...as well as economic lives. As people progress through their educational life certain inequalities will result in different outcomes of schooling for different sets of people. “In post war Britain pupils from a working class background are constantly found to gain fewer academic qualifications, to be under represented in institutions of higher education and to end up in jobs offering little opportunity for social advancement” (Brown 1987 p11). It is inequalities such as these that are present both in and out of school that will determine life chances of individuals. It is commonly accepted that education is the main determinant of where someone will find himself or herself in later life, certain experiences at different stages of the life cycle with regard to education will therefore have an effect on life chances. This essay will examine these in and out of factors and how at different stages in the life cycle they affect life chances.
One of the main contributing factors to life chances is education. What someone achieves in his or her academic career exhibits much inequality. It has been a long running trend in employment that those from working class backgrounds will enter into occupations of manual or low-skilled nature. Conversely those from middle-class backgrounds tend to enter more into administrative and or professional occupations. Despite government reforms to limit inequalities in education and the effect of class differences but since trends in employment and educational achievement still persist there is still a strong link between social class and life chances. The schooling system has been regarded by some Marxist writers who feel “school is primarily a means of reproducing the existing structure of social and economic inequalities” (Brown 1987 p15). In this manner it can be argued that the way children are...
