Education policies and their significance Flashcards
What are criticisms that can be made of the 1944 Education Act and the Tripartite system?
- Only 20% of the country could go to grammar schools.
- Secondary moderns did not establish parity of esteem.
- More places were not made for girls even though they tended to do better on the 11+ exams.
- Very few T-Schools were ever built due to cost.
How did the 1944 Education Act aim to make schools more meritocratic?
Grammar schools, free for all and paid for by the State.
What influenced the Comprehensivisation of Schools?
→ Floud and Halsey (1956)
The 11+ was unfair on children from a working class background. The best way to boost social mobility was to give all students access to the same educational opportunity.
What was the New Right criticism of Comprehensives?
Progress was stagnated; schools would just find ways to reproduce the grammar system internally; less need for schools to be dynamic and more time was spent dealing with behavioural issues.
How were schools “marketised” by the 1988 Education Act?
League tables were created; parents gained choice of which comprehensive to send students to; A National Curriculum standardised what it was expected for children to know.
What criticisms can be made of the marketisation of schools?
- Selection through house prices / affordability of homes relative to income.
- Pressures on school / competition led to schools trying to show improvement over the quality of provision for the young people in their care.
- Creation of an A-C economy left some students behind.
How has the marketisation of schools improved schools?
- More dynamism in producing “results” for the children.
- Pass rates in English and Maths have increased.
- More accountability and more focus on progress has led to better measures for judging school improvement since 2010.
- Failing schools have been given a fresh start by dynamic school leaders and the support of extra money.
What was the 1976 Ruskin Speech?
A questioning of the suitability of the education system for providing children with the skills to succeed.
How has “parity of esteem” attempted to have been established in the education system since 1976?
Vocational courses, beginning with the YTS and later NVQs. From 2021: T-Levels.
What are popular trends in schools today?
- Assessing progress over achievement.
- Providing a knowledge rich curriculum that specifies the cultural literacy for a child to succeed.
- Greater school accountability on the range and breadth of a school’s curriculum as opposed to the headline results they provide each year.
