Educational Policy And Inequaility Flashcards

Question

Academies - conservative government

Answer 1

- from 2010, all schools were encouraged to leave local authority control 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 2017, over 68% 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 labours original city academies targeted disadvantaged schools and ares, the coalition government, by allowing any school to become an academy, removed the focus on reducing inequality

Answer 2

- although funded directly 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 ares - however, Allen argues that research from Sweden, where 20% of schools are free schools, show that they only benefit children from highly educated families. - other critics claim that free schools are socially divisive and that they lower standards. - in England, evidence shows that free schools take fewer disadvantage pupils than nearby schools.

Answer 3

- ball argues that promoting academies and free schools has led to both increased fragmentation and increased centralisation of control over educational provision in England

Answer 4

- 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

Answer 5

- 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 rapid growth has greatly reduced the role of elected local authorities in education

Answer 6

- while the conservative led coalitions marketisation policies are said to have increased inequality, they also introduces polices aimed at reducing it. These include: - free school meals - for all children in reception, year one and year two - the pupil premium - money that schools receive for each pupils from a disadvantaged background - however, ofsted is found that in many cases the pupil premium is not spent on those it is supposed to help. Only 1 in 10 head teachers said that it has significantly changes how they supported pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds - furthermore, as part of the conservative governments ‘austerity’ programme, spending on many areas of education has been cut: many sure start centres were closed. Education maintenance allowance (EMA) was abolished and uni fees tripled - critics argue that cutting cure start and the EMA has reduced opportunities for w/c pupils. And the increase of uni fees may discourage them from entering higher education

Answer 7

- 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 a source of profit for capitalist in what balls calls the ‘education services industry’ or ESI - private companies in the ESI are invloved in an ever increasing range of activities in education, including building schools. - large scale school building projects often involve public-private partnerships, in which private sector companies provide capital to design, build, finance and operate educational services. - many of these activities are very profitable. According to ball, companies involved in such work expect to make up to ten times as much profit as they do on other contracts.

Answer 8

- many senior officials in the public sector, such as directors of local authorities and head teachers, now leave to set up or work for private sector education businesses. These companies then bid for contracts to provide services to schools and local authorities. E.g, two companies set up in this way hold four of the five national contracts for school inspection services - as pollack notes, this flow of personnel allows companies to buy ‘insider knowledge’ to help win contracts, as well as side stepping local authority democracy

Answer 9

- 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. - similarly, according to Buckingham and scanlon, the uks four leading educational softwear compaines 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 overseas companies

Answer 10

- the private sector is also penetrating education indirectly, e.g, through vending machines on school premises and the development of brand loyalty through displays of the logos and sponsorships. This process has been called the ‘cola-isation’ of schools - according to molnar, schools are targeted by private companies because ‘schools by their nature carry enormous goodwill and can thus confer legitimacy on anything associated with them’ in other words, they are kind of product endorsement - however, the benefits to schools and pupils of this private sector involvement are often very limited. E.g, according to ball, a cadburys sports equipment promotion was scrapped after it was realved that pupils would have yo eat 5,440 chocolate bars just to qualify for a set of volleyball posts. - according to beder, uk families spent £110,000 in Tesco supermarkets in return for a single computer for schools

Answer 11

- ball concludes that a fundamental change is taking place in which privatisation is becoming the key factor shaping educational policy. Policy is increasingly focused on moving educational services out of the public sector controlled by the nation state, to be provided by private companies instead. In the process, education is being turned into a ‘legitimate object of private profit making’, a commodity to be bought and sold under an education market - privatisation means that the state is losing its role as its provider of educational services. - similarly, Marxist such as hall see conservative government policies as part of the ‘’long march of the neoliberal revolution’’. Hall sees academies as an example of handling over public services to private capitalists, such as educational businesses. In the Marxist view, the Neo liberal claim is that privatisation and competition drive up standards is a myth used to legitimate the turning of education into a source of private profit

Answer 12

- in the 19th century, females were largely excluded from higher eduction. More recently, under the tripartite system, girls often had to achieve a higher mark than boys in the 11+ in order to obtain a grammar school place - since the 1970s, however, policies such as GIST have been introduces to try to reduce gender differences in subject choice

Answer 13

- policies aimed at raising the achievements of children from minority ethnic backgrounds have gone through serval phases: - assimilation - multicultural education - social inclusion

Answer 14

- pupils from minority ethnic groups, and policies to raise their achievement, became the focus in the late 1990s. Policies included: - detailed monitoring of exam results by ethnicity - amending the race relations act to place a legal duty on schools to promote racial equality - help for voluntary ‘Saturday schools’ in the back community - English as an additional language programme - however, Mirza sees little genuine changes in the policy. She argues, 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 cultural, behaviour and the home - similarly, gillborn argues that institutionally rasict policies in relation to the ethnocentric curriculum, assessment and steaming continue to disadvantage minority ethnic group pupils

Answer 15

- policies in the 1960s and 70s 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 eduction - however, critics argue that some minority groups who are at risk of of underachieving, such as African Caribbean pupils already speak English and that the real cause for their under achievement lies in poverty or racism

Answer 16

- 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 - however, multicultural education has been criticised on serval grounds: - stone argues that black pupils do not fail for lack of self esteem - critical race theorist argue multicultural education is mere tokenism it picks out stereotypoical features of minority cultures for inclusion in the curriculum, but fails to tackle institutional racism - the new right criticise for perpetuating cultural divisions. They take the view that education should promote a shared national culture and identity into which minorities should be assimilated