Education - Social Policy Flashcards
What was the 1944 Tripartite System aka the ‘Butler Act’?
- Aimed to give equal chance to develop individuals’ abilities.
Primary - 5>11y/o, Secondary - 11>15y/o - 11+ exams were introduced and allocated into 3 schools:
-Grammar (20%, mostly m/c)
-Technical (5%)
-Secondary Modern (75%)
What are criticisms of the 1944 Tripartite System?
- 11+ is too young to determine a child’s future life
- Many were unable to get into further education
- Secondary Mod. schools were seen as ‘second rate’
- Class divide still remains
What were the 1966 Comprehensives policy?
Believed that everyone should have an equal chance to succeed and provided equality of educational opportunity. 11+ exams were scrapped along with grammar and secondary modern schools and a comprehensive system was introduced. By 1979, 80% of secondary pupils were attending comprehensives.
What are the Sociological views of Comprehensives?
Functionalists - Believe that comprehensives achieve social integration and meritocratic selection for future work roles.
Marxists - See education as serving the interested of capitalism, reproducing and legitimising class inequality (now often achieved through streaming)
What are the criticisms of Comprehensives?
- Streaming - as Keddie suggests, streaming may lead to self-fulfilling prophecy in which the achievements of pupils in lower streams deteriorate
- Labelling - as Ball shows, even when streaming isn’t present teachers may continue to label w/c pupil negatively and restrict their opportunities. Therefore education can reproduce inequality.
- Comprehensives are seen to have legitimated inequality through the ‘myth of meritocracy’, all pupils in the same school are seen to have equal opportunity, regardless of experiences of deprivation etc
- As local authorities were allowed to decide whether to go comprehensive and not all did, grammar - secondary mod. divide still exists.
What was the 1988 Education Reform Act?
The conservative government established a national curriculum for all state schools, introduced national testing like SATs, reduced the role of LEAs by giving greater control to individuals schools and gave parents choice and schools were funded according to the amount of ‘bums on seats’. The new right liked this as it introduced the idea of marketisation. The Education Reform Act began this process of marketisation and has continued into New Labour and Coalition Gov.t.
What are the similarities and differences between New Right, Neo Liberal and Functionalists?
Similarities:
- Some people are more naturally talented
- Education should be run on meritocratic principles
- Education should specialise pupils into shared values, such as competition
Differences (New Right):
- The Education system isn’t achieving it’s goals
- Education is failing as its run by the state
-It is an unresponsive and inefficient system as it doesn’t respond to consumer demands
What is the New Right’s aims?
Has actively promoted the process of marketisation. They believe that schools should compete to attract students so that parents want to send their children to the ‘best’ local school. New Right believe that this competition between schools will empower the consumers, bringing diversity, choice and efficiency to education. New Right believe that standards in education will be improved if the role of the state is reduced. State can only interfere to impose a framework for schools to compete or to impose a national curriculum.
What did New Right’s theorist Chubb and Moe argue?
Suggests that American state education has ailed and should be opened to market forces of supply and demand. It’s ailed and it does not create equality or opportunity. They called for the introduction of a market system into state education - putting education into the hands of consumers. Each family is given a voucher to spend on buying education from the school of their choice. There’s the belief that this will force schools to be responsive to parents and schools will have to work to improve standards and attract consumers. Suggest that the privatisation of state education would be beneficial as they found from a survey that pupils from low income families that 5% of kids did better in private schools.
What policies were introduces to promote marketisation?
- League tables and Ofsted inspections - informing parents of the ‘best’ schools
- Business sponsorship of schools - involving private funding in education
- Open enrolment - allowing successful schools to recruit more pupils, from outside their catchment
- Formula funding - schools receive the same amount of funding for each pupil, so therefore encouraging schools to recruit more students to increase funding
- Schools being able to opt out of LEA control - gaining funding from central gov.t and giving individual schools greater control over their budget.
- Introduction of tuition fees for higher education
- Allowing parents and others to set up free schools giving parents, charities and churches more involvement in education
What was David’s view of marketisation?
He described marketisation phase as parentocracy ‘rule by parents’. Power has shifted from the producers o education (teachers/schools) to the consumer (parents). This encourages diversity, choice and meet the needs of pupils and raise standards.
What are criticisms of the marketisation and the New Right view?
- Goods schools are allowed to be more selective and recruit high achieving, many m/c pupils. For bad schools, they can’t afford to be selective and have to take less able, mainly w/c. Their results are poorer and remain unattractive to m/c parents.
- Schools are allocated funds by a formula based on how many pupils they attract. Popular schools gets more funding therefore more facilities which increases popularity and allows them to be selective. In contrast schools in poorer areas cannot relate and will eventually close.
How does Ball criticise the New Right view?
- Suggests that marketisation has increased social class inequalities and m/c parents take advantage of their choice using their cultural and economic capital. Marketisation reproduces and legitimates inequality thru league table and formula funding
- The myth of parentocracy: marketisation reproduces inequality but it also legitimates it by concealing its true causes. Suggests that marketisation gives the appearance of a ‘parentocracy’ but that’s a myth as not all parents have choice
How does Gerwitz criticise the New Right view?
Gerwitz studied 14 London schools and identified 3 main types of parents: Privileged skilled choosers, Semi-skilled choosers and Disconnected-local choosers. Gerwitz shows that m/c parents have more economic and cultural capital, so are able to do things such as moving into a desirable catchment which many w/c are unable to do so also proves the myth of parentocracy
How does Bartlett (1993) criticise the New Right view?
Argues that marketisation leads to popular schools:
- Cream-skimming: selecting higher ability pupils, who gain the best results and cost less to teach
- Silt-shifting: Off-loading pupils with learning difficulties, who are expensive to teach and get poor results
