Social class Social class refers to the social differentiation of people within a society depending on their social status, which is majorly determined by their economic status. People of low economic status usually belong to a low social class and vice versa. Karl Marx presented a two class model of society comprising the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The bourgeoisie are the capitalists who are few in number and are the owners of capital. They are also rich, powerful, oppressors, exploiters and they always win elections in democratic countries (Lareau, 2002). On the other hand, the proletariat are the workers, owners of labour and they are the majority in numbers but are powerless since they are oppressed and exploited by the rich and they always lose in elections in democratic nations. The proletariat can be described as a class in itself in the sense that they share same objectives and relationships to the means of production, that is, they are laboures who are paid in wages (Lareau, 2002). The two classes are always in conflict with each other because their interests are incompatible. While the bourgeoisie have the interests of maintaining the status quo which ensures their dominance, the proletariat are interested in changing the status quo which deprives them of good life. However, the two classes are not aware of the nature of the circumstances which they live in but assume that the situations which they find themselves in are natural and nothing can be done to change them, a situation Karl Marx calls false class consciousness (Irving, 2004). In order to explain the differences in education attainment between the children of the rich and those of the poor, it is important to decompose the social origins of the children into parental status, parental education and parental class. These are the three main mechanisms that link children’s social class origins to their educational attainment. The three are viewed as separate entities but are interrelated in many ways. They can be contextualized using the theory of cultural deprivation and compensatory education, a theory which is applied in the study of education attainment. It refers to lack of appropriate cultural resources like language or knowledge. It is used to explain the limitations the minority groups in the society face in education attainment. In the theory, the working class sub-culture, that is, the culture of the poor is portrayed as a substandard version of the mainstream culture. According to the theory, the sub-culture of the low income earners is deficient in certain important ways and this explains the low educational attainment of the members of this group. The theory attributes low education attainment to poor family background. A culturally deprived child is deficient in important skills, attitudes and values which are essential for educational attainment. The environment in which poor children live is poverty stricken in economic and cultural ways. The deprived children are isolated from those rich experiences found in the culture of the rich. The isolation is enhanced by poverty, poor intellectual resources in their homes and surroundings, incapacity, illiteracy, or indifference of the elders and of the entire community. The children of the poor are also poorly traveled with probably one trip