Education: Educational policy and inequality Flashcards
What is the difference between equality of educational opportunity and equality of outcome?
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).
What would Marxists say about equality of outcome?
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.
What would functionalists say about equality of outcome?
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.
What Act was passed in 1880? What did it do?
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.
What Act was passed in 1994? What did it do? What was the aim?
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.
What were the three types of schools introduced under the tripartite system?
- Grammar schools
- Technical schools
- Secondary Modern schools
Define the ‘characteristics’ of Grammar schools:
Schools for students who passed the 11+ test. These students school with A-levels.
Define the ‘characteristics’ of Technical schools:
Schools for students that has artistic talents e.g. D.T., art etc.
Define the ‘characteristics’ of Secondary Modern schools:
Schools for students who failed the 11+ test. These students left school with O-levels after the 1960’s.
What were the short-term and long-term effects of the tripartite system on people?
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.
What is Marketisation?
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.
Which Act was passed in 1999, under Thatcher’s Conservative governments?
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.
What is ‘cream-skimming’?
When schools take the best students from surrounding schools, they do not create them. This makes the surrounding schools ‘sink schools’.
What percentage of Grammar schools students are middle class?
94%
What was ‘comprehensivisation’? What was the idea behind it?
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.
Name two A03 points to evaluate comprehensivisation:
- Inequality still persisted through institutional racism, classism and gender bias.
- Comprehensivisation failed to address the underlying causes of inequality. This persists through setting, streaming and labeling.
What are the effects of Marketisation?
- 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).
How does Marketisation work?
- Increased choice.
- Increased competition.
- Increased independence.
Myth of Parentocracy (A03): Describe what Sharon Gerwitz, 1995, did, found and identified:
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.
What is a privileged-skilled chooser?
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.
What is a disconnected-local chooser?
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.
What is a semi-skiller chooser?
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.
What does Ball believe about Parentocracy? Why does he think this?
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.
What is ‘covert selection’?
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.
