Education

Question 1

What is the timeline for the main eras of education reforms?

Answer 1

1944 - Butler education act
1965 - comprehensive education
1988 - education reform act (conservative / Thatcher)
1997 - new labour policies
2010 - coalition policies

Question 2

What is the new right view on education?

Answer 2

• some people naturally more intelligent
• socialise individuals into shared values
• society is meritocratic
• prepare for workforce
• students responsible for themselves
• marketisation

Question 3

What is the social democratic view of education?

Answer 3

• society based on justice and fairness
• equal chance to succeed
• social mobility
• spend money on socially disadvantaged students

Question 4

What policies were introduced by the education reform act (1988)?

Answer 4

• national curriculum
• open enrolment
• national testing
• Ofsted
• league tables
• formula funding

Question 5

POSITIVES AND NEGATIVES

Question 6

What policies were introduced by the new labour policies (1997)?

Answer 6

• education action zones
• aim higher
• education maintenance allowance
• national literacy strategy
• sure start
• specialist schools
• beacon schools
• academy schools

Question 7

POSITIVES AND NEGATIVES

Question 8

What policies were introduced by coalition and conservative (2010-onwards)?

Answer 8

• academies and free schools
• curriculum reform
• bursaries
• tuition fees
• pupil premium
• covid catch up
• T levels
• Turing scheme

Question 9

POSITIVES AND NEGATIVES

Question 10

What is marketisation?

Answer 10

treating schools like businesses and encouraging competition

Question 11

What is parentocracy?

Answer 11

parents having choice in education

Question 12

What is privatisation?

Answer 12

transfer of assets and resources from state control into hands of private sector

Question 13

MORE DETAIL ON PRIVATISATION AND GLOBALISATION

Question 14

What is functionalism?

Question 15

Who are the key functionalist sociologists?

Answer 15

• Durkheim
• Parsons
• Davis and Moore

Question 16

What are Durkheim’s beliefs on the role of education?

Answer 16

• social solidarity (agreement on shared norms and values)
• specialist skills (learn specific skills for specific jobs)
• society in miniature (prepare students for workforce)

Question 17

What are Parsons’ beliefs on the role of education?

Answer 17

• secondary socialisation (bridge between family and wider society)
• family particularistic values (ascribed status/fixed from birth) versus school universalistic values (achieved status)
• meritocracy / sifting and sorting / achieve through own ability

Question 18

What is Davis and Moore’s belief on the role of education?

Answer 18

role allocation

Question 19

Who are the key Marxist / neo-Marxist sociologists?

Answer 19

• Althusser
• Bowles and Gintis
• Willis (neo-Marxist)

Question 20

What are Althusser’s beliefs on the role of education?

Answer 20

• ideological state apparatus (bourgeoisie maintain control)
• reproduce class inequality
• justify inequality through false class consciousness (failing because they are not working hard enough)

Question 21

What are Bowles and Gintis’ beliefs on the role of education?

Answer 21

• reward submissive workers and punish defiant behaviour
• correspondence principle (hierarchies in school and work in capitalist society)
• myth of meritocracy

Question 22

What is Willis’ belief on the role of education?

Answer 22

students do have the power to reject the values being transmitted by the education system (shown through study of 12 working class boys) and mainstream Marxists are too deterministic

Question 23

What do Marxist feminists believe about education?

Answer 23

education reinforces capitalism and women are socialised into supporting men at home and work - shown through gendered subject choice

Question 24

What do liberal feminists believe about education?

Answer 24

There have been changes in equal opportunities and education policies will end patriarchy. Changing socialisation is also relevant

Question 25

What do difference feminists believe about education?

Answer 25

Being black and female is very different to being white and female which is seen through the way teachers treat students differently

Question 26

What do radical feminists believe about education?

Answer 26

Education focuses on ‘raising boys achievement’ and reflects a male dominated system

Question 27

What did Haywood and Ghaill’s study on reinforcing gender identity find?

Answer 27

Boys told off for ‘behaving like girls’ and ignored verbal abuse of girls and even blamed girls for attracting it

Question 28

What did Sue Lees’ study on reinforcing gender identity find?

Answer 28

Double standard in sexual morality - boys brag whereas girls labelled as ‘slags’

Question 29

What did Heaton and Lawson’s study on reinforcing gender identity find?

Answer 29

Hidden curriculum taught patriarchal values - traditional family structures

Question 30

What did Spender’s study on reinforcing gender identity find?

Answer 30

‘Invisible women’ in education - lack of focus on females in curriculum in textbooks and women weren’t historically encouraged in education

Question 31

What is the postmodernist view of education?

Answer 31

- schools are more consumerist and provide more individual choice through marketisation and open enrolment - more individualised through different teaching approaches - more ‘hyperreal’ through use of ICT and online sources - more diverse school types - equip students to compete in postmodern world eg global workforce - increasing fragmentation as theres not one set path and many opportunities

Question 32

What is Howard Becker’s theory?

Answer 32

Labelling theory - ideal pupil is hard working and conforms to rules - most likely middle class

Question 33

What is educational triage?

Answer 33

(Gilborn and Youdell) 1) likely to succeed anyway so don’t need much input 2) borderline cases who require more attention 3) little chance of succeeding so written off

Question 34

How might pupils react to being labelled?

Answer 34

- self fulfilling prophecy - subcultures

Question 35

What did Rosenthal and Jacobson find in their study about self fulfilling prophecies?

Answer 35

Student labelled as ‘bloomers’ receive more help and achieve higher

Question 36

Two examples of pro-school subcultures:

Answer 36

- Margaret Fuller found a group of black female pupils were labelled as failures but worked hard to prove teachers wrong - Mac an Ghaill academic achievers (w/c focused on traditional academic subjects) and new enterprisers (w/c rejected traditional academic curriculum but motivated to study business and computing)

Question 37

Example of anti school subculture

Answer 37

Paul Willis found 12 w/c boys saw academic work as effeminate and identified with ‘proper’ masculine w/c manual labour so rejected school

Question 38

What did Lacey’s study of setting and streaming involve?

Answer 38

1) differentiation - teachers judge and rank students into groups 2) polarisation - students divided into opposing groups 3) top set (achieve highly, conform to rules, pleasant relationships with teachers) or bottom set (dont achieve, break rules, not encouraged, worse relationships with teachers)