There is an argument that a student’s life is shaped by the suburb they grew

up in and what school they attended. This argument outlines that for students in low

socio-economic communities, outcomes for schooling, income and overall success

are limited by their surroundings. This essay aims to explore this notion and examine

low Socio-Economic Status (SES) making a comparison between advantaged and

disadvantaged suburbs by focusing on income and educational results. The ‘Place-

Based Approach’ and how it could help schools deal with the low SES issue will be

explained. In order to explain and ground the issue in the Greater Western Sydney

area, relevant news articles about the concerns faced in low SES communities will be

presented along with suitable supporting evidence around the issue. Bourdieu’s

Theory of Social Practice will be applied to explain the trends being experienced in

regards to the educational outcomes of students from low SES communities and the

power relations affecting governmental policies which impact schools and

educational practice.

Bourdieu’s Theory of Social Practice can be used to explain the social issues

related to low SES communities and how different communities can hold more

power than others. Bourdieu’s Theory of Social Practice is divided into three key
aspects: Capital, Habitus and Field (Bourdieu, 1977). Capital denotes different forms

of capital such as economic capital which gives an individual purchasing power,

cultural capital referring to a person’s attitude, disposition skills and other cultural

assets, and social capital such as network connections (Ferfolja et al., 2015a). Field

describes ‘a set of relations between social actors who are positioned within a social

context’ (Ferfolja et al., 2015b). Finally, Habitus refers to a set of beliefs, dispositions

and values that allude to a student’s participation in education

(Ferfolja et al., 2015a). For this reason, Habitus is important for a student’s

education because with a positive Habitus, obstacles such as low SES can be

overcome through a positive attitude to schooling (Seligman et al., 2009). The three

different aspects, Capital, Habitus and Field, can be brought together by a metaphor
used by Bourdieu (1989), where he places each key tenet as an aspect of a game. In

this game, Habitus is the act of playing the game, Field is the game itself and Capital

is used by participants to participate in the game. This social theory can be applied to

any social structure, however in the case of low SES school communities, the Field is

the school itself, Habitus is how the community views education and Capital is the

social, economic and cultural values held within the community. These can have a

large impact on school policies, school culture and teacher interaction with students

and parents.

In Bourdieu’s Theory of Social Practice, Capital can be used to gain influence

over the other two tenets, Habitus and Field. More importantly, different forms of

capital can be converted into other forms. For example, economic capital can be

converted into social capital (Ferfolja et al., 2015a), however this conversion process

depends on the social laws governing the conversion. This means that the individual

must undergo a process of social recognition to convert wealth into reputation,

social status and prestige (Ferfolja et al., 2015a). This ability to convert economic

capital into social capital is important part of the Social Practice Theory as it allows

people with wealth to attain more social capital within a particular field. It is also
useful to note that economic capital can be used to produce more economic capital.

Thus people in high SES communities can use capital to exert a greater influence

over issues and government policies than people in low SES communities.

Schools assist in low SES communities by adopting ‘Place Based Approaches

(PBA)’ to their school policies. A Place Based Approach is defined as an ‘approach to

learning that takes advantage of geography to create authentic, meaningful and

engaging personalized learning for students’ (Getting Smart, 2017). By schools

implementing a Place Based Approach, schools can ground the local community in

the school or help ground the students in the community by giving them a place to

belong (Gannon, 2009). By using this approach in low SES schools and communities,
a general increase in the local habitus or educational values of students can be

achieved. Using approaches like PBA can have a lasting effect on a community and

the results of students delivering better educational outcomes for students.

The increasing wage gap between high and low SES communities has been an

issue over the last few decades and only seems to worsening. In an article by

J. Irvine (2015) entitled ‘Sydney’s rich and poor: the rising crisis in our suburbs’, there

is a focus on the how the top ten poorest suburbs in NSW had a negative gain to

their incomes when taking into account wage growth and the increasing cost of

living. While, as outlined in a Fairfax media analysis, the top ten richest suburbs have

had significant income growth. Irvine further backs up this claim with data released

by the tax office showing that in Auburn, a low socio-economic suburb in South-

Western Sydney, incomes grew 13 per cent while the consumer price inflation (CPI)

grew 31 per cent over the same time frame (Irvine, 2015). To further support the

view, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) recently released data on the most

advantaged and disadvantaged suburbs in NSW following the 2016 census. The data

showed that the ten most advantaged suburbs in NSW were all in the inner city area

(Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS], 2018a). While of the ten most disadvantaged
suburbs in NSW, five were in Western and South-Western Sydney and the other five

were rural communities. When comparing the advantaged and disadvantaged

suburbs list it can be seen that the advantaged suburbs median weekly household

income is almost five time that of the disadvantaged communities

(Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS], 2018b, 2018c). From census data collected in

2011 and 2016, the median weekly household income has risen 32% in the

advantaged suburbs but only 17% in the disadvantaged suburbs (ABS, 2018b, 2018c).

This data released by the ABS and the Australian census shows that there is a divide

between the high SES suburbs in the inner city and low SES suburbs in Western and

South-Western Sydney. The larger increase in household incomes in the more

advantaged suburbs highlights the Socio-Economic issue facing low SES suburbs in
Western and South-Western Sydney in regards to income growth and breaking the

poverty cycle.

In low SES communities, parents’ income can be an indication of a student’s

future income, perpetuating the poverty cycle that is affecting the most

disadvantaged suburbs in NSW. In the article, ‘Australia is a far less equal place than

it was in the 1980’s’ by P. Martin’s (2018) there is a link between where a family lives

and what potential increase in income a child might have over their parents.

Research conducted by Deutscher (2018) points to a link in that a student’s future

income is affected by their peers’ parents’ incomes. Deutscher (2018) has used data

from the Australian Tax Office (ATO) to determine what increases in income students

had compared to their parents of students who stayed in the same suburb. He then

assessed the families that moved into a more affluent suburb and found that families

who moved out of poorer suburbs had an improvement in future incomes even

when students’ parents’ incomes didn’t change. Through further analysis,

Deutscher (2018) found that moving mattered most during a student’s teenage

years and would cost a 4% increase to potential income for every year a teenager

delayed moving. Deutscher’s (2018) research is backed up by studies conducted in

the united States by Chetty and Hendren (2017) which found that there is a linear

relationship between the future income and the time spent in a poorer area. This

research shows that social capital and field has an effect on the future economic

capital of students later in life. By changing the field and social capital during the

teenage years, there is a positive effect on a student’s future economic capital

(Ferfolja et al., 2015a). However moving to a new suburb is extremely difficult for

parents and students if the family has a low amount of economic capital, thus using

the social practise theory, the Field must be changed which can only be done by

governmental, departmental policy makers, staff in the school and the community as

a whole.
 There is also a severe gap in literacy and numeracy results between High SES

students in the inner city and students low SES communities in Western and South-

Western Sydney. An article by A. Stevenson’s (2011), ‘Gap Between poor and rich

schools growing’, shows a large gap between low and high SES schools in regards to

level of literacy and numeracy in the 2011 NAPLAN. Using the latest NAPLAN results

and the most advantaged and disadvantaged suburbs in NSW list (ABS, 2018a) a

comparison between the educational performance of a sample of high and low SES

schools can be made. First of all, the schools identified as being located in the ten

most advantaged suburbs have an average Index of Community Socio- Educational

Advantage (ICSEA) score of 1091 while the most disadvantaged schools have an

average score of 865 (ACARA, 2018). From the recent NAPLAN data available at the

My Schools (2018) web site, the top ten advantage suburbs in Sydney have all

achieved above average in both literacy and numeracy, while the disadvantaged

suburbs in Western and South-Western Sydney have all received substantially below

average results. This gap was identified in 2011 in the Gonski report where it states

that “Australia has a significant gap between its highest and lowest performing

students” (Gonski, 2011). This shows that this is not a new issue facing teachers in

low SES communities but has been an issue for a long time and show a clear divide
between the high and low SES communities.

There are government policies and action being taken to improve the

educational outcomes of students in Western and south-western Sydney suburbs.

The biggest and most controversial is the government commissioned Gonski report,

which found that there is a growing gap in student performance between high and

low SES areas, the education funding model was unnecessarily complex and that

schools need appropriate funding to support every student (Gonski, 2011). The

Australian government has since started to implement some changes to school

funding based on the report’s recommendations. The aim of the resulting funding
packages has been to improve results in Low SES communities however it is unclear

as to what affect this will have.

Bourdieu’s Theory of Social Practice can be applied to explain the balance of

power within the community and Australia leading to the educational inequalities

experienced by students from schools in low SES communities. The theory can be

applied to a national, local or even a school level, each having its own power

structure and effects from the different aspects of the theory. On a national and

state level the theory describes how different types of capital can be used to

influence the balance of power or in this case affect policies to benefit people from

one social class rather than another (Bourdieu, 1977). Low SES communities have

less capital than affluent communities therefore the balance of power is shifted to

communities with higher capital, meaning these high SES communities have a

greater ability to affect policies. When the same theory is applied to a school level

the amount of capital a school has, whether it be economical or social, can greatly

affect the outcomes of students. For example the less capital a school has the harder

it is to obtain better resources and to attract and retain quality teaching staff due to

negative stereotypes (Gannon, 2009). This negative stereotype can also have an
effect on the habitus of the school by failing to attract families with a good schooling

values or habitus. This affects the quality of schooling in low SES areas as schools

with low social capital tend to be harder to staff and have poorer resources which

can affect student results as shown by the latest NAPLAN results.

In conclusion, it has been shown that in low SES communities there is a

growing issue that has been around for a long time. In low SES communities there is

an issue regarding income growth, students’ potential income growth above their

parents and educational outcomes for students. The low SES communities in Greater

Western Sydney achieve less in regard to income and schooling outcomes than high

SES communities in Inner Sydney suburbs. This has been attributed to, through the
application of Bourdieu’s theory of social practice, the power imbalance between

the different communities by the acquisition of social and economic capital in the

high SES communities. There is evidence that students moving out of these low SES

communities during their early teenage years have an ability to improve their future

income. Schools and teachers can make a change to student outcomes by

implementing place based approaches to ground students in the community.

However the largest affect for change comes down to governmental and

departmental policy makers.

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