Marketisation and Parentocracy Flashcards
1988 Act?
Education Reform Act
What did the Education Reform Act introduce?
Formula funding
SATS (7, 11, 14, 16)
League tables
OFSTED
What are the consequences of formula funding?
Schools are unlikely to cooperate with each other
Resources are spent on marketing the school
What are the consequences of SATS?
Stress
Reproduction of class inequality through streaming and banding
Self-fulfilling prophecy
Educational triage?
Gillborn and Youdell (2000)
A-C economy focuses on C/D borderline students
Hopeless cases and those who will pass anyway are ignored
What is marketisation?
Parents are stakeholders and select a school from a highly competitive free market
Why was marketisation introduced?
To raise standards of education
How may Marxists criticise marketisation?
Inequality causes low standards
Marketisation increases inequality between schools
What is parentocracy?
Parents selecting which school they’d prefer their child to attend
What are Brown’s (1990) three waves of education?
1 - introduction of mass schooling
2 - post-war, value of meritocracy
3 - post-ERA, value of parentocracy
What did Ball et al (1994) conclude about the marketisation of education?
Inequality between schools benefits only the middle class
Privileged, semi-skilled, and disconnected choosers
SEN students often neglected in favour of high achievers
What did Gerwitz (1994) say about parentocracy?
It is a myth
Parents do not have equal means to choose
Middle class parents use their cultural capital to ‘play the system’
What did Leech and Campos (2003) say about parentocracy?
Presented “selection by mortgage”
Middle class parents can afford to move into certain catchment areas
