scoring children from less educated families. Social gradients widen between 3 and 9 years, with the gap in cognitive skills between children from professional and lowerskilled families and those with a history of little or no employment, increasing over time. Socio-economic gradients were also evident in terms of how far parents expect their children to progress in education. The vast majority of children from professional, highly educated or higher income families are expected to achieve at least degree level education, even where their reading test scores at 9 years were relatively low (McNamara et al., 2021). Earlier research (McCoy et al., 2016) has highlighted the implications of parental expectations for both academic and socio-emotional development as children move into adolescence and beyond.
Cognitive scores continue to be closely linked with home learning environments, with children who were read to frequently at 3 and 5 years of age achieving significantly higher reading scores at 9 years. Finally, the Cohort ’08 study also gathers evidence on the extent to which families are requested to make financial contributions to the school (McNamara et al., p.70-71, 2021). Over half (59%) of families in the most deprived schools (Urban Band 1 DEIS) were not asked for a contribution compared with half of those in Urban Band 2 DEIS schools, 44 per cent in rural DEIS schools and 30 per cent in non-DEIS schools. Where a contribution was requested, families with lower levels of education and income were less likely to pay it. Overall, families with higher levels of income or education were more likely to be asked to make larger contributions; 23 per cent of the highest income group paid €100 or more per child while this was the case for only 5 per cent of the lowest income group. This evidence suggests that schools are responsive to the ability of families to pay contributions. However, this likely has implications for schools’ capacity to raise revenue, which may also shape their capacity to provide diverse extracurricular opportunities for their school communities. References available on request, by email to editor@ippn.ie. If you would like to contact Selina in relation to this article, you can email her at Selina.McCoy@esri.ie.