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Talent, Effort or Social Background?

ABSTRACT Little research has been conducted into the way citizens explain educational outcomes today. This is remarkable because scholars have always claimed that education as an institution contributes to a representation of society in which success is ‘achieved’ on strictly meritocratic grounds. This paper attempts to fill this gap by examining public opinion on three explanations for educational success and failure – namely talent, effort and social background – in Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium). Survey data (N = 1693) revealed that people are much more inclined to attribute educational success to effort and dedication when compared to educational failure. Contrary to the expectations derived from the literature on symbolic capital, ‘talent’ was not deemed very important by our respondents as an explanation for educational outcomes. In addition, higher educated people supported an explanation for school success or failure in terms of social background more than the less educated. The implications of our findings are discussed.