Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Educational Policy
- Before 1988
- Before 1833, the
public state spent no
money on public
education
- Industrialisation =
state made schooling
compulsory from the
ages 5 - 13 in 1880
- The type of education
children received depended
on their class background
- Middle-class =
academic curriculum
to prepare for careers.
Working-class = basic
numeracy and literacy
needed for routine
factory work.
- The Tripartite System
1994
- Influenced by the idea of
meritocracy - didn't
achieve this
- Children would be selected and
allocated 1 of 3 different types of
secondary school according to
their aptitudes and abilities
- Promoted inequality by channelling two different
social classes into two different types of
schooling and then being offered unequal
opportunities.
- 1) Grammar School
2) Secondary
Modern School 3)
Technical School
- Comprehensive System
1965 - 1979
- AIM: overcome class divide, make
education more meritocratic
- 11+, grammar schools and secondary
modern schools would be abolished -
replaced with comprehensive
schools which all pupils would attend
- Left to local education authority
to decide whether to 'go
comprehensive' and not all did
so.
- FUNCTIONALISTS: see education as fulfilling
essential functions such as a social
integregation and meritocratic selection for
future work roles.
- MARXISTS: see education as serving
the interests of capitalism by
reproducing and legitimating class
inquality
- Marketisation
- 1) Reducing direct state control over education.
2) Increasing both competition between schools
and parental choice of school.
- 1988 Education Reform Act -
Conservative gov. (Thatcher)
- 1997 - New Labour governments
of Blair and Brown followed
similar policies
- Sociologist Miriam David (1993) describes
education as 'parentocracy'. Supporters
of marketisation argue that in an
education market, power shifts away
from producers and to consumers.
- The reproduction
of inequality
- Ball (1994) and Whitty (1998) note how
marketisation policies (such as league
tables) reproduce class inequalities by
creating them between schools.
- Parents are attracted to those
with good league table rankings
(policy to publish exam results)
- Will Bartlett (1993)
1) cream - skinning
2) silt - shifting
- Gewirtz: parental
choice
- Study of 14
London
secondary
schools
identified 3
types of
parents: 1)
Privileged -
skilled choosers
2) Disconnected
- local choosers
3) Semi - skilled
consumers
- Privileged - skilled choosers: Professional middle - class
who used their economic and cultural capital to gain
educational capital for their children, being well - educated
they were able to take full advantage of the choices open to
them.
- Disconnected - local choosers: Working - class
parents whose choices were restricted by their
lack of economic and cultural capital
- Semi - skilled choosers: Working - class
(however were ambitious for their children)
unfortunately lacked cultural capital and found
it difficult to make sense of the education
market (rely on others opinions about school)
- New Labour and
reducing inequality
- Policies include:
designating some
deprived areas as
Education Action Zones
and providing them with
additional resources.
EMAs. Aimer Higher
Programme.
- Benn (2012) criticises
and sees a
contradiction between
Labour policies to
tackle inequality and its
commitment to
marketisation e.g.
introduction of EMA's
however tuition fees
for higher education is
very expensive