Over the board, middle class students generally do better than working class students in educational achievement. Some sociologists argue that this is due to three key factors. Labelling, subcultures and marketisation. This focuses on things that occur internally.

One of these key factors is labelling. To label someone is to attach a meaning or definition to someone. An example of this would be that teachers often apply labels to students on the basis of their behaviour or appearance. Becker found some evidence behind this after he did some research on high school teachers. He found they would label students according to how closely they fitted the image of the, “ideal pupil.” Pupils work conduct and appearance were the key factors in influencing their judgement. Cicourel and Kitsuse also found some evidence when studying counsellors. They found inconsistencies in the way in which students suitability for courses were assessed. The councellors said they judged students according to their ability. In practise however they judged them on the basis of social class or race. Middle class students were more likely to be placed on higher level courses and seen as suitable college material.

Following on from this labelling theory, Rist did some research and found that teachers used a range of methods to place students in separate groups and this had implications in terms of access to knowledge and achievement. Each pupil was streamed into a different group. Streaming is when a teacher will allocate different ability groups to each pupil for whatever fits them best. Gillborn and Youdell said teachers use the notion of ability to decide who can potentially get five A*-C GCSEs. Working class and afro-caribbean children were put into lower sets and different levels of GCSE. This theory of streaming leads on to the action of self-fulfilling prophecy. This is a prediction