Educational policy

• Education in the past

  -Before 1870, education was not free nor was it compulsory

  -Education was either privately funded or provided by the church

  -With the Industrial Revolution, child labour dominated childhood

  -With the introduction of 1870 Education Act, children aged 5-12 were expected to attend to school.
• The tripartite system

  -From 1994, education began to be influenced by the idea of meritocracy- that individuals should achieve their status in life through their own efforts and abilities.

  -The 1994 Education Act brought in the tripartite system, so called because children were to be selected and allocated to one of three different types of school.These were to be identified by the 11+ exam.

  -Rather than promoting meritocracy, the tripartite system and 11+ reproduced class inequality by channelling the two social classes into 2 diff types of school that offered unequal opportunities. It ALSO reproduced gender inequality by requiring girls to gain higher marks than boys to pass the 11+

  -The only positive is that students who entered the grammar school left with excellent results.

  -Only 3% of grammar school children are on FSM

  -criticism: it is too early to decide a child's future
• The comprehensive school system

  -->It was introduced from 1965 onwards. It aimed to overcome the class divide of the tripartite system and make education more meritocratic. The 11= was abolished along with grammar schools and replaced with comprehensive schools- however it was let to the local authority council to decide whether they wanted to "go comprehensive".
• Evaluation


  -->Explanations suggesting why it was effective:

  -W/C children have the opportunity to pursue the same qualifications as m/c students.

  -More w/c students now enter higher education

  -Less academic students do better because of the greater range of courses and qualifications

  -->Explanations suggesting why it was not effective:

  -Hargreaves (1967) and Ball (1981) argue that the comprehensive ideal is undermined by streaming and setting . the allocation of children to streams or sets is often based on social class or conformity to rules rather than ability.

  -Some local authorities continue with the grammar school system
• Two roles of comprehensives

  -->Functionalists argue that comprehensives promote social integration by bringing children of diff social classes together in one school. However, an early study by Ford(1969) found little social mixing between w/c and m/c pupils, largely because of streaming.

  -->Also, they believe it gives pupils a longer period in which to develop and show their abilities, unlike the tripartite system.

  -->However Marxists argue that comprehensives are not meritocratic. Rather, they reproduce class inequality from one generation to the next through the continuation of the practise of streaming and labelling. They deny w/c children equal opportunity.
• Marketisation


  -refers to the process of introducing market forces of consumer choice and competition between suppliers into areas run by the state. It has created an education market by:

  -Reducing direct state control over education

  -Increasing both competition between schools and parental choice of school.

  -Marketisation has become a central theme of gov education policy since the 1988 Education Reform Act, introduced by the conservative gov of Margaret Thatcher.

  -From 1997, the New Labour govs of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown followed similar policies, emphasising standards, diversity and choice. In 2010, the neo-liberal democrat coalition gov took marketisation for example creating free academies and free schools.
• Parentocracy


  -Policies to promote marketisation:

  -->Publication of league tables and Ofsted inspection reports that rank each school according to its exam.

  -->Business sponsorship of schools

  -->Open enrolment

  -->Specialist schools, specialising in IT, languages etc.

  -->intro of tuition fees for higher education

  -Miriam David(1993) describes marketised education as a 'parentocracy'. Supporters of marketisation argue that in an education market, power shifts away from the producers to the consumers.
• The reproduction of inequality


  However, despite the claimed benefits of marketisation, its critics argue that it has increased inequalities. E.g Stephen Ball(1994) not how marketisation policies such as exam league tables and the funding formula reproduce class inequalities between schools.
• league tables and cream-skimming


  -->The policy of publishing each school's exam results in a league table ensures that schools that achieve good results.

  -->CREAM-SKIMMING: 'good' schools can be more selective, choose their own customers and recruit high, achieving mainly m/c pupils.

  -->SILT-SKIMMING: 'good' schools can avoid taking less able pupils who are likely to get poor results and damage the school's league table.
• The funding formula


  -->Schools are allocated finds by a formula based on how many pupils they attract. As a result, popular schools get more funds and so can afford better-qualified teachers and better facilities.

  -->Public Policy research(2012) found that competition-orientated education systems such as Britain's produce more segregation between children of different social backgrounds.
• Gewirtz: parental choice(1995)

  -By increasing parental choice, marketisation also advantages m/c parents, whose economic and cultural capital puts them in a better position to choose 'good schools' for their children.

  -Gewirt's studies 14 London secondary schools and she identifies three main types of parents:

  -->Privileged-skilled choosers: These were mainly professional m/c parents who used their economic and cultural capital to gain education capital for their children. These parents possessed cultural capital. Their economic capital also meant they could afford to move their children around the educational system to get the best deal out of it.

  -->Disconnected-local choosers: these were w/c parents whose choices were restricted by their lack of economic and cultural capital. Their funds were limited and a place at the nearest school was often their only realistic option for their children.

  -->Semi-skilled choosers: these parents were also mainly w/c but unlike the disconnected-local choosers, they were ambitious for their children. However, they to lacked cultural capital and found it difficult to make sense of the education market.

  -Gerwitz concludes that in practise m/c parents possess cultural and economic capital and have more choice than w/c parents.
• The myth of parentocracy

  -Not only does marketisation reproduce inequality, it also legitimates it by concealing its true causes and by justifying.

  -Ball believes that marketisation gives the appearance of a 'parentocracy'. However, Ball argues that parentocracy is a myth, not a reality.

  -M/C parents are able to take advantage of the choices available. By disguising the fact that schooling continues to reproduce inequality in this way.
• New Labour and inequality

  -->The New Labour govs of 1997 to 2010 have introduced policies to reduce inequaolity:

  -Designating some areas as Education Action Zones and providing them with resources.

  -The Aim Higher programme to raise aspirations of groups who are under-represented.

  -City Academies were created to give a fresh start to struggling inner-city schools who mainly w/c pupils.

  -->However, BENN(2012) see a contradiction 'New Labour paradox'. E.g despite introducing EMA's to encourage poorer students, they introduced higher tuition fees that may defer them from going to uni.
• Conservative Gov policies from 2010

  -David Cameron stated that the aim of the Coalition's education policy was to encourage 'excellence, competition and innovation'.

  -Making free schools and academies.

  -cuts were made to the education budget.
• Academies


  -From 2010, all schools were encouraged to leave local authority and become authorities. The funding from local authority was taken and directly to academies from the central gov.

  -By 2017, over 68% of all secondary had converted to academy status.

  -However, whereas Labour's original city academies targeted disadvantaged schools and areas, the Coalition gov, by allowing schools to become academies, removed the focusing on reducing inequality.
• Free Schools


  -Free schools are set up and run by parents, teachers, faith organisations or businesses rather than local authority.

  -Free schools, it is claimed, give parents and teachers the opportunity to create a new school if they are unhappy with the state schools in their local area.

  -However, Rebecca Allen, argues that research from Sweden, where 20% of schools are free schools, show that they only benefit children from highly educated families.

  -Charter schools in the US have also been criticised for appearing to raise standards but only doing so by strict pupil selection and exclusion policies.

  -In England, evidence shows that free schools take fewer disadvantaged pupils in nearby schools. E.g in 2011, only 6.4% of pupils at Bristol Free school were eligible for fsm compared to the 22.5% across the city as a whole.
• Fragmented centralisation


  -Ball(2011) argues that promoting academies and free schools has led to both increased fragmentation and increased centralisation of control.

  -FRAGMENTATION: the comprehensive system is being replaced by a patchwork of diverse provision, much of it involving private providers.

  -CENTRALISATION: Central gov alone has the power to allow or require schools to become academies or allow free schools to be set up. Funded by gov.
• Policies to reduce inequality

  -->Reducing inequality aims:

  -Fsm for all children in reception, yr 1 and 2

  -Pupil Premium given to students from disadvantaged background.

  -->However, Ofsted(2012) found that in many cases the PP is not spent on those it is supposed to help. Only one in ten head teachers said it changed pupils.

  -->As part of Conservative gov's 'austerity' programme, spending has been cut: school buildings by 60%, Sure Start centres were closed, the EMA was abolished and uni fees tripled to 9,000 a year.

  -->Critics argue that Sure Start and EMA has reduced opp for w/c pupils. It increased uni fees to discourage them from entering higher education.
• The Privatisation of education


  -It involves the transfer of public assets such as schools to private companies. Education services industry- ESI

  -Private companies in the ESI are involved in an ever increasing range of activities in education including building schools, providing subs, careers advice and Ofsted inspection services.

  -Many of these activities are very profitable, According to Ball, companies involved in such work expect to make up 10x as much as they do in other contracts. However, local gov can only make these contracts as they lack funding from central gov.
• Blurring the public/private boundary

  -Many senior officials in the public sector now leave to set up or work for private-sector education businesses.

  -As Allyson Pallock notes, this flow of personnel allows companies to buy 'insider knowledge' to help win contracts as well as side-stepping authority democracy.
• Privatisation and globalisation of education policy

  -Many private companies in education services industry are foreign owned. The exam board is owned by the US educational and testing giant, Pearson.

  -According to Buckingham and Scanlon, UK's 4 leading educational companies are owned by global multinationals (Disney, Mattel and Hambro, Vivendi). In a globalised world, educational services are often bought by overseas companies.

  -Conversely, some UK edu-businesses work overseas. Often private companies are exporting UK education policy to other countries and then providing the services to deliver these policies.

  -As a result, nation-states are becoming less important in policymaking, which is shifting to a global level and which is also privatised.
• Cola-isation of schools


  -This means the private sector is penetrating education indirectly e.g. vending machines on school premises, sponsorship and development of brand loyalty through displays of logos

  -According to Molnar, schools are targeted by private companies because they are a kind of product endorsement.
• Education as a commodity

  -Education is being turned into a 'legitimate object of private profit making', a commodity to be bought and sold in the education market.

  -Marxists such as Stuart Hall(2011) see conservative gov policies as part of the long march of the neoliberal revolution. Hall sees academies as an example of handing over public services to priv capitals such as educational businesses.
• Policies on gender and ethnicity

  -Policies also have an impact on other differences in achievement such as gender and ethnicity
• Gender


  -Recently, upon the tripartite system, girls often had to achieve a higher mark than boys in the 11+ in order to obtain a grammar school place.

  -Since the 1970s, however, policies such as GIST have been introduced to try to reduce gender differences in subject choice.
• Ethnicity

  -->Assimilation: policies in the 1960s and 70s focused on the need for pupils from minority ethnic groups to assimilate into mainstream British culture as a way of raising their achievement.

  -->However, critics argue that some minority groups who are at risk of underachieving such as Caribbean pupils, already speak english and the real cause of underachievement is poverty or racism.

  -->Multicultural education policies through the 80s and 90s aimed to promote achievements of pupils from minority ethnic groups.

  -->However, MCE has been criticised through:

  -Maureen Stone(1981) argues that black pupils don't fail for lack of self-esteem, so MCE is misguided

  -Critical race theorists argue that MCE is mere tokenism. It picks out stereotypical features of minority cultures for inclusion in the curriculum.

  -->Social Inclusion of pupils from minority ethnic groups and policies to raise their achievement became the focus in the 90s. These include:

  -Detailed monitoring of exam results by ethnicity

  -English as an Additional Language programmes

  -->However, Heidi Mirza(2005) sees little change in policy. She argues that instead of tackling the structural causes of ethnic inequality such as poverty and racism.