State policy and education

Question 1

What are the three types of school in the Tripartite system?

Answer 1

• Grammar schools - were for the able kids who passed the 11+. Pupils were taught traditional subjects ready for university. Around 20% of kids got into grammar school.
• Secondary modern schools- were for the 75-80% of pupils who failed the 11+. offered a basic education.
• Technical Schools - meant to provide a more vocational education for those pupils with aptitude for practical subjects.

Question 2

What are some problems with the tripartite system and the 11+?

Answer 2

• the 11+ didn’t necessarily measure your intelligence. it was culturally biased, and suited the middle class more than the working class. it legitimised social class inequality, by incorporating it into a system.
• few technical schools were built, so the vocational part of the plan didn’t work that well. Most children ended up at either a grammar school or secondary modern school.
• kids who failed the 11+ were labelled as failures, which sometimes turned them off education.
• if well-off middle class pupils failed, their parents could still afford to send them to private schools.

Question 3

what are some positive aspects of the 1965 comprehensive system?

Answer 3

• there’s no 11+, so 80% of the school population don’t get labelled as failures.
• High-ability students generally still do well with this system. Lower-ability pupils do better in comprehensive schools than in the old secondary moderns.

Question 4

What are some criticisms of the 1965 comprehensive system?

Answer 4

• most comprehensive schools still sort pupils into streams or sets depending on test scores, so it’s still possible to feel like a failure without the 11+.
• comprehensives in working-class areas have worse GCSE results than those in middle-class areas.
• comprehensive schooling hasn’t achieved equality of opportunity. schools tend to be ‘single-class’, depending on the local area.

Question 5

What were the vocational reforms that were pushed for in 1976?

Answer 5

• Youth Training Schemes (YTS) started in 1983. These were job training schemes for school leavers aged 16-17.
  -NVQs (1986) and GNVQs (1992) were introduced - these were practical qualifications.
• the New Deal, introduced in 1998, meant people on benefits had to attend courses if they didn’t accept work.

Question 6

What are some problems with vocational education?

Answer 6

• vocational education aims to teach good work discipline, not skills.
• some marxist sociologists say that vocational training provides cheap labour and that governments encourage people into training schemes to lower unemployment statistics.
• vocational qualifications often aren’t regarded as highly as academic qualifications by universities and employers.
• some feminist sociologists argue that vocational qualifications force girls into traditionally ‘female’ jobs, such as beautician and childminder.

Question 7

What did the conservative government introduce in the 1988 education reform act?

Answer 7

• introduced more vocational courses and more work placement schemes.
• national curriculum of compulsory subjects for all 5-16 year olds. (English, Maths and Science).
• OFSTED was set up to inspect schools and make sure they were doing a decent job.
• Schools could opt out of their local education authority and become grant-maintained schools. They got money straight from the government and could spend it how they liked. the government believed this would improve standards.
• parents could choose which school to send their child to
• parents could use league tables to help them choose.
• schools worked like businesses and advertised for students.
• pupils had to sit SATS at 7,11 and 14, and GCSES at 16.
• the results could be used to form league tables.

Question 8

What are some criticisms of these policies?

Answer 8

• sociologists like Whitty (1998) argue that middle-class parents have an advantage in an educational market. Since they are more likely to have succeeded in education themselves, they have the knowledge and attitudes to choose a good school for their child. They also have financial capital to move to an area with better schools.
• constant testing can be stressful for students, and can encourage labelling and self-fulfilling prophecy.
• Ball (1995) claimed that the new National Curriculum was the ‘curriculum of the dead’, because its emphasis on the core subjects was outdated.

Question 9

From (1997-2010) New Labour followed third way ideas, what were these ideas/ what did they do?

Answer 9

• new labour continued the process of marketisation begun by the previous conservative government. E.g., they let schools specialise in certain subjects and they also allowed faith schools to be set up.
• New right thinking made education more privatised. Agencies were given contracts for things like improving the reading and writing in primary schools.
  -the government also pursued some interventionist policies such as: reducing infant class sizes to a max of 30, introducing numeracy hour and literacy hour in primary schools, trying to increase the number of people going to uni.

Question 10

What were some policies aimed to promote gender equality?

Answer 10

• the 1988 National Curriculum gave all pupils equal entitlement to all subjects for the first time. This has been credited with the increased achievement of girls in the last 20 years.
• initiatives such as the computer club for girls (CC4G), Women Into Science and Engineering (WISE) and Girls in Science and Technology (GIST) encourage girls to get involved with subjects they have traditionally avoided.
• in 1999 the government gave grants to primary schools to hold extra writing classes for boys to help push up their SAT scores. In 2005 the Breakthrough programme introduced mentoring, after-school classes and e-tutorials for teenage boys in an attempt to improve their exam performance.

Question 11

What are some new labour policies aimed to reduce class inequality?

Answer 11

• sure start began in 1999. It was a government programme to improve early education and childcare in England, and offered up to years of free childcare and early education to all three- and four-year-olds.
• The Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) gave up to £30 a week to students who stayed on in education post-16. A series of bonuses were available for good attendance and progress.
• Education Action zones were introduced in 1998 as a way of tackling educational inequality by area.
• Free school meals and breakfast clubs also aimed to reduce class inequality.
• the Academies Programme opened new schools in disadvantaged areas where existing schools were judged to be ‘failing’. They were run in partnership with local business sponsors to try to improve performance.

Question 12

What are some criticisms of the new labour policies?

Answer 12

Benn (2012) criticised new labour because their policies aimed at reducing educational inequality seemed to be inconsistent with policies that threatened to increase it. (e.g., raising uni fees creates a barrier to higher education for many working-class students).
- third-way politics was too contradictory. She calls this the ‘New Labour paradox’/

Question 13

What did the coalition government do with privatisation and marketisation?

Answer 13

• they changed the academies programme. any schools classed as ‘outstanding’ by OFSTED could apply to become an academy without a sponsor. Failing schools were made into sponsored academies. The increasing numbers of schools run by private organisations means the privatisation of the education system has advanced.
• They also introduced free schools, which are set up by groups of parents, teachers or religious groups and don’t have to teach the national curriculum. The government hoped this would provide more choice in disadvantaged areas.
• Education secretary Micheal Gove changed the national curriculum: a levels were changed to a linear structure, coursework and modular exams were removed at GCSE, far more formal grammar was included in the primary english curriculum.
• introduced the pupil premium, provided extra funding for schools with students on free school meals.

Question 14

What are some criticisms of the Coalition education policies?

Answer 14

• in some disadvantaged areas, the academies and free schools attract all the best teachers, which undermines other local schools.
• it is difficult to track whether pupil premium funding is actually being spent on disadvantaged pupils, or whether it is being absorbed into the whole school budget.
• the maximum tuition fees in higher education increased to £9000 per year. This can be seen as socially exclusive, because it’s also increased the loans that most students need. This debt can be off-putting for working-class students.

Question 15

How has globalisation affected education?

Answer 15

• the British economy needs to be competitive in global industries like technology, so British workers need to be highly trained. This has an impact on education policy - e.g., computer programming has been introduced to the primary school curriculum.
• Increased immigration to the UK has meant that there’s a heavier focus on learning about other cultures. schools also need to provide specialised support for pupils whose first language is not english.
• educational ideas are shared between nations. UK politicians have been influenced by countries such as Finland, whose education system is ranked very highly. However, Kelly (2009) has warned that as education systems become increasingly similar, they’ll become less relevant to the needs of individual nations.