This chapter presents background information on the educational situation of socially excluded children and young people. The first part of the chapter briefly outlines some of the explanations proffered for the persistence of educational inequality in most European countries. The second and third parts examine the relationship between socioeconomic background and educational outcomes in the six participating countries: Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Scotland and Spain. This discussion provides the context for the analysis of educational policy measures to tackle social exclusion presented in the following chapters.

The causes of educational inequality

Research on socioeconomic background and educational outcomes

International research has indicated a consistently significant effect of social background on educational outcomes (see, for example, Coleman et al, 1966; Bourdieu and Passeron, 1970; Jencks et al, 1972; Halsey et al, 1980). Comparative studies have shown that the pattern of association between social class background and education tends to be similar, even in countries with very different educational systems (Shavit and Blossfeld, 1993; Ishida et al, 1995). Parental education has a similar association with children’s education, with children of university-educated parents having higher rates of educational attainment (Shavit and Blossfeld, 1993) and higher literacy levels (OECD, 1997a). The effect of social background has been apparent in relation to both the level of education reached and academic performance at various stages within the educational system.

Socioeconomic background is shown to have a stronger effect at earlier stages of the educational process, declining in relative terms as students move through the system (Shavit and Blossfeld, 1993; Raftery and Hout, 1993). Two explanations have been advanced for this pattern. First, the life-course hypothesis proposes that older students are less dependent on family resources, both cultural and economic, in making decisions about continued educational participation (Shavit and Blossfeld, 1993). Second, others have argued that this process reflects selection effects since those working-class students who do go on to higher education are likely to be atypical of working-class students within the educational system (Mare, 1980).

In comparison with social class and parental education, other dimensions of socioeconomic background (such as parental unemployment, family income and ‘poverty’) have been relatively neglected.