Assessment 1 Diversity, Social Justice and Learning

Socioeconomic status has found to have direct influence on the educational

outcomes across the globe. Economic capital was supposed to catalyse the way of
human development, but the contemporary society nowadays view this on the other
way around where socioeconomic status decides the access and inclusion in
education, which is believed to be the major step towards human flourishing. Coupling
socioeconomic status with education is more complex in a society which has a huge
diversity in culture, language, race and ethnicity. The essay tries to explore low
socioeconomic status as a social justice issue and consequently deals with the social
exclusion as well as inequality in Australian schools, concentrating in the Greater
Western Sydney area. This will be discussed through the exploration of the
socioeconomic background and school achievements in the area, a short description
of the place-based approach, the depths of social exclusion and inequity explained
with sociological theories, the global reach of the issues and the policies in place along
with some implications.

Greater Western Sydney is one of the fastest growing community with a huge
diversity of people who come from 170 countries and speak around 100 languages,
which also includes a greater percentage of Aboriginal Australians (Somerville, 2013).
The individual income analysis showed that there was higher proportion of people
earning less than $500 a week. Moreover, there was a significant proportion of people
who had no income (12.3%) (Profile id., Greater Western Sydney Region, 2016). The
same statistics also reported that 33.4% of the population left school at year 10 or
above. These data align together to form the basis of the inequality and exclusion in
schools. In addition to this, New South Wales -DOTE 2015 report showed the
consistent disadvantage in Western Sydney region, specifically lack of qualifications
and low overall education was reported to be a major issue in these areas. These data
give an overall socioeconomic backgrounds and diversity existing in the Greater
Western Sydney area.

With such huge miscellany, teaching and learning in Australia adopted many
methods of effective schooling. Among which place based learning (PBL) seemed to
be the sociologically tied approach and was being discussed around the globe. Place
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based learning is a multidisciplinary and factual approach developed from the specific
attributes of the place, its community and connectedness (Molyneux & Tyler, 2014).
Place based learning emphasises on the real-world problem solving where students
are engaged to understand the social and community issues and enable them to
become producers of knowledge rather than consumers (Mclnernery, Smith & Down,
2011). Thus, PBL was also referred to as community-oriented schooling, place
conscious education, ecological education and ecoliteracy (Mclnernery, Smith &
Down, 2011).

In PBL, the student is the nucleus of the educative process and therefore,
teachers need to aim at education with logical and relational understanding of the
sociocultural, socioeconomical, gender, identity, disabilities and the environment in
which students find themselves (Best, MacGregor & Price, 2017). Research had shown
that PBL can not only enhance academic achievements but also develop strong
connectedness to their local community, strengthens their care for their ecology and
creates the value to serve their place and nation (Sobel, 2005 as cited in Mclnernery,
Smith & Down, 2011). Hence, PBL has always been viewed as a milestone for the
educative reformers in neoliberal times.

Socio economic status (SES) had always been linked to the academic and career
achievements of students around the globe. When looking at a multicultural and
socially stratified community in Greater Western Sydney (GWS), this relationship of
low SES and educational disadvantage is well proven throughout the research. A
recent study (Somerville, 2013) within the Blacktown community, which is one of the
disadvantaged local government area in the GWS region reported that children from
low SES backgrounds had lower levels of educational and career achievements. The
study compared the aspirational paths of primary school students and identified a
significant downward trend for low SES students from kindergarten to Year 5 and the
trend was reversed for mid to high SES students. Bradley’s review (2008) identified
that socioeconomic status and rural location are the key factors affecting the students’
aspiration for higher education. This was also evidenced in the social inequality studies
done with the data from Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA)
Survey which reported that despite steps to the higher education expansion, there are
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no significant evidence of elimination of intergenerational transmission of advantage

(Chesters, 2015).

Eventhough, low SES students have low family income as the common deficit
they are different in the ways they are poor, they come from different poverty
scenarios such as recent arrived refugees, Aboriginals, single parent families, living on
parents’ commonwealth benefits or military benefits, pension relied, or their parents
would have recently lost a job. Either ways, students experience poverty in different
ways and levels (Comber, 2016). This makes it more complicated to analyse the actual
low SES profile and education in GWS area. However, it is a global issue with same
complexity in many western countries. The study of 1,119 low income students in US
public schools with variables of low family income and socioeconomic composition of
schools reported that low SES students progressed less in science and maths and had
different psychosocial issues. This effect was elevated when exposed to high SES
school environment (frog pond framework), which suggested the close links of
demographic and social backgrounds affecting academic achievements (Crosnoe,
2009).

The above said facts of the SES status of the students can be clearly explained
by the Bourdieu’s theory of social practice. The theory emphasises on capital which
incorporates cultural, social and economic capital, through the process of transfer and
conversion in between them. Economic capital is acquired through monetary wealth
which can be converted to material goods such as property as well as resources like
education (Ferfolja, Diaz & Ullman, 2015). Thus economic capital directs the
attainment of education and career goals, while the other way around should have
been the ideal way (create economic capital through education).

Understanding SES factors in education can be linked through various

sociological theories which draws a framework through which the socioeconomic
stratification is being done in the society. Critical race theory with its whiteness and
privilege attributes narrates that how white or privileged people are identified to be
the majority or their culture to be the normal one and others to be deficits (Ferfolja,
Diaz & Ullman, 2015). This can be aligned with the exclusion students experience in

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the way others look at them, which had been already proven to have negative effects
on the student accomplishments.

SES stays to be an evaluative marker in diverse settings and thus the negative
self-perceptions and emotional distress are the outcomes (Crosnoe, 2009). Another
face of the coin is the fact that teachers in these schools have little knowledge about
the socioeconomic or cultural differences of the children as they are from a high SES
majority community. This cultural and economic mismatch can also create exclusions
and inequalities in the classrooms, leading to colour blindness and deficit thinking
(Ferfolja, Diaz & Ullman, 2015).

Despite the numerous ways suggested for inclusive education across Australia,
low SES children tend to be marginalised and categorised at schools which highlights
the inequality that exists within the education system. As mentioned before,
connecting socioeconomic status and education is complex as it underpinned other
factors such as culture, language and other disparities. Consequently, fixing the
educational inequality and social exclusion is often focussed on fixing teachers,
students and parents (Comber, 2016). This can shift the actual need to address the
basic material effects of poverty on students. Poverty can have detrimental effects on
individual students which may lead to low self worth, inferiority and decreased
engagement in studies as well as low peer interaction (Crosnoe, 2009;Kenway &
Hickey-Moody, 2011).

Moreover, targeted studies on different backgrounds of low SES showed that

a policy that fits all of them cannot be useful for students with different needs. For
example, refugee education. The needs of refugee students from low SES backgrounds
have been non-attended by education policy makers and by research for long time
(Taylor & Sidhu, 2012). The above ideas are contradicted through the study of cross
class interaction among socioeconomical diverse students at school (Park & Denson,
2013). The findings in the study showed that students had more cross class
interactions in more diverse environment.

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The hidden but well-known fact that inequality at schools for low SES students
draws the attention to the power that directs teaching and learning. Power and
politics in education equality had been and still stays a debating topic in Australia.
Although there had different government policies made to address inequality, social
justice and disadvantage, how far has the implementation progressed is still a chaos.
As a critique to the educational policy, Smyth (2010) argued that educational
disadvantage is often addressed through fear, where schools’ standards fall which
leads to strong regulatory solutions and that teachers can be made accountable only
through rewards for performance. The media plays an important power role that
channels this fear to the different people differently. The social inequality can be
addressed only if the missing links that sets back the disadvantaged group from
stepping into the ladder of opportunity are targeted through significant interventions.

However, Australia has developed different policies and strategies to assist the
students with diverse needs. But how well do they address the low SES issues are not
clear. The labor government’s education policy emphasised on national curriculum,
professional standards and the National Assessment Program- Literacy and Numeracy
(NAPLAN). Lingard (as cited in Kenway, 2013) referred this reforms as testing times
and analysed the equity in two levels: Smarter Schools Programme which focussed on
teacher quality and enhanced literacy and numeracy and the second phase where the
Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority (ACARA) which run the My
School website where the schools are compared. The latest initiative is the Review of
Funding for Schooling Final Report, 2011 (Gonski Report). All these policies in place,
the socio economic inequality in school education is a consistent and well recognised
problem throughout Australia (Kenway, 2013).

Moving on to the funding strategies of the Australian schools, the 2018

Planned School Budget Allocation Report details the different aspects of funding
classified under three categories Targeted funding, Equity loadings and Base school
allocations. The report compares the current funding allowance with that of 2017 and
showed that the variance between the two years is positive through out the different
areas. For example, the variance for refugee support is +5,238$ and for socioeconomic

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equity is +26,926$. This proves that the government has allocated funds and resources
for the equality and improvement of education.

However, the Gonski report which formed the basis of all these funding
policies had political and power constraints which caused the education funding to be
framed in different sectors such as government, Catholic and independent schools.
The catholic sector is largely funded and the independent schools also receive
significant amount of government funding. The below graphs derived from the ACARA
data set and Gonski Report (Kenway, 2013) explicitly showed the inequality in the
socioeconomic status and the disadvantages of students in the three different
sectors. This triggers a thought of the credibility of the targeted funding and other
policies for school reforms.

Figure 1: Distribution of students by socio-educational advantage quarter, by

sector, 2010 (Kenway, 2013)

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Figure 2. Proportion of students by disadvantage group, by sector, 2010.

(Kenway, 2013)

Being said the dispiriting facts of the power and political interference in the
Australian education, there are outstanding interventions done both in schools and
teacher education systems to enhance inclusive education. Graham & Harwood, 2011,
highlighted the positive approaches of two schools in the Western Sydney region,
Tralee Public School (TPS) and Kingfisher Public School (KPS) that improved their
academic achievements while decreasing suspensions. The opportunity classes for the
non English speaking students and the transitional playground to address students’
challenging behaviour are landmark steps in TPS. While, KPS had to pick up from the
physical structure to attendance of students. The parent engagement initiatives and
congratulations letter for attendance were basic interventions which brought a huge
difference. Alongside can be the reformative pre service teacher program initiated in
Western Sydney. This program was to draw pre service teachers from Western Sydney
to bring in their own cultural and linguistic knowledge and skills to enlighten quality
teaching in a diverse community (Naidoo & D’warte, 2017).

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In conclusion, with systematic and empirical strategies for inclusive education

in place, Greater Western Sydney schools like other diverse communities around the
globe experiences social exclusion and inequality in education. The hurdles to
overcome are complex but can be overcome with the effective steps from basics to
highly intensive teacher education and leadership at schools. All starts with the human
initiative for equity within the diversity.

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REFERENCES
About the profile areas | Greater Western Sydney Region | profile.id. (2018).
Profile.id.com.au. Retrieved 20 March 2018, from
https://profile.id.com.au/wsroc/about?WebID=200

Best, M., MacGregor, D., & Price, D. (2017). Designing for Diverse Learning: Case
study of place-based learning in Design and Technologies pre-service teacher
education. Australian Journal Of Teacher Education, 42(3), 91-106.
http://dx.doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2017v42n3.6

Bradley, D. (2008). Review of Australian Higher Education Final Report. Retrieved

from http://www.voced.edu.au/content/ngv%3A32134

Chesters, J. (2015). Maintaining Inequality Despite Expansion: Evidence of the Link

between Parents' Education and Qualitative Differences in Educational
Attainment. Higher Education Quarterly, 69(2), 138-157.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/hequ.12060

Comber, B. (2016). Poverty, place and pedagogy in education: research stories from
front-line workers. The Australian Educational Researcher, 43(4), 393-417.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13384-016-0212-9

Crosnoe, R. (2009). Low-Income Students and the Socioeconomic Composition of

Public High Schools. American Sociological Review, 74(5), 709-730.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/000312240907400502

Ferfolija, T., Diaz, C.J., & Ullman, J. (Eds.). (2015). Understanding sociological theory
for educational practices. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Graham, L., & Harwood, V. (2011). Developing capabilities for social inclusion:
engaging diversity through inclusive school communities. International
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Kenway, J. (2013). Challenging inequality in Australian schools: Gonski and beyond.

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Naidoo, L., & D'warte, J. (2017). The Western Sydney Rustbelt: Recognizing and
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New South Wales - Dote 2015. (2018). Dote 2015. Retrieved 21 March 2018, from
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NSW Government Education. (2018). 2018 Planned School Budget Allocation Report
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Park, J., & Denson, N. (2013). When Race and Class Both Matter: The Relationship
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