ABSTRACT

Educational sociologists in the 1950s and 1960s defined the working class child as an under-achiever; that is, given similar measured ability to his middle class counterpart, he was more likely to be destined for a secondary modern school than for a grammar school. Poor educational facilities in the home were compensated for by better-than-average educational facilities in the school. An improved pupil-teacher ratio; provision for links with the community; a salary supplement for teachers to reduce staff turnover; and physical and material resources in the school which were better than average. The teachers at Rockfield referred to those children of Asian background as 'immigrants'. The great majority of them, however, had been born in Britain. Technically they were not immigrants. In other words, the teachers differentiated their pupils by stating that some were 'immigrants' and others were, in the parlance of some teachers, 'our children'.