Education- Educational Policies

Question 1

Explain ‘educational policies’.

Answer 1

Educational policies are concerned with government plans for what the education system should achieve and how it should be organised.

Such policies include an understanding of the structure, role, impact, and experience of access to education, as well as the impact of globalisation on educational policy.

Question 2

What are the key aims of educational policy?

Answer 2

• Economic efficiency: improving skills of the labour force.
• Raising educational standards.
• Creating equality of educational opportunity.

Question 3

What are Gillborn and Youdell’s four aspects of educational opportunity? Explain them.

Answer 3

• Equality of access: Everyone should have the same opportunities to access schools of similar quality without unfair selection.
• Equality of circumstances: Everyone should start school at the same point in terms of home and material circumstance.
• Equality of participation: Everyone should have the same chances to participate on an equal footing in the everyday life of schools.
• Equality of outcome: Everyone should have the same chances of sharing the long-term benefits of schooling.

Question 4

Explain the Tripartite system and the three types of school.

Answer 4

Abilities were based on the 11+ exam, and children were allocated 1 of 3 schools based on aptitudes and abilities.
Technical schools only existed in a few areas.
Secondary modern schools offered a ‘practical’ curriculum and access to manual work for those who failed the 11+ (working class).
Grammar schools offered an academic curriculum and access to non-manual jobs for those who passed the 11+ (middle-class).
Reproduced class and gender inequality: channelled the two social classes into separate schools, and girls needed more marks in the 11+ to get a place in a grammar school than boys.

Question 5

Explain the Comprehensive school system.

Answer 5

Abolished 11+ exams, secondary-modern and grammar schools. It aimed to overcome the class divide and make education more meritocratic. All students within one area would attend the same comprehensive school. The change was decided by local education authorities meaning a secondary-modern/grammar divide still existed.

Question 6

What was the functionalist perspective on Comprehensive schools?

Answer 6

Functionalists say that comprehensive schools promote social integration by bringing children of all classes into one school. They also see the comprehensives as more meritocratic as it gives pupils longer to develop abilities and show skills.

Question 7

Explain Julienne Ford’s 1969 study.

Answer 7

Julienne Ford (1969) found that there was little social mixing between working-class and middle-class pupils, largely because of streaming.

Question 8

Explain the Marxist perspective on Comprehensive schools.

Answer 8

They argue that comprehensives are not meritocratic, and instead say that it reproduces class inequality through the continuation of streaming and labelling.

Question 9

What is the ‘myth of meritocracy’?

Answer 9

By not selecting children at 11, comprehensives appear to offer equal chance. The ‘myth of meritocracy’ legitimates class inequality by making unequal achievement seem fair and just, because failure looks like the fault of the individual rather than the system.

Question 10

What are compensatory policies, and what did they aim to do?

Answer 10

Compensatory education policies aimed to discriminate in favour of young people facing disadvantages in education due to home life or social class.
The policies included:
- Educational Action Zones/ Excellence in Cities (late 1990s-2000s)
- The pupil premium (2010-).
Gives schools with disadvantaged pupils more money which HAS to be spent on helping those pupils.

Question 11

What are the 4 factors that influence educational policy?

Answer 11

• Neoliberalism
• Globalisation
• Privatisation
• Marketisation

Question 12

Explain Neoliberalism’s effect.

Answer 12

Neoliberalism has links to the New Right and believes that the state should have a minimal role in providing and managing public services like education, relying instead on a system akin to how businesses operate in a free market.

Question 13

Explain Globalisation’s effect.

Answer 13

Globalisation, as it refers to education, is the formation of educational policy within a global context, using evidence drawn from comparisons with other countries (e.g. PISA).
This evidence had influenced changes to the curriculum, including the introduction of the EBacc which enables students to compete more effectively in a global market.

Question 14

Explain Privatisation’s effect.

Answer 14

Privatisation refers to the drive to make schools and colleges operate more like independent private businesses, such as managing their own affairs and competing with other schools through systems like league tables.

Question 15

Explain Marketisation’s effect.

Answer 15

Marketisation is necessary if schools are to be run like businesses and might include publicity, advertising literature and open days in order to tempt parents (the consumer) to send their children to the school.

Question 16

Explain Ball and Youdell’s ‘endogenous privatisation’ (privatisation IN education).

Answer 16

Privatisation in education involves schools and colleges operating in similar ways to private independent businesses, including managing their own affairs, competing with other schools for pupils, and using target setting and league tables to measure progress.

Question 17

Explain Ball and Youdell’s ‘exogenous privatisation’ (privatisation OF education).

Answer 17

Privatisation of education refers to the opening up of state education to private businesses who design, manage or deliver education (e.g. privately managed chains of academy schools, private companies taking responsibility for the exam system or ICT companies like Apple and Google providing online curriculum content).

Question 18

Evaluate Privatisation.

Answer 18

Positives:

• Privatisation creates more business-like and efficient schools, leading to raised standards and an increase in the school’s popularity amongst a potential customer base.
• Privatisation provides parents with more choices.

Negatives:

• Money might be drained from education and into private profit.
• Privatisation might very well lead to more inequalities in education because schools will want to discourage those children from poorer and disadvantaged families who might threaten the schools league position.

Question 19

What are the main 3 features of marketisation (education)? Explain them.

Answer 19

The marketisation of education began with the 1988 Education Reform Act, influenced by the neoliberal ideas of the New Right, and includes three main features:

• Independence: refers to the way schools operate similarly to businesses, in that they have control over their own affairs.
• Competition: means that schools compete with other schools for customers (pupils).
• Choice or ‘parentocracy’: refers to the way in which parents and potential pupils (the customers) are given the opportunity to decide which school or college they attend, rather than these decisions being made by the local authority.

Question 20

Evaluate ‘parentocracy’.

Answer 20

Parentocracy isn’t a reality for many parents, and while the middle-classes have gained most from parental choice, those families from disadvantaged backgrounds might be discriminated against through hidden or covert methods.

Question 21

What are the negative consequences of educational marketisation?

Answer 21

• Schools might attempt to maintain their position in league tables by concentrating resources on those pupils who are most likely to achieve (usually the middle-class) which increases divisions between pupils.
• Marketisation fails to help the weaker schools improve, as they lose money to their more successful rivals.
• There is less control over the planning and supply of school places and less control over school quality, with little regulation to prevent illegal and unfair covert admission policies.

Question 22

What was the influence of the Conservative government policies on management & funding? (1980s onwards).

Answer 22

Management moved from away from local authorities and to governors and headteachers.
The Conservative governments changed the formula used to calculate funding. Money is now allocated to schools based on the number of pupils in a school.

Question 23

What was the influence of the Conservative government policies on choice? (1980s onwards).

Answer 23

Parental choice and open enrolment – any school with vacancies had to accept any pupil until they were full.
A National curriculum and national testing (SATs) was implemented.

Question 24

What was the influence of the Conservative government policies on control measures? (1980s onwards).

Answer 24

Establishment of Ofsted to measure school performance and school quality.
Introduction of school performance tables (league tables), ranking schools on the grades achieved by their students and the ‘quality’ of each school.

Question 25

What improvements were made by the Labour government between 1997-2010?

Answer 25

• Increased funding for schools
• More nursery education
• Smaller primary school classes

Question 26

What is an Education Action Zone (EAZ)?

Answer 26

Establishment of Education Action Zones and academies in the more disadvantaged areas.
Education Action Zones are special areas, often in deprived parts of the country. The aim was to unite local schools, local parents & businesses to try to improve education in these areas.

Question 27

What did the 1997-2010 Labour government do for school funding?

Answer 27

Introduction of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA).
This provided supplementary funds or income to support children from less advantaged backgrounds as they continued in school.

Question 28

What is a Specialist school status?

Answer 28

Introduction of Specialist school status where all secondary schools were encouraged to adopt a specialist subject area.
For example, some schools could become ‘Language Colleges’ and specialise in teaching languages to their pupils.

Question 29

What did the Conservative- Lib Dem coalition do for academies and free schools? 2010-2015

Answer 29

Increase in the number of academies. Academies get the money for their budget directly from the central government (or department for education), instead of from the local government. Academies often have more autonomy around which teachers they should hire and how they choose which pupils should be admitted to their school.
Introduction of free schools. Free schools are schools that are set up by a group of people (sometimes parents) and they also receive their funding directly from the central government.

Question 30

What did the Conservative- Lib Dem coalition do for funding? 2010-2015

Answer 30

Introduction of the pupil premium (extra money for the most disadvantaged pupils).
How much money schools get in ‘pupil premium’ is often linked to the incomes of the parents of the children who attend the school.

Question 31

What did the Conservative- Lib Dem coalition do to the school curriculum? 2010-2015

Answer 31

Introduction of the English Baccalaureate (EBacc):
- The Department for Education define the EBacc as the subjects English Language & Literature, Maths, Science, Geography or History, and a language.

National Curriculum Reform (academies exempted).
Exam reform (new-style GCSE, AS and A levels). 

Coursework was removed from many subjects and exams were less modular, with AS levels de-emphasised and most GCSE exams happening at the end of year 11.

Question 32

What is, and explain PISA?

Answer 32

The  international league table known as PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) is measured every 3 to 5 years in order to compare performance from around the world.

The concerns that PISA highlights often creates panic amongst governments, this as ‘PISA panic’.
This is because governments want to quickly fix issues so that their education system is looked on more favourably.

Question 33

What are the benefits of international students?

Answer 33

British universities are relying on globalisation to help with financial hardships. -  International students generally pay much higher tuition fees than home-based students which therefore brings in extra funds.  

Question 34

Explain multiculturalism as a result of globalisation.

Answer 34

Globalisation has also impacted education due to the increasing flow of people from other cultures. 
This has led to teachings of multiculturalism, citizenship studies and wider variety of modern foreign languages.