Educational Policy And Inequaility

Question 1

Education policy in Britain before 1988

Answer 1

• before the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, there were no state schools. Education was only available only to a minority of the population. It was provided by free paying schools for the week off, or by the churches and charities first a few of the poor. Before 1833, the state spent no public money on education.
• industrialisation increased the need for an educated workforce, and from the late 19th century they state began to become more involved in education. Reflecting the growing importance of education, the state made schooling compulsory from the ages 5 to 13 in 1880
• in this period the type of education children received depended on their class background. Schooling did little to change pupils ascribed status. M/c pupils were given an academic curriculum to prepare them for careers in the professions or office work
• in contrast, w/c pupils were given a choosing to equip them with the basic numeracy and literacy skills needed for routine factory work and to instil them an obedient attitude to their superiors

Question 2

Selection: the tripartite system - 1944 education act

Answer 2

• from 1944, education began to be influence by the idea of meritocracy - that individuals should achieve their status in life through their own efforts and abilities, rather than it being ascribed at birth by their class background
• the 1944 education act brought in the tripartite system, so called because children were to be selected and allocated to one of three different types of secondary schools, supposedly according to their aptitudes and ability. These were identified by the 11+ exam
• grammar schools
• secondary modern schools
• technical schools

Question 3

What are grammar schools?

Answer 3

• offered an academic curriculum and access to non manual jobs and higher education. They were pupils with academic ability who passed the 11+. These pupils were mainly middle class

Question 4

What are secondary modern schools?

Answer 4

• offered a non academic ‘pratical’ curriculum and access to manual work for pupils who failed the 11+. These pupils were mainly working class

Question 5

What are technical schools?

Answer 5

• existed in a few areas only, so in practise was more of a bipartite than a tripartite system

Question 6

What did the 1944 education act of the tripartite system reproduce

Answer 6

• rather than promoting meritocracy, the tripartite system and 11+ reproduced class inequality by channelling the two social classes into two different types of school that offered unequals opportunities. The system also reproduces gender inequality by requiring girls to gain higher marks than the boys in the 11+ to obtain a grammar school place
• the tripartite system also justified inequality through the ideology that that ability is inborn. It was thus argued that ability could be measured early on in life through the 11+. However, in reality children’s environment greatly affects their chances of success

Question 7

The comprehensive school system - 1965

Answer 7

• the comprehensive school system was introduced in many areas from 1965 onwards. It aimed to overcome the class divide of the tripartite system and make education more meritocratic. The 11+ was to be abolished along with grammars and secondary moderns, to be replaces by comprehensive schools that all pupils within the area would attend
• however, it was left to the local education authority to decide whether to ‘go comprehensive’ and not all did so. As a result, the grammar secondary modern divide still exists in many areas

Question 8

Two theories of the role of comprehensives

Answer 8

• as Marxists and functionalists see the role of education very differently. Functionalists see it as fulfilling essential functions such as social integration and meritocratic selection for future work roles. In contrast, Marxist see education as serving the interest’s of capitalism by reproducing and legitimising class inequality
• functionalist argue that comprehensives promote social integration by bringing children of different social classes together in one school. However, an early study by ford found little social mixing between w/c and m/c pupils, largely because of streaming
• functionalists also see the comprehensive system as more meritocratic because it gives pupils a longer period in which to develop and show their abilities, unlike the tripartite system,which sought to select the most able pupils at the age of 11
• however, Marxist argue that comprehensives are not meritocratic. Rather, they reproduce class inequality from one generation to the next through the continuation of the practice of streaming and labelling. These continue to deny w/c children equal opportunity
• yet by not selecting children at 11, comprehensives may appear to offer equal changes to all. This is the ‘myth of meritocracy’ justifies class inequality by making unequal achievement seem fair and just, because failure looks like it is the fault of the individual rather than the system

Question 9

What is marketisation?

Answer 9

• marketisation refers to the process of introducing market forces of consumer choice and competition between suppliers into areas run by the state, such as education. Marketisation has created an ‘education market’ by:
• reducing direct state control over education
• increasing both competition between schools and parental choice of school
• marketisation has become a central theme of government education policy since the 1988 education reforms act, introduced by the conservative government of Margaret thatcher.

Question 10

1977 and marketisation

Answer 10

• from 1977, the new labour governments of toby Blair and Gordon brown followed similar policies of marketisation emphasising standards, diversity and choice. From 2010 the, the conservative Liberal Democrat coalition government took marketisation even further, e.g, by creating academies and free schools

Question 11

Neo liberal and new right - marketisation

Answer 11

• neoliberals and the new right favour marketisation. They argue that marketisation means that schools have to attract customers (parents) by competing with each other in the market. Schools that provide customers with what they want - such as success in exams - will thrive, and those who don’t will ‘go out of business’

Question 12

Parentocracy and marketisation

Answer 12

Policies to promote marketisation include:
- publication of league tables and ofsted reports that rank each school according to its school performance and give parents the information needed to choose the right school
- business sponsorship of schools
- open enrolment, allowing successful schools to recruit more pupils
- specialist schools, to widen parental choice
- formula funding, where schools receive the same amount of funding for each pupil
- schools being allowed to opt out of local authority control
- schools having to compete to attract pupils
- introduction if tuition fees for higher education
- allowing parents and others to set up free schools

Question 13

David (1993) - parentocracy - marketisation

Answer 13

• David describes marketised education as ‘parentocray’ (‘rule by parents’). Supporters of marketisation argue that in an education market, power shifts away from the producers (teachers and schools) to consumers (parents). They claim that this encourages diversity among schools, gives parents more choice and raises standards

Question 14

The reproduction of inequality - marketisation

Answer 14

• however, despite the claimed benefits of marketisation, its critics argue that it has increased inequalities. E.g, ball and whitty note how marketisation policies such as exam league tables and the funding formula reproduce class inequalities by creating inequalities between schools

Question 15

League tables and cream skimming - marketisation

Answer 15

• the policy of publishing each schools exam results in a league table ensures that schools that achieve good results are more in demand, because parents are attracted to those with good league table rankings. As Bartlett notes, this encourages:
• cream skimming - ‘good’ schools can be more selective, choose their own customers and recruit high achieving, mainly middle class pupils. As a result, these pupils gain an advantage
• slit shifting - ‘good’ schools can avoid taking less able pupils who are likely to get poor results and damage the schools league table position
• for schools with poor league table positions, the opposite applies, they cannot afford to be selective and have to take less, able mainly working class pupils, so their results are poorer and they remain unattractive to m/c parents. The overall effect of league tables is that it produces unequal schools that reproduce social class inequalities

Question 16

The funding formula - marketisation

Answer 16

• schools are allocated funds by a formula based on how many pupils they attract. As a result, popular schools get more funds and so can afford better qualified teachers and better facilities. Again, their popularity allows them to be more selective and attracts more able or ambitious, generally middle class parents
• on the other hand, unpopular schools loose income and find it difficult to match the teacher skills and facilities of their more successful rivals. Thus, popular schools with good results and m/c pupils thrive - unpopular schools fail to attract pupils and their funding is further reduced
• a study of international patterns of educational inequality by the institute for public policy research found that competition oriented education systems such as Britain’s produce more segregation between children of different social backgrounds.

Question 17

Gewirtz: parental choice - marketisation

Answer 17

• not only do marketisation policies benefits the m/c by creating inequalities between schools. By increasing parental choice, marketisation also advantages m/c parents, whose economic and cultural capital puts them in a better position to choose ‘good’ schools for their children.
• this is shown in gewirtz study of 14 London secondary schools. Gewitrz found that differences in parents economic and cultural capital lead to class differences in how far that can exercise choice of secondary school.
• she identifies three main types of parents, who she calls privileged skilled choosers, disconnected local choosers and semi skilled choosers

Question 18

What are privileged skilled choosers - marketisation

Answer 18

• these were mainly professional m/c parents who used their economic and cultural capital to gain educational capital for their children. Being prosperous, confident and well educated, they were able to take full advantage of the choice open to them
• these parents possessed cultural capital. They knew how school admissions systems work, e.g, the importance of putting particular schools at first choice. They had time to visit schools and the skills to research the options available
• the economic capital also meant they could afford to move their children around the education system to get the best deal out of it, e.g, by paying extra travel cost so that their children could attend ‘better’ schools out of the area.

Question 19

What are disconnect local choosers? - marketisation

Answer 19

• these were working class parents whose choices were restricted by their lack of economic and cultural capital
• they found it difficult to understand school admissions procedures. They were less confident in their dealings with schools, less aware of the choices open to them, and less able to manipulate the system to their own advantage. Many of them attached more importance to safety and the quality of school facilities than to league tables or long term ambitions
• distance and cost of travel were major restrictions on their choice of school. Their funds were limited and a place at the nearest school was often their only realistic option for their children

Question 20

What are semi skilled choosers? - marketisation

Answer 20

• these parents were also mainly working class, but unlike the disconnected local choosers, they were ambitious for their children. However, they too lacked cultural capital and found it difficult to make sense of the education market, often having to rely on other people opinions about schools. They were often frustrated at their inability to get their children into the schools they wanted
• although, in theory the education market gives everyone a greater choice, gewirtz concludes that in practise m/c parents possess cultural capital and economic capital and have more choice than working class parents

Question 21

They myth of parentocracy - marketisation

Answer 21

• not only does marketisation reproduce inequality, it also legitimises it by concealing its true causes and by justifying its existence
• ball believes that marketisation gives the appearance of a ‘parentocracy’. That is the education system seems as if it is based on parents having a free choice of school. However, ball argues that parnetocracy is a myth. It makes it appear that all parents have the same freedom to choose which school to send their children to
• in reality, as gewirtz shows, m/c parents are better able to take advantage of the choices available. E.g, as leech and campos show, they can afford to move to the catchment area of a school
• by disguising the fact that schooling continues to reproduce class inequality in this way, the myth of parentocracy makes inequality in education appear fair and inevitable

Question 22

New labour and inequality - marketisation

Answer 22

while marketisation polices have tended to increase inequality, the new labour governments of 1997 to 2010 also introduced a number of policies aimed at reducing it. These include:
- designating some deprived areas as education action zones and providing them with additional resources
- the aim higher programme to raise the aspirations of groups that are under represented in education
- education maintenance allowances
- introduction of the national literacy strategy, literacy and number act hours and reducing primary school class size. Claimed these policy are of a greater benefit to disadvantaged groups
- city academies were created to give a fresh start to struggling inner city schools
- increased funding for the state education

Question 23

Criticisms of new labour and inequality - marketisation

Answer 23

• critics such as benn see a contradiction between labours policies to tackle inequality and its commitment to marketisation - something she calls the ‘new labour paradox’
• e.g, despite introducing EMAs to encourager poorer students to stay in education, labour also introduced tuition fees for higher education that may deter them from going to uni
• the new labour governments neither abolished free paying private schools nor removed their charitable status

Question 24

Conservative government policies from 2010

Answer 24

• the conservative led coalition government (2010-2015) and the conservative government from 2015 accelerated the move away from an education system based largely on comprehensive schools from an education system based on largely on comprehensive schools run by local authorities. Its policies have been strongly influence by neoliberal and new right ideas about reducing the role of the state in the provision of eduction through marketisation and privatisation
• David Cameron (prime minister 2010-15) states that the aim of the coalitions eduction policy was to encourage ‘excellence, completion and innovation’, by freeing schools from the ‘dead hand of the state’, through policies such as academies and free schools. Furthermore, cuts were made to the education budget, as part of the governments general policy of reducing state spending

Question 25

Academies - conservative government

Answer 25

• from 2010, all schools were encouraged to leave local authority control and become academies. Funding was taken from local authority budgets and given directly to academies by central government, and academies were given control over their curriculum
• by 2017, over 68% of all secondary schools had converted to academy status. Some academies are run by private educational businesses and funded directly by the state
• however, whereas labours original city academies targeted disadvantaged schools and ares, the coalition government, by allowing any school to become an academy, removed the focus on reducing inequality

Question 26

Free schools - conservative government

Answer 26

• although funded directly by the state, free schools are set up and run by parents, teachers, faith organisations or businesses rather than the local authority
• supporters of free schools claim that they improve educational standards by taking control away from the state and giving power to parents. Free schools, it is claimed, give parents and teachers the opportunity to create a new school if they are unhappy with the state schools in their local ares
• however, Allen argues that research from Sweden, where 20% of schools are free schools, show that they only benefit children from highly educated families.
• other critics claim that free schools are socially divisive and that they lower standards.
• in England, evidence shows that free schools take fewer disadvantage pupils than nearby schools.

Question 27

Fragmented centralisation - conservative government

Answer 27

• ball argues that promoting academies and free schools has led to both increased fragmentation and increased centralisation of control over educational provision in England

Question 28

What is fragmentation? - conservative government

Answer 28

• the comprehensive system is being replaced by a patchwork of diverse provision, much of it involving private providers, that leads to greater inequality in opportunities

Question 29

What is centralisation of control? - conservative government

Answer 29

• central government alone has the power to allow or require schools to become academies or allow free schools to be set up. These schools are funded directly by central government. Their rapid growth has greatly reduced the role of elected local authorities in education

Question 30

Policies to reduced inequality - conservative government

Answer 30

• while the conservative led coalitions marketisation policies are said to have increased inequality, they also introduces polices aimed at reducing it. These include:
• free school meals - for all children in reception, year one and year two
• the pupil premium - money that schools receive for each pupils from a disadvantaged background
• however, ofsted is found that in many cases the pupil premium is not spent on those it is supposed to help. Only 1 in 10 head teachers said that it has significantly changes how they supported pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds
• furthermore, as part of the conservative governments ‘austerity’ programme, spending on many areas of education has been cut: many sure start centres were closed. Education maintenance allowance (EMA) was abolished and uni fees tripled
• critics argue that cutting cure start and the EMA has reduced opportunities for w/c pupils. And the increase of uni fees may discourage them from entering higher education

Question 31

The privatisation of education

Answer 31

• privatisation involves the transfer of public assets such as schools to private companies. In recent years, there has been a trend towards the privatisation of important aspects of education, both in the uk and globally. In the process education becomes a source of profit for capitalist in what balls calls the ‘education services industry’ or ESI
• private companies in the ESI are invloved in an ever increasing range of activities in education, including building schools.
• large scale school building projects often involve public-private partnerships, in which private sector companies provide capital to design, build, finance and operate educational services.
• many of these activities are very profitable. According to ball, companies involved in such work expect to make up to ten times as much profit as they do on other contracts.

Question 32

Blurring the public/private boundary - privatisation

Answer 32

• many senior officials in the public sector, such as directors of local authorities and head teachers, now leave to set up or work for private sector education businesses. These companies then bid for contracts to provide services to schools and local authorities. E.g, two companies set up in this way hold four of the five national contracts for school inspection services
• as pollack notes, this flow of personnel allows companies to buy ‘insider knowledge’ to help win contracts, as well as side stepping local authority democracy

Question 33

Privatisation and the globalisation of education policy

Answer 33

• many private companies in the education services industry are foreign owned. The exam board edexcel is owned by the US educational publishing and testing giant Pearson.
• similarly, according to Buckingham and scanlon, the uks four leading educational softwear compaines are all owned by global multinationals. Many contracts for educational services in the uk are sold on by the original company to others such as banks and investment funds. In a globalised world, these are often bought by overseas companies

Question 34

The cola-isation of schools

Answer 34

• the private sector is also penetrating education indirectly, e.g, through vending machines on school premises and the development of brand loyalty through displays of the logos and sponsorships. This process has been called the ‘cola-isation’ of schools
• according to molnar, schools are targeted by private companies because ‘schools by their nature carry enormous goodwill and can thus confer legitimacy on anything associated with them’ in other words, they are kind of product endorsement
• however, the benefits to schools and pupils of this private sector involvement are often very limited. E.g, according to ball, a cadburys sports equipment promotion was scrapped after it was realved that pupils would have yo eat 5,440 chocolate bars just to qualify for a set of volleyball posts.
• according to beder, uk families spent £110,000 in Tesco supermarkets in return for a single computer for schools

Question 35

Education as a commodity - privatisation

Answer 35

• ball concludes that a fundamental change is taking place in which privatisation is becoming the key factor shaping educational policy. Policy is increasingly focused on moving educational services out of the public sector controlled by the nation state, to be provided by private companies instead. In the process, education is being turned into a ‘legitimate object of private profit making’, a commodity to be bought and sold under an education market
• privatisation means that the state is losing its role as its provider of educational services.
• similarly, Marxist such as hall see conservative government policies as part of the ‘’long march of the neoliberal revolution’’. Hall sees academies as an example of handling over public services to private capitalists, such as educational businesses. In the Marxist view, the Neo liberal claim is that privatisation and competition drive up standards is a myth used to legitimate the turning of education into a source of private profit

Question 36

Polices on gender - privatisation

Answer 36

• in the 19th century, females were largely excluded from higher eduction. More recently, under the tripartite system, girls often had to achieve a higher mark than boys in the 11+ in order to obtain a grammar school place
• since the 1970s, however, policies such as GIST have been introduces to try to reduce gender differences in subject choice

Question 37

Policies on ethnicity - privatisation

Answer 37

• policies aimed at raising the achievements of children from minority ethnic backgrounds have gone through serval phases:
• assimilation
• multicultural education
• social inclusion

Question 38

What is social inclusion? - privatisation

Answer 38

• pupils from minority ethnic groups, and policies to raise their achievement, became the focus in the late 1990s. Policies included:
• detailed monitoring of exam results by ethnicity
• amending the race relations act to place a legal duty on schools to promote racial equality
• help for voluntary ‘Saturday schools’ in the back community
• English as an additional language programme
• however, Mirza sees little genuine changes in the policy. She argues, that, instead of tackling the structural causes of ethnic inequality such as poverty and racism, educational policy still takes a ‘soft’ approach that focuses on cultural, behaviour and the home
• similarly, gillborn argues that institutionally rasict policies in relation to the ethnocentric curriculum, assessment and steaming continue to disadvantage minority ethnic group pupils

Question 39

What is assimilation? - privatisation

Answer 39

• policies in the 1960s and 70s focused on the need for pupils from minority ethnic groups to assimilate into mainstream British culture as a way of raising their achievement, especially by helping those for whom English was not their first language. A related policy is that of compensatory eduction
• however, critics argue that some minority groups who are at risk of of underachieving, such as African Caribbean pupils already speak English and that the real cause for their under achievement lies in poverty or racism

Question 40

What is multicultural education? - privatisation

Answer 40

• policies through the 1980s and into the 1990s aimed to promote the achievements of children from minority ethnic groups by valuing all cultures in the school curriculum, thereby raising minority pupils self esteem and achievements
• however, multicultural education has been criticised on serval grounds:
• stone argues that black pupils do not fail for lack of self esteem
• critical race theorist argue multicultural education is mere tokenism it picks out stereotypoical features of minority cultures for inclusion in the curriculum, but fails to tackle institutional racism
• the new right criticise for perpetuating cultural divisions. They take the view that education should promote a shared national culture and identity into which minorities should be assimilated