The role of social class in
the classroom
Who goes there?
As I’ve pointed out elsewhere, when the Leaving Certificate examination was
introduced in 1924, only a small minority of students graduated to universities, and
very few working-class students stayed in school to Leaving Certificate Level. In the
second decade of the twenty-first century, however, things are very different. Over
half the population now graduates to third-level study. The majority of working-class
students now complete the Leaving Certificate, and grant-aid is available for students
from the poorest families to study at third level.
The general population of students in Irish universities is still
predominantly from the upper and middle points on the socio-
economic scale
On the face of it, these factors add up to a more democratic spread of
educational opportunity. But at a second glance, things don’t seem that different
after all. The general population of students in Irish universities is still predominantly
from the upper and middle points on the socio-economic scale. ESRI’s report, Leaving
School in Ireland points out that
Young people who attended a school with a concentration of
working-class students were much less likely to go on to higher
education than those who attended middle-class or socially mixed
schools, even [allowing] for individual social background and Leaving
Certificate grades.
The significance of that pattern is enormous. All other things being equal—
intelligence level, Leaving Cert grades, for instance—students at the lower end of
the socio-economic scale are less likely to graduate to third-level study than their
more affluent counterparts, are consequently more likely to work at lower-paid
jobs, and more likely to find themselves unemployed or long-term unemployed.
Private-school students are more likely to graduate to university, are consequently