6 markers

• Outline three reasons why government education policies aimed at raising educational achievement among disadvantaged groups may not always succeed?

  • Difficult to implement policies  – its very difficult to intervene in a pupils’ home life or change how parents socialise and motivate children
  • Educational policies alone cannot overcome poverty as a cause of underachievement – this requires far reaching redistributive economic policies to tackle it
  • Means tested educational policies such as free school meals may have low uptake by targeted groups because of the stigma attached to them
• Outline three ways in which the education system may be seen as patriarchal.

  • Teacher labelling / streaming – girls are more likely to be seen as good pupils, teachers may give more of their time to boys
  • Subject choices – girls are more likely to take humanities subjects like English literature, whilst STEM subjects like computer science are very male dominated
  • Curriculum – the curriculum could be patriarchal as there more examples of males in some subject content
  • Male gaze – girls may be seen as sexual objects
• Outline three reasons why some working-class boys join anti-school subcultures.

  • Status frustration – boys find it harder to succeed, so they form anti-school subcultures to find status in other ways
  • Work – working-class boys are more likely to be the children of manual workers etc who do not value education, and would much rather be working than in academia
  • Working class attitudes and values – fatalism and immediate gratification may result in feelings of alienation for some working-class boys in school and membership of anti-school subcultures
• Outline three criticisms of marketisation policies in education.

  • Disadvantages ethnic minorities through Parentocracy – non-white families who aren’t familiar with the education system don’t have the cultural capital to apply to good schools
  • Assumes competition between schools is desirable – it might discourage cooperation between schools in an area
  • Assumes that competition between schools creates a meritocracy – middle-class parents can use their cultural capital to ensure their children succeed regardless
  • Fewer resources are available for directly supporting learning – time and money is more spent on marketing and publicity 
• Outline three functions that the education system performs for society.

  • Skills and knowledge – schools give students the skills and knowledge needed for them to assume their role in the complex division of labour
  • Secondary socialisation – education system teaches children how to behave and work with others eg groupwork and social norms
  • Social solidarity – through the teaching of history and culture, school helps to create a shared sense of identity
  • To reproduce class inequality – differences in cultural capital limits social mobility