Education and poverty. Contributions of the educational system to the transmission of and fight against poverty

The paper starts with a description of the poverty trap, followed by attempts to define the various facets of child poverty: The concept of income poverty targets the economic aspects, failure to earn credits and deprivation of competency target functional aspects of educational deprivation. The subsequent sections of the paper describe the contribution of the tracking system, of the sociocultural segregation it serves, and of the modalities of the school system's use of time to the intergenerational reproduction of poverty. The final part of the paper outlines strategies of developmentally activating and competence-oriented teaching as a means towards overcoming educational deprivation in schools.