Marketisation Flashcards
How was the education market created?
Process of introducing market forces of consumer choice and competition between suppliers into areas run by the state.
Reducing direct control over education
Increasing both competition between schools and parental choice of school
What were key features of the education reform act in 1988?
National curriculum
National testing 7,11,14
OFSTED
Open enrolment
Formula funding
How has parentocracy been introduced into education system?
Publication of league tables and OFSTED inspection reports
Business sponsorship of schools
Open enrolment
Allowing parents and other to set up free schools
Schools becoming academies
What are league tables?
Publishing each schools exam results in a league table
What is cream skimming?
Good schools can be more selective choosing their own customers and recruiting high achieving mainly middle class pupils
What is silt shifting?
Good schools can avoid taking less able students who are likely to get poor results
What is funding formula?
Schools are allocated funds based on how many pupils they attract
More popular schools will get more funds so can afford more resources and better facilities
What does Gerwitz argue?
There are two types of parents and how they choose schools
Privileged skilled choosers
Disconnected local choosers
What are privileged skilled choosers?
Professional middle class parents
Confident and well educated
Use of economic and cultural capital
Knew how school admissions system worked
Have time to visit schools and skills to research options available
Can afford to move around
What are disconnected local choosers?
Working class parents
Restricted due to lack of cultural and cultural capital
Difficult to understand school admissions procedures
Less aware of choices available to them
Less able to manipulate the system
Distance and cost of travel were major restrictions
Limited meant nearest school was often realistic option
What is the myth of parentocracy?
Marketisation legitimises inequality by concealing its true causes and by justifying its existence
Appears all parents have same freedom to choose which schools to send their children to but this is not the case
Middle class parents are better able tot take advantage of choices by moving to catchment areas
Makes inequality in education seem fair and inevitable
What were features of the new labour 1997-2010?
Education action zones
Aim higher programmes
Educaiton maintenance allowance
City academies created
Increased funding for state schools
What were the coalition policies
Academies - encouraged to leave local authority control, funding taken from local authority budget and given directly to academies
Free schools - set up and run by parents, faith organisations or businesses
Policies to reduce inequality - free school meals and the pupil premium
What does Ball argue?
Fragmented centralisation
Fragmented - replaces by a patchwork of diverse provision
Centralisation of control - central gov alone has power to allocate funding
What did the Sutton trust find about free schools?
Disadvantage pupils in free schools gained slightly higher results than their peers in other groups
However free schools take fewer disadvantaged children than the national average
Many schools have been set up in areas where there are already good schools, so may take students from local schools resulting in a drop of funding for those schools
What are trends about free schools?
1/5 free schools have been set up by groups of parents most have been set up by academy chains
Free schools in disadvantaged areas had a lower proportion of pupils with FSM than the average for the area, suggesting they are attracting middle class students
Free schools recieve much higher funding - £7700 per pupil compared with £4767 for those in LA schools
What is privatisation in education?
Transfer of public assets to private companies
Education become s a source of profit for capitalists (education services industry)
How were coalitions of schools privatised?
Development of brand loyalty through displays of logos and sponsorships, product endorsement.
How did education become a commodity through privatisaiton?
Legitimate object of private profit making, a commodity to be bought and sold in an education market
