Poverty and education

-Of the 100 schools with the highest proportions of pupils eligible for free school meals in England, only three attained the national average GCSE point score
-Schools in the poorest areas have 10-25 % of pupils achieving 5 GCSE at grade A*-C against national average of 50%
-In 2002, 13% of 18 year olds and 7% of 16 year olds in England and Wales were not in any education, training or employment; 30% of these 16 year olds children had no reported GCSE; one third of them at age 18 were not in paid work, training or education
(Poverty: the Facts, Jan Flaherty, John Veit-Wilson, Paul Dornan, 5th edition)
These statistics are examples of how the poverty influence on educational achievement. Children who live in poverty tend to be culturally and materially deprived, which means that they are lack of motivation, parental encouragement in case of cultural deprivation and lack of money and basic necessities, equipment in case of material deprivation. Research of Jan Flaherty showed that lack of material resources such as space to work, books, computers, money are the key factors in children’s low performance. They get low scores and have very low attainment, this may lead to excluding from schools: “Children, excluded from school are unlikely to return to mainstream education.”(G Palmer, M Rahman, R Kenway, Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion 2002) They are not only educationally disadvantaged but also excluded socially as they don’t participate in different kinds of activities and support trips, excursions because of their financial exclusion.
Usually children who grow up in poor families leave schools at the lowest age to find a job and to get paid, even if they go to schools, they don’t do any homework because of lack of equipment and stressful environment at home. Also research of Jan Flaherty has shown that those children tend to help their parents and protect them from total poverty by doing simple things for others for money or helping somebody.
Research showed that children who grew up in a low income families are more likely to be economically inactive, “have lower self-esteem and have a fatalistic attitude to health” because of financial exclusion of their parents: children start to behave in similar way and they usually have a little knowledge of the role of banks and building societies and they disadvantaged in terms of financial skills as their parents don’t show them an appropriate example of making a profit and earning money.
Also children in poverty tend to have more health problems and so they miss more classes and worse master classes.
“In general, children of poverty are more likely to form lower expectations about their succes at school or work and they in fact turn out to be less successful in achieving higher levels of education or getting jobs or avoiding getting pregnant” (J Ermisch, M Francesconi, D J Pevalin Outcomes for children poverty, Research Report 158, Department for Work and Pension, 2001)

(All the research results of Jan Flaherty are taken from the book: Poverty: the Facts, Jan Flaherty, John Veit-Wilson, Paul Dornan, 5th edition)