Failure at school and social origin in primary education: results from an inquiry at the schooling zone of Oeiras-Algés

Abstract

There are quite different factors determining the relation, undeniable today, between success in school and social origin. The present study - based on an inquiry to the pupils of the primary schools of the schooling zone of Oeiras-Algés - is only a first step towards the dismounting of the selective elements of the primary school in Portugal and the finding out of a relation - social origin/failure at school - the explanation of which depends on a large field of research that it is not yet grubbed up in Portugal. In the inquiry made, children were grouped under three social categories, according to the job of the chief of the family: category A - white collar professionals, liberal professions; category B - tradesmen, bank clerks, office clerks and intermediate officials; category C - handworkers: industrial workers and building construction workers, counter employees and attendants. Four hypotheses were first drawn. All of them were confirmed by the inquiry. They are as follows: 1) repeating, a sign of school failure, rises as far as one goes down at the social level and a strong demarcation is to be remarked between the categories A and B on one side and the category C on the other side; 2) repeating is specially seen in the first form, a phenomenon to be explained by the initial shock suffered by children - mainly by the child coming from a popular milieu - face to face with the schooling institution; 3) children belonging to the two superior categories begin schooling earlier than children coming from a popular milieu, a phenomenon to be explained by the aims, the valorization of scholing and even the information the families have regarding school; 4) children belonging to the category A end the primary schooling earlier than those in the category B and the delays of children in the category £ reveal, once more, the abyss between this social category and the other two. Finally it was possible to detect a positive and significant correlation between the repeating rate in category C and the percentage of children of this category per school, what indicates that the concentration of children of the category C contributes to the rise of learning difficulties and, therefore, raises the weight of repeating in children belonging to this category.