Social class is typically known as social grouping or hierarchy based on differences in wealth, income or occupation. In the UK there are mainly two social classes; working class and middle class.
33% of students who are currently on free school meals achieve 5A*-C at GCSE, however 61% of students who are not on free school meals also achieve 5A*-C grades. 90% of the failing school are from deprived areas, and 79% of children from a higher professional family are more likely to go to university, whilst only 15% of children from unskilled and manual backgrounds go to work.

Sub cultures are a group of people within society who share the same norms, values, beliefs and attitude that go against the main stream in society. This is usually different from or opposed to the main stream culture, for instance an anti-school subculture is more likely to be formed by pupils in lower streams. This is backed up by “They have examined the way in which labelling is linked to other processes within schools that result in class differences in achievement” (Item A) “These processes include self-fulfilling prophecy, streaming and the formation of pupil subcultures” (Item A) Therefore working class children will underachieve and middle class children will continue to progress. This can disadvantage working class children because of the use of home and school contracts. The education triage for working class are labelled as “hopeless cases” which then produces a selffulfilling prophecy and failure, which then leads to working class children going under stereotypical ideas. However, some labelled students go against their label to prove teachers wrong, which pushes them to do just as well as middle class