Educational Policy and Inequality Flashcards
Educational Policy in Britain before 1988
The state spent no public money on education.
Compulsory schooling
Industrialisation increased the need for an educated workforce. The state made schooling compulsory from the ages of 5 to 13 in 1880.
The tripartite system
1944 Education Act - students were to selected and allocated to three different types of secondary schools.
Selection by 11+ exam
Grammer school = middle class
Technical school = lower middle
Secondary school = working class
This reproduces class inequality as it legitimated inequality though the ideology that ability is inborn
The comprehensive school system
From 1965 the tripartite system was abolished and replaced with this. Functionalist sees as providing functions for future work roles. Marxists argue this reproduces class inequality.
Functionalists : Role of comprehensives
Promotes social integration by bringing children of different social classes together. Ford found little social mixing between the classes due to streaming. They also see it as meritocratic as it gives pupils a longer period to develop and show their abilities
Marketisation
Marketisation has created an education market by reducing direct state control over education and increasing both competition between schools and parental choice of schools.
1988 Education Reform Act
Central theme of government education policy, introduced by the conservative government of Margaret Thatcher
Neoliberals & New Right
They favour marketisation they argue schools have to attract consumers by competing with each other in the market.
Parentocracy
David (1993) describes marketised education as a rule by parents, they claim that this encourages diversity among schools, gives parents more choice and raises standards.
Policies to promote marketisation include:
Publication of league tables and Ofsted inspection reports.
Business sponsorship of schools
Schools competing to attract pupils
Introduction of tuition fees for higher education
The reproduction of inequality
Ball & Whitty (1998) notes how marketisation policies such as exam league tables reproduce class inequalities by creating inequalities between schools
Cream-Skimming & Slit-Shifting
Bartlett (1993)
Cream-Skimming involves schools becoming more selective and recuriting high achievers and pupils gain advantage
Slit-Shifting involves schools avoiding taking less able pupils who are likely to get poor results and damage schools league tables position
The funding formula
Schools are allocated funds by a formal based on how many pupils they attract. As a result, popular schools get more funds and so can afford better qualified teachers and facilities
Parental choice
Gewirtz argues that increasing parental choice, marketisation also advantages middle-class parents whose cultural capital advantages them.
Myth of Parentocracy
Ball argues that parentocracy is not a reality and all parents have the same freedom to choose which school to send their children.
Gewirtz : three different types of parents
Privileged-skilled choosers : these parents used their cultural capital o gain educational capital for their children and economic capital to afford to move their children around the educational system and go to ‘better schools’
Disconnected-local choosers : these parents were working-class who were restricted by their lack of economic and cultural capital
Semi-skilled choosers : Mainly working-class, who were ambitious for their children but lacked cultural capital.
New Labour & Inequality
The New Labour governments of 1997 & 2010 introduced Education Maintenance Allowances which were payments to students from low-income backgrounds to encourage them to stay in schools after 16 to gain better qualifications. They also introduced increased funding for state education.
Free schools
In England, evidence shows that free schools take fewer disadvantaged pupils than nearby schools, for example in 2011 only 6.4% of pupils at Bristol Free School were eligble for free school meals, compared with 22.5% of pupils across the city as a whole
Academies
The coalition government, allowed any school to become an academy, removed the focus on reducing inequality
Fragmented Centralisation
Ball (2011) argues that promoting academies and free schools has led to both increased fragmentation and centralisation of control over education provision in England
Progress 8
Progress 8 measures the progress that students have made from the end of primary school to the end of secondary school, and it predicts students’ GSCE results on the basis of their Key Stage 2 results
Curriculum Reforms
Ball suggests that Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition policy was underscored by Conservative beliefs in ‘real subjects’ and ‘the old methods are the best’ when it comes to teaching this was show by the national curriculum being rewritten, with more demanding programmes of study in English, Maths etc
Coalition Policies and Inequality
Ofsted (2012) found that in many cases the pupil premium is not spent on those it is supposed to help.
Privatisation of Education
Education has become a source of profit for capitalists, Ball calls the ‘education services industry’ According to Ball (2007) companies involved in such work expect to make up to 10x more than on other contracts.
Privatisation and the globalisation of education policy
The exam board Edexcel is owned by the US educational publishing and according to Ball some Pearson GSCE exam answers are now marked in Sydney.
The Cola-isation of schools
Ball
Schools as product endorsement
Molnar (2005) argues schools are targeted by private companies because ‘schools by their nature carry enourmous goodwill and can thus confer legitimacy on anything associated with them’
Policies on Gender
In 19th century, females were largely exlcuded from higher education, and under the tripartite system, girls often had to achieve a higher mark than boys in 11+ in order to obtain a grammer school.
