Education: Educational policy and inequality

Question 1

What is the difference between equality of educational opportunity and equality of outcome?

Answer 1

Equality of educational opportunity:
The idea that every child, regardless of: social class, wealth, ethnicity, gender or disability, should have an equal chance to succeed to the best of their ability.

Equality of educational outcomes:
That everyone has the same chances of hearing in the eventual benefits of schools (e.g. fulfilling employment and prosperity).

Question 2

What would Marxists say about equality of outcome?

Answer 2

That the fact we do not live in a meritocratic society under a false class consciousness means we have no equality of outcome. External factors have a bearing on the outcome.

Question 3

What would functionalists say about equality of outcome?

Answer 3

That education is equal and society is meritocratic. If a child does no succeed they have not understood the habits of the schools norms and values.

Question 4

What Act was passed in 1880? What did it do?

Answer 4

The 1880 ‘education for all’ (the Forster Act):
School attendance was made compulsory for all children up to the age of 10. Before this only non-fee paying schools were run by churches or charities.

Question 5

What Act was passed in 1994? What did it do? What was the aim?

Answer 5

1994 Butler Education Act:
Following the 'success' of WW2, the Act was introduced to provide all children with secondary education. 
The act aimed to abolish class inequalities within education by introducing the tripartite system. This became a policy of selection.

Question 6

What were the three types of schools introduced under the tripartite system?

Answer 6

1. Grammar schools
2. Technical schools
3. Secondary Modern schools

Question 7

Define the ‘characteristics’ of Grammar schools:

Answer 7

Schools for students who passed the 11+ test. These students school with A-levels.

Question 8

Define the ‘characteristics’ of Technical schools:

Answer 8

Schools for students that has artistic talents e.g. D.T., art etc.

Question 9

Define the ‘characteristics’ of Secondary Modern schools:

Answer 9

Schools for students who failed the 11+ test. These students left school with O-levels after the 1960’s.

Question 10

What were the short-term and long-term effects of the tripartite system on people?

Answer 10

Short-term:

• Pupils joined anti-school subcultures.
• They were put into lower sets.

Long-term:

• People suffered from long-term trauma.
• Loss of self-esteem.
• Have a self-imposed barrier.
• Feeling of failure e.g. felt they failed their family.

Question 11

What is Marketisation?

Answer 11

When supply and demand forces of the free market are introduced into public services. The aim is too raise standards through competition whilst reducing costs.

Question 12

Which Act was passed in 1999, under Thatcher’s Conservative governments?

Answer 12

The Educational Reform Act (ERA):
This Act occurred when Thatcher sent Baker to investigate the education system.
Based on his work Marketisation was employed by the government to reform the system.

Question 13

What is ‘cream-skimming’?

Answer 13

When schools take the best students from surrounding schools, they do not create them. This makes the surrounding schools ‘sink schools’.

Question 14

What percentage of Grammar schools students are middle class?

Answer 14

94%

Question 15

What was ‘comprehensivisation’? What was the idea behind it?

Answer 15

Comprehensivisation was where Grammar schools, Secondary Modern schools and Technical schools where combined.
All students went to the same kind of school.
- There would be no more inequality.
- Same opportunity wold be given to all students.
- No more 11+ test.
- Good teachers where put into mainstream schools.

Question 16

Name two A03 points to evaluate comprehensivisation:

Answer 16

1. Inequality still persisted through institutional racism, classism and gender bias.
2. Comprehensivisation failed to address the underlying causes of inequality. This persists through setting, streaming and labeling.

Question 17

What are the effects of Marketisation?

Answer 17

• New IQism, (if you are white your a 2x as likely to be selected for the Gifted and Talented Programme then if you are of ethnic background).
• Educational Triage, (focusing on middle range children, this neglects working class pupils).

Question 18

How does Marketisation work?

Answer 18

1. Increased choice.
2. Increased competition.
3. Increased independence.

Question 19

Myth of Parentocracy (A03): Describe what Sharon Gerwitz, 1995, did, found and identified:

Answer 19

Gerwitz studied 14 London Secondary Schools.
She found that marketisation only benefited the middle class families due to their economic and cultural capital.
She identified three typed of parents:
1. Privileged-skilled choosers.
2. Disconnected-local choosers.
3. Semi-skilled choosers.

Question 20

What is a privileged-skilled chooser?

Answer 20

Professional middle-class parents who use their economic and cultural capital to gain educational capital for their children. Due to their confidence and previous education they are able to take advantage of the choices open to them.

Question 21

What is a disconnected-local chooser?

Answer 21

Working class parents whose choices were restricted by their lack of economic and cultural capital. They’re less able to manipulate the system to favour them and have difficulty dealing with the school.

Question 22

What is a semi-skiller chooser?

Answer 22

These parents are also mainly working class but unlike the disconnected-local choosers they are ambitious for their children. However, they too lack cultural capital and so had difficulty navigating the education system and often rely on other people’s opinion of the schools.

Question 23

What does Ball believe about Parentocracy? Why does he think this?

Answer 23

He believes it is a myth.
He believes Marketisation gives the appearance of parentocracy. It makes it appear that all parents have the same freedom to choose which school to send their children to, when in reality they don’t.

Question 24

What is ‘covert selection’?

Answer 24

Where secondary schools, and sometimes primary schools, use backdoor selection to cherry-pick those pupils who they think are likely to be of higher ability and/ or from a higher social class, with well-off, educated parents.
This is forbidden by the schools admission code.

Question 25

Name three examples of how covert selection is implemented in schools to slyly select students:

Answer 25

1. School kit is made expensive.
2. Certain areas are targeted for advertisements e.g. leaflets for open days only given out to richer areas.
3. Make the selection system hard to understand and complicated. After a while lower income families will get bored or not understand how to navigate the stem and put their child into the school.

Question 26

Impact of Marketisation: Free Schools:

What are free schools?

Answer 26

Schools that are free of local government or government control.

Question 27

How many free schools have been created?

Answer 27

Between 2010 and 2015 over 400 were approved.

Question 28

What has the government promised if a free school is built in a deprived area?

Answer 28

They are given additional funding.

Question 29

List some reasons to why it can be argued that free schools policy is wasteful:

Answer 29

1. There is no evidence that free schools have improved educational standards.
2. They receive a higher amount of funding that could be given to other schools.
3. They compete against neighboring schools. This can lead to a drop in funding - having a negative effect on some students.

Question 30

What did Vaughn find in 2016 about free schools?

Answer 30

He found they had mixed educational results, some very good and some very bad.

Question 31

According to Green et al, 2014, what is the problem with free schools built in socially deprived areas?

Answer 31

Schools have become socially selective. He found that free schools in disadvantaged areas had a lower proportion of FSM than the average for the area.

Question 32

Do free schools raise standards?

Answer 32

There is no evidence that they do.
According to the 2015 Ofsted report ‘we have inspected 158 free schools and inspection outcomes have broadly been in line with those for other schools’.
- However it is early days for free schools.

Question 33

What policies were put in place to help working class children break the middle class habitus of schools?

Answer 33

1. Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA): children were incentivized to stay in school by being given £30 a week.
2. City academies: setup to give failing inner city schools a fresh start and additional resources having a private sector sponsor.
3. Aim Higher Programme: aimed to raise the aspirations of groups who were underrepresented in higher education, (extra funds available, pay for schools trips etc.)

Question 34

What policy was put in place that contradicted the attempt for educational equality?

Answer 34

Labour introduced tuition fees for university. It created inequality through privatisation and Marketisation.

Question 35

What policy did the 2010-15 coalition government implement?

Answer 35

Funding was taken from local authority budgets and given directly to academies by central government, and were were given control over their curriculum. By allowing any school to become an academy the focus was taken off reducing educational inequality.

Question 36

Why is there little equality of outcome?

Answer 36

Because we do not lie in a meritocratic society. We still have a class divide through factors like capital and selection by mortgage. Middle class pupils do not fail as their parents can provide a glass floor, however you cannot tell them not to do this as that would be an infringement of personal liberty.

Question 37

What is Pupil Premium? What did Ofsted discover about it?

Answer 37

Pupil Premium is money that schools receive for each pupil from a disadvantaged background.
Ofsted (2012) found that in many cases the money is not spent in the areas it is meant too and so doesn’t have educational benefits.
Only 1/10 teachers said that it had changed how they supported from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Question 38

How have free schools affected Sweden’s education attainment?

Answer 38

Since introducing free schools Sweden’s educational ranking has fallen.
20% of schools in Sweden are now free schools, however many argue they: only benefit the middle class: they are socially divisive: lower standards.