Education - Educational Policy And Inequality Flashcards
(10 cards)
What is the tripartite system?
From 1944, education began to be influenced 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 school, supposedly according to their attitudes and abilities. These were to be identified by the eleven plus (11+) exam.
- grammar schools offered an academic curriculum and access to non-manual jobs and higher education. They were for pupils with academic ability who passed the 11+. These pupils were mainly middle-class.
- secondary modern schools offered a non-academic, ‘practical’ curriculum and access to manual work for pupils who failed the 11+. These pupils were mainly working-class.
Thus 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 unequal opportunities. The system also reproduced gender inequality by requiring girls to gain higher marks than boys in the 11+ to obtain a grammar school place.
The tripartite system also legitimated (justified) inequality through the ideology that ability is unborn. 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.
What is the comprehensive school system?
The comprehensive 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 replaced 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.
What are the two theories of the role of comprehensive?
Marxists and functionalist 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. By contrast, Marxists see education as serving the interests of capitalism by reproducing and legitimacy class inequality. We can apply these theories to the role of comprehensive schooling.
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 working class and middle class pupils, largely because of streaming.
Functionalist 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 eleven.
However, Marxists 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 working-class children equal opportunity.
Yet by not selecting children at eleven, comprehensives may appear to offer equal chances to all. This myth of meritocracy legitimates (justifies) class inequity by making unequal achievement seem fair and just, because failure looks like it is the fault of the individual rather than the system.
What is a criticism of the tripartite system?
Many critics felt that the 11+ did not truly measure a child’s ability. It was also argued that 11 was too young to measure a child’s ability.
The schools did not have equal status.
The system was socially diverse - grammar schools were predominantly middle class students and the secondary modern schools were mainly working class.
Many sociologists believed that the 11+ favoured the middle class, as parents of the middle class could afford to pay for their children to be tutored for it and therefore stand a better chance of getting in.
How has marketisation effected the education system?
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 of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown followed similar policies, emphasising standards, diversity and choice. From 2010, the conservatives-liberal democrat coalition government took marketisation even further, for example by creating academies and free school.
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 that don’t will ‘go out of business’.
What is parentocracy (marketisation)?
Policies to promote marketisation include:
- Publication of league tables and OFSTED inspection reports that rank each school according to its exam performance and give parents the information they need to choose the right school.
- Business sponsorship of schools
- Open enrolment, allowing successful schools to recruit more pupils
- Specialist schools, specialising in IT, languages etc, 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 e.g. to become academies.
- Schools having to compete to attract pupils
- Introduction of tuition fees for high education
- Allowing parents and others to set up free schools.
Miriam David describes marketised education as ‘parentocracy’ (literally, ‘rule by parents’). Supporters of marketisation argue that in an education market, power shifts away from the produces (teachers and schools) to the consumers (parents). They claim that this encourages diversity among schools, gives parents more choice and raise standards.
What are league tables and cream-skimming (marketisation)?
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 tables rankings. As Will 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.
- silt-shifting ‘good’ schools avoid taking less able pupils who are likely to get poor results and damage the schools league table position.
For schools with poor league tables 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 middle-class parents. The overall effect of league tables is thus to produce unequal schools that reproduce social class inequalities.
What is funding formula (marketisation)?
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 applicants.
On then other hand, unpopular schools lose income and find it difficult to match the teacher skills and facilities of their more successful rivals. Thus, popular schools with good results and middle-class pupils thrive; unpopular schools fail to attract pupils and their funding is further reduced.
A study of international patterns of educational inequality by the institution for public policy research found that competition-oriented education between children of different social backgrounds.
What is Gewirtz’s argument on parental choice (marketisation)?
She studied 14 London secondary schools. Gewirtz found that differences in parents economic and cultural capital lead to class differences in how far they can exercise choice of secondary school. She identifies three main types of parents, whom she calls privileged-skilled choosers, disconnected-local choosers and semi-skilled choosers.
- Privileged-skilled choosers = these were mainly professional middle-class 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 choices open to them.
These parents possessed cultural capital. They knew how school admissions systems work, for example the importance of putting a particular school as first choice. They had the time to visit schools and the skills to research the options available. Their economic capital also meant they could afford to move their children around the education system to get the best deal out of it, for example by paying extra travel costs so that their children could attend ‘better’ schools out of their area.
- Disconnected-local chooser = These were mainly professional middle-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.
- Semi-skilled choosers = 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’s opinions about schools. They were often frustrated at their inability to get their children into the schools they wanted.
Thus, although in theory the education market gives everyone greater choice, Gewirtz concludes that in practice middle-class parents possess cultural and economic capital and have more choice than working-class parents.
