Characteristics of mathematical tasks and social class-related achievement differences among primary school children

• We asked 473 year 3 pupils and 360 year pupils in 9 primary schools to answer mathematical items.
• Class differences were not smaller for pure item sum scores than for realistic item sum scores.
• For year 3, single item analyses showed similar class differences for pure and realistic test items.
• For year 4, only 1 item displayed a smaller class difference in the pure version.

Children from socially disadvantaged backgrounds are less successful in mathematics classes than more privileged children. Based on the theoretical work of Bourdieu (1987) we assumed that class differences in mathematics tests can be related to the presence of everyday knowledge in a mathematical task: Due to their “habitus” acquired via socialization, working-class children might be more often misled by references to the real world than service-class children and therefore answer the word problem incorrectly. We asked 473 year-3 pupils and 360 year-4 pupils in nine primary schools to answer mathematical items which varied only with regard to whether items were embedded in experience-based contexts (“realistic”) or not (“pure”). Our findings indicate that correct response rates of working-class and service-class children were not systematically related to item context. Since the impact of social class on correct response rates varies significantly among classes for realistic test scores, but only to a minor extent for purely mathematical test scores, further studies should focus on the differential impact of classroom instruction on mathematics achievement of children with different social backgrounds.