A-Level Sociology: ethnicity, gender and achievement

Differential achievement by social class, gender and ethnicity sits at the centre of the Education topic in A-level Sociology (for example, AQA A-level Sociology 7192, Paper 1), and essay questions expect you to weigh external factors outside school against internal factors inside it. This material concentrates on the two strands that class-based revision often leaves thin: ethnicity and gender.

On ethnicity, the quiz starts with explanations that locate the cause in the home, such as cultural deprivation, and asks you to see why critics call them victim-blaming. A case in which two groups share the same material circumstances but achieve differently shows why poverty cannot be the whole story. You then move inside the school: Gillborn and Youdell's educational triage and the 'new IQism', pupils who reject negative labels and still succeed, as in Fuller's study, Sewell's typology of responses among Black Caribbean boys, the ethnocentric curriculum and the critical race theory view of institutional racism as inequality built into routine procedures.

On gender, you separate external factors, such as girls' changing ambitions in a changed labour market and family, from internal ones such as marketisation making girls desirable recruits. Boys' underachievement is approached through laddish subcultures and the crisis of masculinity, and the last questions deal with gendered subject choice, where single-sex and mixed schools differ, and with the way name-calling and the double standard police gender identities in school.

Every quiz question is an invented case with one defensible answer and an explanation that names the sociologists involved and adds a line of evaluation, so you practise applying concepts rather than just recognising them.

The material offers four formats. The 12-question quiz explains each answer. The 18-card flashcard deck covers the key concepts and studies, from locked-in inequality to gender domains. The printable written work sets eight open questions, from short outlines to 'assess' questions, with ruled space for handwritten answers that are then checked. The oral exam puts you in front of an examiner who asks one question at a time, follows up on your reasoning and gives brief feedback at the end.

Use it after first teaching of differential achievement, or when planning essays that ask you to assess internal against external explanations for ethnic or gender differences.

• Distinguish external (cultural and material) from internal (school-based) explanations of ethnic differences in achievement
• Explain educational triage, the new IQism and the A-to-C economy, and how they disadvantage some minority pupils
• Use Fuller, Mac an Ghaill and Sewell to show that pupils respond to labels in different ways
• Explain the ethnocentric curriculum and the critical race theory view of institutional racism
• Explain girls' improved achievement through external factors and internal factors such as marketisation
• Account for boys' underachievement, gendered subject choice and the policing of gender identities in school

Practice material written by Zestly, based on the Education topic of A-level Sociology specifications (for example AQA A-level Sociology 7192, specification version 1.2, section 4.1.1: differential educational achievement by gender and ethnicity; relationships and processes within schools).