Streaming, Setting and Pupil Subcultures
Streaming places pupils into fixed ability groups for all their subjects based on a judgement of their general ability, while setting places pupils into separate ability groups for each individual subject.
Before you start
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Method
- Define streaming, fixed ability groups across all subjects, and setting, ability groups per individual subject, precisely, since they are commonly confused.
- Explain that placement in a stream or set is not purely objective; it can be influenced by teacher labelling and judgements about behaviour or social class, not just test results.
- Apply Lacey's concepts of differentiation, the school's act of sorting pupils, for example into streams, and polarisation, the pupil response, splitting into a pro-school subculture, usually in higher streams, and an anti-school subculture, usually in lower streams.
- Apply Willis's study of the lads: a counter-school subculture built around rejecting academic values and having a laugh, which won status among peers but led the boys to leave school prepared only for the low-skilled manual work available to them, reproducing their working-class position.
- Link back to labelling and the self-fulfilling prophecy: a pupil placed in a low stream is often treated as less able, fewer resources, a less experienced teacher, lower expectations, which can lower achievement regardless of the pupil's original potential.
- For a 12-mark discuss question, weigh the argument that streaming or setting damages the achievement of lower-stream pupils against the argument that it can help by matching pace and content to ability, then reach a conclusion.
Worked example
Explain, using Willis's study, why some working-class boys might reject the values of school even though rejecting them makes their own future underachievement more likely.
- Identify the study: Willis's Learning to Labour, an ethnographic study of twelve working-class boys nicknamed the lads.
- Explain the subculture the lads formed: a counter-school culture that mocked academic effort, valued having a laugh and treated conforming pupils, whom they called ear'oles, with contempt.
- Explain the source of status this subculture provided: since the lads had little chance of succeeding by the school's own academic standards, rejecting those standards let them win status among their peers on their own terms instead.
- Explain the paradox Willis identifies: by rejecting school, the lads left with few qualifications, which channelled them into the same low-skilled manual jobs their fathers had done, so their own culture ended up reproducing their class position rather than escaping it.
- State the wider point: this shows underachievement is not always simply imposed by the school; it can also emerge from pupils' own responses to a system they see as offering them little, which links to Lacey's idea of polarisation into anti-school subcultures.
Practice questions
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Q1What is the difference between streaming and setting?Show answer
Answer: Streaming places a pupil in the same fixed ability group for every subject, while setting places a pupil in a separate ability group for each individual subject.
Q2What does Lacey mean by differentiation?Show answer
Answer: The process by which a school sorts pupils into different groups, for example streams or sets, according to a judgement of their ability or behaviour.
Q3What does Lacey mean by polarisation?Show answer
Answer: The process by which pupils, in response to differentiation, split into opposing groups, typically a pro-school subculture and an anti-school subculture.
Q4What is the title of Willis's study of twelve working-class boys?Show answer
Answer: Learning to Labour.
Q5What term did Willis's lads use for conforming pupils who accepted school values?Show answer
Answer: Ear'oles.
Q6Give one reason a pupil placed in a low set might achieve less, beyond their own ability.Show answer
Answer: Lower streams or sets are sometimes taught a narrower curriculum, given less experienced teachers, or held to lower expectations, all of which can independently lower achievement.
Exam-style questions
Written in the style of a GCSE Sociology exam paper, with a full mark scheme.
Explain two effects that placement in a low stream or set could have on a pupil.
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Explain, using Willis's study Learning to Labour, how an anti-school subculture can reproduce working-class pupils' class position.
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Discuss the effects of streaming and setting on pupils' educational achievement. (12 marks)
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See real GCSE Sociology past-paper questions, with official mark schemes →
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