Marketisation

• What is Parentocracy?


  • With the introduction of marketisation, parents have been given the choice in where to send their child to school, this is parentocracy.
• What policies have been introduced with marketisation?

  -Several policies have been introduced with marketisation which parents take into Account when choosing a school for their child such as:

  -League tables

  -OFSTED inspections

  -Business sponsorship of schools

  -Specialist schools - e.g IT, language schools which widens parental choice

  -Formula Funding

  -Schools opting out of local authority control and becoming academies

  -Schools competing to attract pupils

  -Tuition fees

  -Parents and others being able to set-up free schools
• What are the evaluations of Parentocracy?

  • Critics argue that the policies of parentocracy which marketisation has brough has increased inequality.
  • League Tables & Cream-skimming - by publishing exam results, it ensures that there is more demand from parents for their children to go there.
  • (Bartlett) - this encourages cream-skimming & silt shifting.
• What is cream-skimming & silt-shifting?

  • So, the best achieving schools get more funding through formula funding so they can improve facilities to further improve results but they are also able to choose the most gifted students to go to their school - ‘cream-skimming’ whilst the underachieving students go to a worse school - ‘silt-shifting’.
  • These worse schools continue to get poorer results and so cant improve without more formula funding and continue to produce poorer results.
• What is formula funding?

  • Schools get the same amount of only per student attending the school, school that have more students attending, which happens to better schools which are in higher demand will recieve more funding and will be able to improve facilities and quality of education to be ale to continue to improve results.
• What is Parental Choice?

  • (Gewirtz) With marketisation Parental choice has increased, however, middle-class parents are in a better position to choose a good school for their children.
  • Gewirtz studied 14 London secondary schools, found that differences in parents economic & cultural capital leads to class differences in how much they can exercise the ability to make a choice of what secondary school they want to send their kids to.
  • She identified 3 main types of parents.

  1. Privileged-skilled choosers
  2. Disconnected-local choosers
  3. Semi-skilled chooser
• Who are semi-skilled choosers?

  • Semi-skilled chooser - Mainly working class but were ambitious for their children, but found it difficult to navigate the education market, relying on others opinion of the school.
• Who are privileged-skilled choosers?

  • Privileged-skilled choosers - Mainly middle-class parents who use their economic & cultural capital to gain better education for their children. They know how school admissions work & had time to visit schools and the skills to research available options E.g on the internet.
• Who are disconnected local choosers?

  • Disconnected Local Choosers - Working—class who’s choice of their children's education is restricted by a lack of economic & cultural capital. They don’t understand school admissions and believe safety and quality of facilities is more important than long-term ambitions. Distance & cost of travels are also a major restriction in choice of school.
• What is the myth of parentocracy?

  • (Ball) - parentocracy is a myth and is not reality, it makes it appear that parents have the same opportunity to choose where they want to send their child to school, A lot of parents don’t have that choice.
  • Gewirtz highlights in her study of London secondary schools that middle-class parents are better able to take advantage of the choices available.
  • (Leech & Campos) - middle-class can afford to move to areas with more desirable schools.
  • Therefore, there continues to be class inequality in education if middle-class can choose better schools.