Educational Policy + Inequality

• comprehensive school system - introduced 1965 and aimed to overcome class divide of tripartite system

  • 11+ and grammars, secondary moderns were abolished - replaced with comprehensive all pupils in area can attend
• Educational policy in Britain before 1940s

  Before Industrial Revolution no state school - education available to minority of population

  • industrialisation increased need for educated workforce - state made schooling compulsory
  • type of education children received depended on class background

  e.g. WC pupils given basic numeracy + literacy skills
• Selection: the tripartite system

  Influenced by idea of meritocracy, rather than ascribed at birth

  1944 Education Act - selected + allocated children to 3 different types of secondary schools - identified by 11+ exam

  1. Grammar: access to non-manual jobs and higher education (mainly MC)
  2. Secondary: access to manual work for people who failed exam (mainly WC)
  3. Technical: mostly for practical subjects
• Selection: the tripartite system - EVALUATION

  • exam reproduced class inequalities as different schools offered unequal opportunities
  • reproduced gender inequality
• two theories of comprehensive

  Functionalist: see education as fulfilling functions - e.g. secondary socialisation and meritocratic selection

  • argues it helps bring children from different social classes together

  Marxists: see it as serving needs of capitalism, reproducing and legitimising class inequality
• Conservative government policies from 2010

  Conservative - led coalition government and accelerated move from education system being based on comprehensive schools run by local authorities

  • strongly influenced by New Right through marketisation and privatisation
  • cuts were made to education budgets to reduce state spending
• Conservative government policies from 2010

  Academies:

  Schools encouraged to leave local authority control and become academies

  • funding taken from local authority budgets and given directly to academies

  In 2021, 78% of secondary schools converted to academy status

  • Labour's original city academies targeted disadvantaged schools - coalition government allowed any school to become academy, removed focus of reducing inequality
• Conservative government policies from 2010

  Free Schools: set + run by parents, teachers etc.

  • improving educational standards by moving control from state to parents

  Rebecca Allen: 20% = free schools that only benefit children from highly educated families

  • socially decisive and has lower standards

  Charter Schools: criticised for appearing to raise standards through strict pupil selection and exclusion policies
• Conservative government policies from 2010

  Fragmented centralisation

  Ball: argues promoting academies and free schools = increased fragmentation + centralisation of control over educational provision

  fragmentation - comprehensive system replaced by patchwork of diverse provisions, involving private providers = greater inequality in opportunities

  centralisation of control - power to allow schools to become academies/free schools, funded directly from central government
• Policy to reduce inequality: introduced free school meals and pupil premium

  Pupil Premium - money schools receive for each pupil from disadvantaged backgrounds

  Ofsted (2012) - Pupil premium is not spent on those it's supposed to help

  1 in 10 headteachers said it significantly changed how they supported pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds