Educational Policy Flashcards
86 (21 cards)
The Tripartite System
Brought in by the 1944 Education Act
Children allocated to one of 3 different types of school, identified through the 11+ exam:
Grammar schools (mainly middle class)
Secondary Modern (working class)
Technical Schools (only existed in a few areas)
This reproduced class inequality
Comprehensive School System
Aimed to overcome the class divide and be more meritocratic
Aimed to abolish 11+ and grammar and secondary modern schools - replace with comprehensive schools
Functionalists: promotes social integration and meritocracy
Marxists: Reproduces class inequality through streaming and labelling (‘myth of meritocracy’)
Marketisation
Introducing consumer choice and competition between schools, creating an ‘education market’
- Reduced direct state control over education
- Increased competition between schools and parental choice
Policies to promote marketisation
- League tables and OFSTED inspections
- Business sponsorship of schools
- Open enrolment
- Specialist schools to widen parental choice
- Formula funding; schools receive the same amount of funding for each pupil
- Schools competing to attract pupils
- Tuition fees for higher education
- Allowing the setup of free schools
League Tables
Allowing league tables to be viewed publicly encourages cream skimming and silt shifting
Cream-Skimming: ‘good’ schools can be more selective over what students they want
Silt-Shifting: ‘good’ schools can avoid taking pupils less likely to get good results
The Funding Formula
Schools given funding based on how many pupils they attract
More popular schools get more funding, so can afford better resources - high in demand, so mostly attended my middle-class students
Gewirtz: Parental Choice
Differences in parents’ economic and cultural capital leads to class differences in their choice of school:
- Privileged-Skilled Choosers: middle-class parents who use their economic and cultural capital to get the best for their child
- Disconnected-Local Choosers - working-class -parents whose choices were restricted by their lack of economic and cultural capital
- Semi-Skilled Choosers: working-class, ambitious for their children but lacked eco/cul capital so relied on other peoples’ opinions on schools
Myth of Parentocracy
Ball - education system seems like its based on parental choice, but not all parents have the same freedom to choose which school to send their child to
Middle-class parents can better take advantage of the choices available
Coalition Government Policies from 2010
Encourage ‘excellence, competition and innovation’
- Free schools
- Academies
- Fragmented centralisation
Academies
Coalition removed focus of reducing inequality by letting any school become an academy
Funding given directly by the government - they can control their own curriculum
2012 - 1/2 secondary schools converted
Free Schools
Set up and run by parents, teachers, businesses etc. instead of the local economy
- Claim gives opportunity to make new school if unhappy with the state of schools in the local area
Free schools take fewer disadvantaged pupil
Allen (2010) - Sweden, 20% free schools, only benefit children from highly educated families; free schools socially divisive
Fragmented Centralisation
Ball (2011) - academies and free schools have high fragmentation and centralisation of control
Fragmentation - comprehensive schools replaced by private providers; high inequality
Centralisation of control - central government has control of the development of academies or free schools
Coalition Policies & Inequality
Free school meals & pupil premium
- OFSTED (2012) - pupil premium not spent on those its meant to help
Sure start and EMA reduced working class opportunities
Privatisation of Education
Education becomes source of profit for capitalists
Ball - Education services industry (ESI) involved in range of activities in education; increased profit
Blurring the public/private boundary
Many senior officials leave to set up/work for private sector education businesses which provide services to schools
Pollack (2004) - allows companies to buy insider knowledge
Privatisation and the globalisation of educational policy
Many private companies in education services - industry foreign owned
Shift to privatised global level
Education as a commodity
Privatisation becoming key in shaping educational policy
State losing its role as provider of education
Cola-isation of schools
Private sector coming into schools indirectly (e.g. through vending machines)
Molnar (2005) - schools targeted as product endorsement
Marxists (Hall, 2011) - public services handed to private capitalists
Multicultural Education (MCE)
80s & 90s - promoted achievements of minority students
Stone (1981) - MCE misguided; picked out stereotypical features
Policies on Ethnicity
Assimilation - 60s and 70s focused on assimilating minorities into British culture
Social inclusion to help them learn English
Mirza (2005) - little change in policy
Gillborn - institutional racism still continues to do harm
Policies on Gender
Girls had to achieve higher marks in the 11+ exam to get into grammar schools
GIST - try to lower gender differences in subject choice
