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Introduction

analysis provides a breakdown of the factors and processes and their inter-
relationships that bring about the social class attainment gap. However, this does not
reflect a view that social class is not important.

Neither does it reflect a view that social class can be reduced to education or to any of
the other individual factors considered. Moreover, we recognise that a class-based
perspective would offer a different analysis of the role of education.

1.5.8 A ‘capitals’ model

An alternative approach to the problem of why and how education impacts on
children’s attainment could be offered by a focus on ‘capitals’. This approach would
consider parental education as a proxy measure of parents’ human capital, an asset
which is productive in the production of children’s attainment alongside other capitals
which have all been mooted and/or tested as supportive of the development of
attainment, such as social capital (Coleman, 1988), financial capital (Bynner &
Paxton, 2001), cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1984) and identity capital (Cδte & Levine,
2002).

There are many strengths of the capitals model and it has been usefully applied in
many important papers as well as in previous work undertaken at the Centre for
Research on the Wider Benefits of Learning (Schuller et al
., 2004).

However, the advantage of the developmental perspective adopted here is that it
explicitly focuses on the relationships between elements and since an essential aspect
of the role of education is the way it mediates and moderates other factors we see a
great advantage to an approach that makes these processes explicit. Moreover, many
aspects of a capitals approach can be modelled within this multilevel developmental
approach, for example social capital and cultural capital.

Social capital

Section 3 of the report describes the effects of extra-familial contexts such as schools
and neighbourhoods on child development. The strength of the interactions between
these different contexts can be thought of as social capital.

Cultural capital

Another example is in relation to cultural capital, the impact on educational
attainment of this has been investigated by Sullivan (2001). She uses primary data
collected on 465 pupils in their final year of compulsory education in England.
Parental cultural capital includes reading, newspapers taken, types of music and radio
station listen to, participation in formal culture (visits to museums) and the subjects
discussed by parents in the home. Sullivan finds that parental cultural capital mediates
the effect of parental education and class on achievement. The overall effect of
parents’ class on pupils’ GCSE attainment is reduced by 30% and the overall effect of
parental education is reduced by 60% when measures of parental cultural capital are
included in statistical analysis. We note that these aspects of cultural capital are

16



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