A Study Of The Impact Of Family Background On High School Education Opportunities

Education is the important way to achieve social mobility, which depends on the equal distribution of education opportunities with different social stratus and different family backgrounds. The equal education opportunities not only reflect the equal of the society, but also become the basic condition for the equal of the society. To some extent, the distribution of high-school education opportunities demonstrate the realization of educational equality and social equality.Based on Education Opportunities Equality Theory, Cultural Capital Theory, Cultural Reproduction Theory, Feminist Theory and Gender Theory, by using literature method, questionnaire survey, statistical data analysis and interviewing method, and choosing 695 students from 3 high schools in J city in Henan Province as research objects, including 1 provincial key high school,1 ordinary high school, and 1 secondary vocational school, this paper argued about the influence of family backgrounds on high school education opportunities. The results showed as follows:From the statistics and analysis of socio-demographic characteristics, this research found students' gender, age, nationality and whether the "only-child" have no significant influence on their high school education opportunities. The household registration has significant influence on their high school education opportunities. Students with urban Hukou were easier to get key/ordinary high school education opportunities. On the contrary, students with rural Hukou were more likely to get secondary vocational school education opportunities. But the influence of household registration will be weakened by students' family backgrounds.Students' family backgrounds have significant influence on the high school education opportunities. Specifically, students' family professional status, their family income, and their parents' education level all have significant influence on their high school education opportunities. Students, who have higher family professional status, higher family income and higher parents' education level, are easier to get key/ordinary high school education opportunities. On the contrary, students, who have lower family professional status, lower family income and lower parents" education level, are more likely to get secondary vocational school education opportunities. In the three components of the family backgrounds, which influence students'high school education opportunities, parents' educational level has the most significant impact on students' educational opportunities.According to the research results, this paper explores following problems:(1) how the family backgrounds affect the high school education opportunities of students; (2) how the family backgrounds play an important role in the effect of educational system; (3) how family backgrounds made high school education opportunities be differentiation with the influence of the current educational system; (4) Under the influence of educational investment benefits, how family backgrounds may cause the imbalance of high school education opportunities, and (5) how family backgrounds, under the influence of gender, lead to the microscopic change of high school education opportunities.In a word, some suggestions are put forward to promote the equality of educational opportunities, including to concern inferior class more and to promote the social stratum to flow, to balance the development of the vocational education and ordinary education, to equalize the distribution of education resource, to establish and improve the system of poor students funding, to spread gender equality culture, and so on.