Аннотация: To a greater extent is academic success determined by the characteristics of the family, the school, or the characteristics of the child himself? Can the school compensate for the influence of the family? The answers to these questions are fundamentally important from the point of view of forming a strategy for compensatory effects on social inequality in education. Traditional ideas about poverty as the cause of academic failure of schoolchildren do not reflect the real situation with educational inequality. This study is devoted to identifying previously unexplored factors of social inequality in families that can affect the educational outcomes of children from poor families. The factors of influence of social inequality on the academic success of students in this study are highlighted: 1. Stigmatization of poor children (they feel like second-class people from childhood and therefore prefer to remain in the shadows, do not show themselves, and if they try to show themselves, biased teachers do not give them the opportunity).
2. Low cultural capital of the family (children come to school with less erudition, less vocabulary, etc., and this undermines their confidence).
3. The opportunity to receive additional education. 4. Ideological attitudes (in well-off families, parents take over this function, and in families with low socio-economic status, parents often do not believe in the success of their children, as they themselves have not achieved it).
5. School climate (respect, safety, equal treatment of all students by teachers).
The aim of the work is to study and analyze the factors that cause unequal educational opportunities for schoolchildren from socially vulnerable families, and their impact on academic performance, in order to develop strategies to partially compensate for social inequality in education. The object of the study is social inequality in the educational system. The subject of the research is the conditions and mechanisms of the impact of poverty on the academic results of students, forms of manifestation of educational inequality. The study identified the factors influencing academic success: the mother's higher education, the high level of family income, the hard work and inspiration of the student. The practical significance of the work lies in the possibility of using its results in the work of educational institutions with a pronounced heterogeneity of the contingent.