POVERTY & CLASS
WESSEX SCENE INVESTIGATES: STUDENT POVERT Y AND CLASS DIVISIONS Although there is a lot of dialogue around the impact poverty presumably was not a barrier to their academic of student debt, there is comparatively little about the success. With 2.4 million families in the UK being reported poverty students face on a day-to-day basis. as separated in 2017/2018, it is interesting to note that, in contrast to this, 64.2% of respondents reported that Whether it be the flawed rationale of defining students’ prior to university, they lived in a dual-parent household/ maintenance loan entitlements on their parents’ nuclear family setting. This dissonance between national income, the fact maintenance loans are loans at all or the statistics and our own survey in turn suggests that students continuous barriers working class students face even when from single parent households are less likely to study at in higher education, one thing is clear: class divisions are Southampton. rife, especially in redbrick, Russell Group universities like Southampton. This investigation considers how poverty and class divisions specifically impact the student community of Southampton, as we try and gauge the different student demographics and their perceptions on certain class issues. Over 300 students in total responded to our survey. Here are the findings. Our first question centred around where students went to secondary school. The most popular answer was state school, with 39.3% respondents reporting they attended there. In comparison, only 12.9% of respondents reportedly went to private/independent schools. Although this is a fairly high number, state school being the most popular options suggests that despite Southampton being a Russell Group, they do not frown upon students who have had a state education - or, at least, not to the same extent as universities like Oxford or Cambridge.
However, with 73.9% of students reporting they were not entitled to school meals in comparison to the 20.1% that were, it is clear that despite their state education, the vast majority of students surveyed did not experience financial hardship or poverty during their early years, meaning that 8
It can be suggested that the reason for this is rooted in finances, with less than half of single parent households nationally paying child support in 2017/2018, which then suggests that students brought up in a nuclear family setting have a slight financial advantage. Subsequently, it is likely that factors associated with having a nuclear family setup - such as two incomes coming into the household - contributed to a higher overall income for these families and thereby making it easier for such students to attend university in comparison to those from single parent households. Although, it is worth noting that over a quarter (25.4%) of respondents also reported that they live in a single parent household, suggesting that this barrier is not necessarily impossible to overcome depending on students’ individual situations. Backing up the idea that the majority of students surveyed come from financially privileged backgrounds is the fact that over half (52.7%) of those surveyed live in a mortgaged property, whilst a further 27.1% of those surveyed live with families who own their own property.
POVERTY
