Role of education and educational policy

Question 1

What does Durkheim argue that role of education is?

Answer 1

• Functionalist
• Social solidarity, edication system transmits societies values and culture
• Specialist skills, teaches people knowledge and skills to be used in labour after education

Question 2

What does Parsons argue that the role of education is?

Answer 2

• Functionalist
• Bridge between family and society, teaching universalistic values through meritocracy

Question 3

What do Davis and Moore argue that the role of education is?

Answer 3

• Functionalist
• inequality is necessary to make sure key roles are filled with able people because not everyone is equally talented
• Acts as a proving ground for ability
• Allows everyone to achieve the same job

Question 4

What is the evaluation of the funcationalist persepctives?

Answer 4

• Education system does not teach specialised skills as up to a third of 16-19 year olds are on courses that lead to low status jobs
• Equal opportunity does not exist becauuse of things such as material deprivation
• Marxists say it does not promote social solidarity but correspondance to the ruling class
• People are capable of rejecting education and do not passively accept educations values
• Neo liberals argue that education fails to prepare young people for work

Question 5

What are some similarities between new right and functionalist views?

Answer 5

• Some people are naturally more talented than others
• Favour meritocracy and competition
• Education should instill a shared value system

Question 6

What is Chubb and Moes persepctive on education?

Answer 6

• New right
• USA state education failed because it doesnt create equal opportunity, fails to produce pupils with correct skills for the economy, private schools provide higher quality of education because they answer to consumers
• Pupils from low income families do 5% better in private schools
• Parents given a voucher that funds a school and to get more vouchers the schools have to raise the quality of their education

Question 7

What do the new right say the role of the state is?

Answer 7

• Post framework about schools such as ofsted reports and league tables of school
• Schools transmit shared culture by imposing a single national curriculum

Question 8

What are the evaluations of the new right perspective?

Answer 8

• Gerwitz and Ball say competition benefits the middle class because they can use their cultural and economic capital to gain access to better schols
• Social inequality and low funded state schools is the cause of low educational standards
• Marxists argue that it dones not impose a shared culture but a dominant middle class one

Question 9

What does Althusser say the role of education is?

Answer 9

• Marxist
• Ideological state apparatus, Bourgeoisie can keep controlling the people’s ideas
• Repressive state apparatus, maintain the role of the Bourgeoisie through force.
• education produces and legitimates class inequalities.

Question 10

What do Bowles and Gintis say about the role of education?

Answer 10

• 237 high school students were rewarded more for correspondence than ingenuity
• This is known as the correspondence principle, school teaches submissiveness through the hidden curriculum
• Meritocracy does not exist

Question 11

What is an example of the working class rejecting the correspondance principle?

Answer 11

• Non-participant observation, 12 working class boys who rejected the school and were aware of the fact they were goig to work in factoires and chose to do it rather than being forced that way

Question 12

What are the evaluations of marxist persepetives ?

Answer 12

• Post-modernists argue that due to industrialisation, people no lloner work in factories and the system promotes diversity not inequality
• Pupils have the free will to reject reproduction and legitimisation of class inequality
• There are other inequalities not just class?

Question 13

What was education like before 1988?

Answer 13

• No state funding before 1833
• Compulsory to go to school fro 5 to 13 in 1880

Question 14

What was the tripartite system?

Answer 14

• 1944 education act, took the 11+ exam and if you passed you would go to a grammar school with an academic curriculum, mainly middle class
• If you failed you went to a secondary modern school, vocational and academic curriculum, mainly for working class
• Technical schools, fully vocational, mechanics and engineering. Very little amount

Question 15

What is the comprehensive school system?

Answer 15

• 1965, abolition of tripartite schools
• Left local education authority to chang ebut many didnt and grammar schools still exist
• Functionalists see the role of these as social intergration because of middle class and wokring class being in the same sets
• Marxists see the role of these as to reproduce class inequality through streaming where the proletariat are placed in lower sets and denied opportunity

Question 16

What is marketisation?

Answer 16

• Introducing market forces of competition ad consuumer choice to education by reducing state control and increasing parental education and competition
• Began with the 1988 Education reform act

Question 17

What is parentocracy?

Answer 17

• Power is shifted to the consumers (parents)encouraging choice and raising standards through competition through
• Open enrollment
• Specialist schools
• Formula funding
• Academisation
• Tuition fees
• Free schools

Question 18

What is cream skimming and silt-shifting?

Answer 18

• Cream skimming, middle class pupils are more likely to be picked because parents will be attracted to those with a higher standing on the league tables
• Silt shifting, good schools less likely to take low achieving groups filtering them into ‘bad schools’

Question 19

What is the funding formula?

Answer 19

• Popular schools get more funds as the same amount of funding is given per child
• Unpopular schools lose funding due to having less pupils leading to exponential failure

Question 20

What are the different types of choosers in parents?

Answer 20

• Gerwitz found there are three types of choosers depending on cultural, economic and social capital.
• Priviliged-skilled choosers, mainly middle class nad able to take opportunities due to economic and cultural capital
• Disconnected skilled choosers, working class parents who were restricted to lack of eocnomic and cultutal capital. Also restricted by distance and cost of travel to the school
• Semi-skilled choosers, mainly working class but ambitious for children, rely on the opinions of others to decide where is a good school.
• This shows the myth of parentocracy because some parents have more choice than others

Question 21

What policies did New labour introduce to reduce inequalities?

Answer 21

• Education action zones provided with extra support
• Aim higher programme
• Education maintenance allowances, children paid fortnightly if they attended all classes
• City academies
• Increased state funding for education

Question 22

What are academies?

Answer 22

• Academies, all school encouraged to leave LEA and funding given to academies directly from the central government taking it from LEAs
• 2012, over half of secondary schools are academies some government funded some privately funded

Question 23

What are free schools?

Answer 23

• Free schools, funded directly by the state but set up by parents.
• Claim to raise standards but 20% of Sweden’s schools are free schools and only benefit affluent children and being socially divisive
• Bristol free school had 18% less FSM children than the rest of the city

Question 24

What are some coalition policies that affected inequality?

Answer 24

• Free school meals, for all reception, year one and year 2
• Pupil premium, money schools receive fro each pupil from disadvantaged backgrounds
• Spending on school buildngs cut by 60%, sure start centres closed and EMAs abolished

Question 25

What is the privatisation of education?

Answer 25

• Trabsfer of public assets to private companies

Question 26

How has privatisation led to the globalisation of education policy?

Answer 26

• Edexcel now owned by Pearson exams now marked in Sidney and Iowa
• Four leading educational software companies owned by global multinationals such as Disney

Question 27

What is the cola-isation of schools?

Answer 27

• Schools targeted by private companies for product endorsement due to huge markets
• Limited benefits for schools, Pupils would have 5440 cadbury bars for new volleyball posts
• Uk families spent £110,000 in Tesco in return for one school computer

Question 28

What are some examples of ethnic educational policy?

Answer 28

• Assimilation, integrating EM into British education to raise achievement in the 60’s and 70’s
• Multicultural education, 80s-90s valuing EM culture in order to raise self esteem
• Social inclusion, Monitoring of exam results by ethnicity
• Schools promote racial equality due to the race relations act