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Is SES really that important for educational outcomes in Australia? A review and some recent evidence

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Abstract

This paper demonstrates that the emphasis on students’ socioeconomic status (SES) in research and policy circles in Australia is unwarranted. The bivariate relationships between SES and educational outcomes are only moderate and the effects of SES are quite small when taking into account cognitive ability or prior achievement. These two influences have much stronger relationships with students’ outcomes than SES and their effects cannot be attributed to the influence of SES at earlier points of time. The theoretical explanations for socioeconomic inequalities in education (e.g. schools and cultural factors) are problematic and are not supported by empirical work. The much weaker than assumed effects of SES has implications for research and policy.

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Notes

  1. Erikson (2016) cites Lazarsfeld (1939) on this point. Sewell and Hauser (1972:856) comment, “there may be little merit in the efforts of some social scientists to interpret all social inequalities in terms of income differences.”

  2. Until and including the 2006 census, Census Collector districts are the smallest geographical unit for collection in processing. For the 2006 census there were over 38,000 CDs comprising on average 225 households (ABS 2011).

  3. For examples of the items used in NAPLAN see http://www.nap.edu.au/naplan/the-tests.html. Examples of the PISA test items are also available (OECD 2013).

  4. For 30 countries, the standardized effects range from 0.03 to 0.08, not controlling for test scores.

  5. The Victorian government (Victorian Department of Education and Training 2015) has an initiative which targets “additional funding for students entering secondary school who struggled with basic skills in primary school”.

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  1. Government, Policy and Strategy, The Vice-Chancellery, Australian Catholic University, Level 4, 232 Victoria Parade, East Melbourne, VIC, 3002, Australia

    Gary N. Marks

  2. Fitzroy MDC, Locked Bag 4115, Fitzroy, VIC, 3065, Australia

    Gary N. Marks

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Marks, G.N. Is SES really that important for educational outcomes in Australia? A review and some recent evidence. Aust. Educ. Res. 44, 191–211 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-016-0219-2

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