New Right views of education

Question 1

what did the New Right argue about parents?

Answer 1

• parents should be given choice in their child’s education

Question 2

how did the New Right plan on implementing this?

Answer 2

• create competition between schools for results
• increased choice for parents - open enrolment
• increased involvement of private enterprise in education

Question 3

what did the 1988 education reform act do?

Answer 3

• created a national curriculum
• formula funding - money given to schools was based on the number of students they attracted
• standardised testing
• parental choice and open enrolment - allowed successful schools to expand to the limit of their physical capacity

Question 4

what did the 1988 ERA encourage?

Answer 4

• marketisation - the idea that education could be run like a business. schools would compete with each other for customers in the form of parents and students

Question 5

what did New Rightists argue that marketisation would lead to?

Answer 5

• competition between schools which would give them more incentive to improve
• leads to expansion of successful schools measured by greater enrolment and the ability to recruit the best teachers

Question 6

what is Parentocracy?

Answer 6

• the ERA symbolised a power shift from local education authorities to parents because marketisation aimed to transform parents into consumers in the educational marketplace by giving them the ability to choose a school that best suits the needs of their child

Question 7

why does Gewirtz 1995 criticise parentocracy?

Answer 7

• studied 14 London schools and found that parentocracy is a myth because parental power is not equally distributed across all parents
• m/c parents have more power than w/c to choose from schools because they are able to use their economic, cultural and social capital to ensure their children enter the ‘best’ schools
• parents who fail to get children into schools of choice have limited choices in practice - have to go to failing schools

Question 8

why does Ball 1994 criticise marketisation?

Answer 8

• argues it reproduced and increased social class inequalities in education because high-achieving schools tended to select the ‘cream’ of m/c academic students and were less likely to admit students with learning difficulties