Social background and school performance

A great deal of research into school performance sees schools both as a primary selection body and as a unifying mechanism, insofar as schools unify by socialising and divide by selecting. If school divides, then it is legitimate to ask about the determinants and the most important consequences of the selective mechanisms of success and failure. The scientific community remains relatively unanimous on what performance is as a school criterion, but this unanimity is far from being achieved when it comes to its determinants. Although social background is an essential factor in the quest to elucidate school performance, this book is intended as a warning against any conception of the unbridled determinism of social class theory, which relegates all personal and school variables to second place in the explanation of results achieved at school.