EDUCATION POLICIES AND THEIR IMPACT

Question 1

Before 1988 (Selection: the tripartite system)

Answer 1

• 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 bought 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 exam.
• These contained Grammar school (offered an academic curriculum and access to non-manual jobs and higher education, they were for pupils with academic ability and were often middle-class), Secondary modern schools (offered a non-academic ‘practical’ curriculum and access to manual work for pupils who failed the 11+, and were mainly working-class), and technical schools (these only existed in a few areas).

Question 2

Eval (Marxists)

Answer 2

• 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+ exam to obtain a grammar school place.

Question 3

David (Marketisation, parentocracy)

Answer 3

• Marketisation has become a central theme of government education policy since the 1988 Education Reform Act (which allowed all schools to be taken out of the direct financial control of local authorities, and instead rely on the Secretary of State and central institutions).
• David describes marketized education as a ‘ parentocracy’. Supporters of marketisation argue that in an education market, power shifts away from the producers (teachers and secondary schools), and to the consumers (parents).
• They claim that this encourages diversity among schools, gives parents more choice and raises standards.
• Policies to promote marketisation include: the publication of league tables and Ofsted inspection reports that rank each school according to its exam performance and gives 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 higher education; allowing parents and others to set up free schools.

Question 4

Eval (Stephan Ball and Geoff Whitty)

Answer 4

• Despite the claimed benefits of marketisation, critics argue that it has increased inequalities.
• They note how marketisation policies, such as exam league tables and the funding formula, reproduces class inequalities by creating inequalities between schools.

Question 5

(Works as an eval/point) Sharon Gerwitz (Marketisation, parental choice)

Answer 5

• Not only do marketisation policies benefit the middle class by creating inequalities between schools, but by increasing parental choice, marketisation also advantages middle-class parents, whose economic and cultural capital puts them in a better position to choose ‘good’ schools for their children.
• Gerwitz’s study of 14 London secondary schools 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.
• The privileged-skilled choosers were mainly professional middle-class parents who used their economic and cultural 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 admission systems work, for example the importance of putting a particular school as a first choice- they had time to visit schools and the skills to research their options available.
• Their economic capital also meant that 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.
• There was also the disconnected-local choosers, who were working-class parents whose choices were restricted by their lack of economic and cultural capital.
• They found it difficult to understand school admissions procedures, and 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 the 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 own realistic option for their children.
• Lastly, there was the semi-skilled choosers, whose parents were also mainly working-class, but 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, and were frustrated at their inability to get their children into the schools they wanted.
• Although the education market gives everyone a greater choice, she concludes that in practice, middle-class parents possess cultural and economic capital and therefore have more choice than working-class parents.

Question 6

Coalition government (New schools)

Answer 6

• The Coalition government 2010 accelerated the move away from an education system based largely on comprehensive schools run by local authorities.
• It policies have been strongly influenced by neoliberal andNew Right ideas about reducing the role of the state in the provision of education through marketisation and privatisation.
• Cameron stated that the aim of the Coalitions educational policies was the encourage ‘excellence, competition and innovation’, by freeing schools from the ‘dead hand of the state’, through policies such as academies and free schools, as part of the government’s general policy of reducing state spending.
• From 2010, all schools were encouraged to leave local authority and become academies.
• Funding was taken from local authority budgets and given directly to academies by central government, and academies were given control over their curriculum.
• By 2012, over half of all secondary schools had converted to academy status; some academies are run by** private educational businesses and funded directly by the state.**
• However, whereas Labour’s original city academies targeted disadvantaged schools and areas, the Coalition government, by allowing any school to become an academy, removed the focus on reducing inequality.
• Furthermore, although directly funded by the state, free schools are set up and run by parents, teachers, faith organisations or businesses rather than the local authority.
• Supporters of free schools claim that they improve educational standards by taking control away from the state and giving power to parents
• Free schools, it is claimed, give parents and teachers the opportunity to create a new school if they are unhappy with the state schools in their local area.
• They also introduced free school meals, and the pupil premium.

Question 7

Eval (Rebecca Allen)

Answer 7

• Argued that research from Sweden, where 20% of schools are free schools, shows that they only benefit children from highly educated families.
• Other critics claim that free schools are socially divisive and that they lower standards- Sweden’s international educational ranking has fallen since their introduction.
• Charter schools in the USA have (similar to free schools) also been criticised for appearing to raise standards, but only doing so by strict pupil selection and exclusion policies.

Question 8

(Extra) Eval (Stephan Ball)

Answer 8

• Argued that promoting academies and free schools has led to both increased fragmentation = the comprehensive system is being replaced by a patchwork of diverse provision, much of it involving private providers, that leads to greater inequality in opportunities
• increased centralisation of control (central government alone has the power to allow or require schools to become academies or allow free schools to be set up; these schools are funded directly by central government, their repaid growth had greatly reduced the role of elected local authorities in education)** over educational provision in England.**

Question 9

Policies on ethnicity (assimilation and multicultural education)

Answer 9

• Policies aimed at raising the achievements of children from minority ethnic backgrounds have gone through several phases.
• These include assimilation policies in the 1960s and 1970s focused on the need for pupils from minority ethnic groups to assimilate into mainstream British culture as a way of raising their achievement, especially by helping those for whom English was not their first language.
• A related policy is that of compensatory education. However, critics argue that some minority groups who are at risk of underachieving, such as African Caribbean pupils, already speak English and that the real cause of their under-achievement lies in poverty or racism. Multicultural education policies through the 1980s and into the 1990s aimed to promote the achievements of children from minority ethnic groups by valuing all cultures in the school curriculum, thereby raising minority pupils’ self-esteem and achievements.

Question 10

Eval ( Mirza)

Answer 10

• They see little genuine change in policy, arguing that instead of tackling the structural causes of ethnic inequality such as poverty and racism, educational policy still takes a ‘soft’ approach that focuses on culture, behaviour, and the home.

Question 11

Privatisation (Privatisation and the globalisation of educational policy)

Answer 11

• Privatisation involves the transfer of public assets such as schools to private companies.
• In recent years, there has been a trend towards the privatisation of important aspects of education, both in the UK and globally.
• In the process, education becomes source of profit for capitalists in what Ball calls the ‘education services industry’ or ESU.
• Many private companies in the education services industry are foreign-owned.
• The exam board Edexcel is owned by the US educational publishing and testing giant Pearson, and according to Ball some Pearson GCSE exam answers are now marked in Sydney and Iowa. Similarly, according to Buckingham and Scanlon, the UK’s four leading educational software companies are all owned by global multinationals.
• Many contracts for educational services in the UK are sold on by the original company to others such as banks and investment funds. In a globalised world, these are often bought by oversees companies.
• Conversely, some UK edu-businesses work overseas.
• For example,Prospects has worked in China, Macedonia and Finland. Often, private companies are exporting UK education policy to other countries and then providing the services to deliver the policies.
• As a result, nation-states are becoming less important in policymaking, which is shifting to a global level and which is often privatised.

Question 12

Eval (Stuart Hall)

Answer 12

• A Marxist, he argued that the Coalitions policies were part of the ‘long march of the neoliberal revolution.
• Hall sees academies as an example of handing over public services to private capitalists, such as educational businesses.
• The neoliberal claim that privatisation and competition drive up standards is a myth used to legitimate the turning of education into a source of private profit.