The essays we expect · how they are marked · full A* answers
Six predicted essays for the summer 2027 AQA exams, each with an A* model answer labelled by assessment objective and built on dated, sourced evidence. The first answer marked "free" is open to read. The rest unlock when you confirm your email. Predictions are our judgement, not leaked questions: revise the whole specification.
Decision: NEW, not a reuse of 2026 essay 1. Essay 1 asked whether in-school processes are the most important cause of social class differences. The 2027 question asks how far three named processes (labelling, setting, subcultures) explain differences in achievement in general, so gender and ethnicity are now in scope. Essay 1 also contains factual errors (listed in Flags for Jay) and runs short of the 1,100–1,300 word house target. It should be corrected on the 2026 page, but it should not be recycled here.
Item (CC-authored) > Some sociologists argue that what happens inside schools shapes who succeeds. Teachers may judge pupils against an image of the “ideal pupil”, and these judgements can influence which set a pupil is placed in. Pupils placed in lower sets may respond by forming groups that reject the values of the school. Others argue that these processes matter less than the resources and cultural advantages children bring from home. They also point out that pupils do not always accept the labels they are given.
AO1 Knowledge · AO2 Application ·
AO3 Analysis and evaluation
Plan - Define labelling, setting/streaming and pupil subcultures; name the gaps (class, gender, ethnicity) with current DfE data. - Build the interactionist chain: label → set → subculture → self-fulfilling prophecy (Becker, Rist, Keddie, Lacey, Ball, Gillborn and Youdell). - Test it on each group: class (Willis), ethnicity (Fuller, Sewell), gender (Mac an Ghaill). - Evaluate: determinism, weak replication, and external factors (Douglas, Bernstein, Bourdieu). - Judgement: in-school processes explain how gaps widen inside school more than why gaps exist; the weight depends on the group.
Introduction [AO1/AO2] Labelling means attaching a meaning or definition to a person, such as “bright” or “troublemaker”. Setting groups pupils by ability in individual subjects; streaming groups them by ability across all subjects. A pupil subculture is a group of pupils who share values and behaviour, which may be pro-school or anti-school. Interactionists argue these three processes work together to produce unequal results.
The gaps are real and current. In 2024/25, the Department for Education’s disadvantage gap index for GCSE pupils stood at 3.92, higher than the 3.66 recorded in 2017 [1]. The average Attainment 8 gap between disadvantaged pupils and others was 15.5 points, while girls outscored boys by 4.0 points [1]. As the Item suggests, the question is whether these gaps are made inside school, or brought into it.
Labelling and the ideal pupil [AO1/AO2] Becker (1952) interviewed 60 Chicago high school teachers. They judged pupils against an image of the “ideal pupil”, and middle-class pupils fitted it most closely. Rist (1970) found that a kindergarten teacher seated children within days of their arrival, using appearance and home background rather than tested ability. The children placed furthest from her received less attention, so the label shaped the teaching they got.
Hargreaves, Hester and Mellor (1975) showed how labels form in three stages: speculation, elaboration and stabilisation. Once stable, a label becomes hard to shift. This links to the self-fulfilling prophecy. Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) told teachers that a randomly chosen 20% of pupils were “spurters”. Those pupils later made larger IQ gains, because teachers expected more and so gave more.
Examiner note: This paragraph applies the Item’s “ideal pupil” phrase directly. Quoting a short phrase from the Item and then building on it is the cleanest way to show AO2.
Setting and streaming [AO1/AO2/AO3] Setting turns a teacher’s label into an organisational fact. Keddie (1971) found that teachers gave higher-stream pupils abstract, high-status knowledge and withheld it from lower streams, even when lower-stream pupils asked good questions. Ball (1981), studying “Beachside Comprehensive”, found that working-class pupils were more likely to be placed in lower bands. Pupils in those bands were then taught differently.
Gillborn and Youdell (2000) updated this for the league-table era. Schools judged on the number of good GCSE passes practised “educational triage”. They focused on borderline pupils and treated some as hopeless cases. Working-class and Black pupils were more likely to be placed in the hopeless group. So setting does not just reflect inequality; it rations the resources that could reduce it. This is the Item’s point in practice: a teacher’s judgement becomes a set, and the set shapes what a pupil is taught.
However, Ball also found that when Beachside abolished banding, teachers still differentiated between pupils. This suggests labels can outlive the structures that carry them, so removing sets alone may not close gaps [AO3].
Pupil subcultures [AO1/AO2] Lacey (1970) explained subcultures through two processes. Differentiation is the ranking of pupils by teachers; polarisation is pupils’ response, splitting into pro-school and anti-school groups. Lower-stream pupils, denied status, gain it from peers instead, often by rejecting school values.
Willis (1977) studied 12 working-class “lads” in a Midlands school. They saw school as pointless and valued “having a laff”. Mac an Ghaill (1994) applied this to gender. He found several masculine subcultures, including the “macho lads”, who rejected schoolwork as unmanly. This helps explain why boys underperform: some boys protect their status by not being seen to try. Yet Mac an Ghaill linked these identities to a crisis of masculinity caused by the decline of manual jobs. So even a school subculture has roots outside the school gates.
Evaluation: labels are not destiny [AO3] Labelling theory is often criticised as deterministic. It assumes pupils accept the labels they are given. Fuller (1984) studied Black girls in a London comprehensive who were aware of negative labels. They worked hard to prove them wrong while staying cool towards teachers. Their subculture was pro-education but anti-school, so the self-fulfilling prophecy failed.
Sewell (1997) identified four responses among Black boys to school racism: conformists, innovators, retreatists and rebels. Rebels were the most visible, but conformists were the largest group. So the subculture that teachers notice is not the typical response.
Labelling and ethnicity: where the theory is strongest [AO2/AO3] The internal argument is most persuasive for ethnicity. Gillborn (1990) found that teachers often read Black pupils’ behaviour as a challenge to their authority, even when none was intended. Those pupils were disciplined more often and more harshly. Wright (1992), observing primary classrooms, found that teachers gave Asian pupils less attention and were quicker to reprimand Black boys. Here the label comes first, and home background alone struggles to explain the pattern.
This matters for the question. Exclusion and placement in lower sets remove pupils from the teaching they need, so the label becomes a material disadvantage. The chain in the Item, from judgement to set to subculture, is best supported where teacher expectations are shaped by ethnicity.
The evidence base is also weaker than it looks. Claiborn (1969) tried to repeat the Pygmalion effect and did not find it. Many labelling studies are small ethnographies of one school, so they may not be representative.
Evaluation: the role of external factors [AO3] The strongest challenge is that the gaps exist before secondary school sets are created. Douglas (1964) linked working-class underachievement to lower parental interest in education. Bernstein (1971) argued that schools use the elaborated speech code of the middle class, so working-class children start with a disadvantage. Bourdieu (1977) argued that middle-class children arrive with cultural capital: knowledge, tastes and attitudes that schools reward.
Notice what this does to the internal argument. Willis’s lads drew their anti-school values from the shop-floor culture of their fathers, not only from their sets. Girls’ improvement since the 1980s also owes much to changes outside school, such as women’s rising employment. In-school processes cannot explain that shift on their own.
Marxists add that interactionists ignore power. Teachers’ “ideal pupil” is itself a product of a class structure. Labelling explains how inequality is passed on, but not where it comes from. Gillborn and Youdell’s triage also points beyond the classroom: teachers rationed attention because league tables rewarded it. So even “internal” processes are driven by external policy.
Judgement [AO3] Labelling, setting and subcultures explain a significant part of achievement differences, but they explain how gaps widen more than why they exist. The best evidence (Rist, Keddie, Gillborn and Youdell) shows schools turning small starting differences into large ones. Yet the starting differences come from outside, as Bourdieu and Douglas show.
How far the internal explanation works depends on the group. It is strongest for ethnicity, where teacher expectations and sanctions are well documented. It is weaker for class, where material and cultural factors come first. It is weakest for gender, where girls’ rise reflects wider social change. The most convincing position is interactive: external disadvantage is converted into exam results through in-school processes. That is why the 2025 disadvantage gap remains above its 2017 level, even after years of school-based policy.
Answer body: c. 1,150 words.
A* differentiators - Treat labelling, setting and subcultures as one chain, not three lists of studies. - Test the theory on all three social groups; the question says “social groups”. - Use Fuller and Sewell to break determinism, then reach a conditional judgement.
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