O Level Sociology: Family, Education and Crime — Practice Questions (Cambridge 2251)

These are original questions written for Marlbridge, in the style and at the standard of the examination. They are not reproduced past-paper questions — examination boards hold copyright in their own papers. Use these alongside the official past papers available free from your board.

Related: Paper 2 study guide

Remember candidates answer on 2 of the 3 topics below.

---

Family

1. Identify two ways family structures have changed over time. [4]

2. Explain two functions the family performs for its members and for society. [6]

Education

3. Explain two factors that may affect a student’s educational achievement. [8]

4. “Schools are the only cause of differences in educational achievement.” Evaluate this statement. [10]

Crime, Deviance and Social Control

5. Distinguish between formal and informal social control, giving one example of each. [4]

6. Explain two reasons official crime statistics may not accurately reflect the true rate of crime in society. [6]

---

Answers

1. Smaller family size — average family size has fallen in many societies due to factors such as contraception and changing social attitudes [1] [1]. Growth of alternative family forms — single-parent families, reconstituted (step) families, and delayed marriage/cohabitation are now more common alongside the traditional nuclear family [1] [1].

2. Primary socialisation — the family teaches children the norms, values and language of their society, giving a concrete example such as learning acceptable behaviour through parental reward and correction [1] [1] [1]. Economic support — the family provides food, shelter and financial security for its members, particularly dependent children, allowing them to be raised to become functioning members of society [1] [1] [1].

3. Social class/home background — children from homes with more resources (books, space to study, parental time) may have advantages that support achievement, explained with a mechanism rather than just named [1] [1] [1] [1]. School factors — differences in teacher expectations, school resources, or streaming/setting practices can affect how much support and encouragement different students receive [1] [1] [1] [1].

4. A strong evaluation disagrees with the statement by presenting multiple factors beyond the school itself: home background and parental attitudes, peer group influence, and the individual student’s own engagement all interact with school-based factors such as teacher expectations and resources [1] [1] [1] [1] [1]. A balanced answer should acknowledge that schools do play a role (e.g. streaming can reinforce existing inequalities) [1] [1], while concluding that achievement is better explained as the product of several interacting factors rather than school alone [1] [1] [1].

5. Formal social control — official, codified mechanisms such as the police, courts and laws that respond to deviance through formal sanctions [1] [1]. Informal social control — unofficial mechanisms such as family disapproval, peer pressure, or community norms that regulate behaviour without legal enforcement [1] [1].

6. Under-reporting — many crimes, particularly those without a clear victim or where victims fear reporting, never reach official statistics, meaning recorded figures understate the true rate [1] [1] [1]. Recording differences — how offences are classified, and changes in police recording practices or priorities over time, mean the same underlying level of crime can produce different recorded figures in different periods or areas [1] [1] [1].

---

Applying Paper 1’s research methods here

Because Paper 2’s questions can also draw on the research methods content from Paper 1, practise suggesting a suitable method for studying a family, education or crime-related question and justifying it briefly. For example, a study into why some students underachieve might use structured interviews for comparability across a large sample, or unstructured interviews/participant observation for depth of insight into a small number of cases — being ready to justify the trade-off between representativeness and depth is a transferable skill examiners reward across both papers of this specification.

Weighting your revision across the three topics

Because candidates choose 2 of the 3 topics on this paper, a common and risky strategy is committing early to two topics and dropping the third entirely — this is workable only if that commitment is genuinely secure well before the exam, since the specific two questions set on the paper are not known in advance and a candidate who has under-revised their “backup” topic has no fallback if one of their chosen two proves harder than expected on the day. A safer strategy, reflected in the study guide, is preparing all three topics to a reasonable standard through the course, then narrowing to genuinely deep revision on two only in the final weeks before the exam, once it is clear which two questions are realistically most comfortable.

Distinguishing description from explanation

A recurring pattern in weaker scripts on this paper is answering with description where the question asks for explanation — for instance, describing what a nuclear family looks like when a question asks why family structures are changing, or describing what crime is when a question asks why crime occurs. Before writing an answer, check what the command word actually requires: “identify” wants a short, correct statement; “explain” wants a stated point plus the reasoning or mechanism that connects it to the outcome in the question; “evaluate” wants named points weighed against each other with a concluding judgement. Misreading “explain” as “identify” is one of the most common and avoidable ways marks are lost on this paper, since candidates who know the correct facts but present them at only the identify level cannot access explain-level marks no matter how accurate those facts are.

Where marks are usually lost

• Naming a family/education/crime concept without explaining a mechanism connecting it to the outcome asked about.
• Answering an evaluate-style question (like Q4) with a one-sided list rather than weighing factors against each other.
• Confusing formal and informal social control, or giving an example that fits neither category clearly.
• Presenting official crime statistics as a complete and accurate picture rather than acknowledging their known limitations.
• Answering a family or education question with only common-sense assumptions about effort or personal choice, without engaging any named sociological factor from the specification.
• Forgetting to give a specific, concrete example when a question asks candidates to explain a function or factor, rather than naming it in the abstract.