ABSTRACT
Evidence over many decades has shown that the family and socio-economic backgrounds of young people are major determinants of their subsequent educational attainments (Jencks 1972; Kelly 1995; Mortimore and Whitty 1997). The implications of this for young people are enormous. Put simply, the poorer the families they grow up in, the less well they are likely to do in the education system. Far from offering a route out of poverty, all too often education simply seems to confirm and replicate existing social positions. This chapter offers a conceptual account of the relationship between poverty and education which seeks to capture and frame the various explanations and theoretical understandings of this relationship. Although this conceptualization is one that speaks to connections between education and poverty in a range of international contexts, it is our intention here to examine the way in which New Labour policies embody aspects of this relationship. The chapter is based upon a conceptual framework that identified different clusters of explanations relating to the education poverty relationship; this formed a central aspect of a research literature review on poverty and education (Raffo et al. 2007). This review was undertaken as part of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation Education and Poverty Programme and, we believe, it offers the potential for new and distinctive insights into New Labour’s educational policies.
