educational policy

• The National Curriculum is the framework that sets out what children are expected to know, understand or be able to do at different stages of their education.
• The National Curriculum was introduced by the Education Reform Act (1988) as part of the Conservative government's drive towards greater accountability and standardisation in schools.
• The National Curriculum covers subjects such as English, mathematics, science, history, geography, art and design, music, physical education, computing, modern foreign languages, religious education, citizenship, and careers guidance.
• All governments are interested in education
• Forster Education Act introduced elementary schooling for 5-10 year olds in England and Wales


  1870
• 1944 Education Act


  1. Introduced the Tripartite System and the 11+

  2. Made secondary schools free for all and raised the leaving age to 15
• Before the Second World War, many poor people couldn't afford secondary education because it wasn't free
• Types of schools in the Tripartite System

  • Grammar schools
  • Secondary modern schools
  • Technical schools
• Grammar schools


  • For the able kids who passed the 11+
  • Pupils were taught traditional subjects ready for university
  • About 20% of kids got in
• Secondary modern schools


  • For the 75-80% of pupils who failed the 11+
  • Offered basic education
• Technical schools


  • Meant to provide a more vocational education for those pupils with aptitude for practical subjects
• The Tripartite System aimed to improve the education of all children, but several problems remained
• The 11+ didn't necessarily measure intelligence, it was culturally biased and suited the middle class more than the working class
• The 11+ actually 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
• Grammar schools were seen as the best, even though the schools were supposed to have 'parity of esteem'
• 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
• 1965 Labour Government made schools comprehensive


  Local Education Authorities reorganised most schools so that everyone had equality of opportunity
• Comprehensive schools


  • No 11+, so 80% of the school population don't get labelled as failures
  • High-ability pupils generally still do well
  • Lower ability pupils do better than in the old secondary moderns
• Comprehensive schooling hasn't achieved equality of opportunity
• Schools tend to be 'single-class', depending on the local area
• Where people can afford to live (and how good the local schools are) is important in educational attainment
• 1976 Push for Vocational Education started


  1. Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan said British education and industry was in decline because schools didn't teach people the skills they needed in work

  2. All governments since then have had policies designed to create a closer link between school and work
• Vocational reforms


  • Youth Training Schemes (YTS) started in 1983
  • NVQs (1986) and GNVQs (1992) were introduced
  • The New Deal, introduced in 1998, meant people on benefits had to attend courses if they didn't accept work
• Some sociologists argue that vocational education aims to teach good work discipline, not skills
• The vocational education system took a largely functionalist approach (based on the ideas of role allocation)
• David (1993) describes the situation as a 'parentocracy', because the power in education is held by parents, rather than by teachers and schools
• 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
• 1988 Education Reform Act

  1. Widened choice within the education system

  2. Encouraged more competition to create a 'market' in schools (marketisation)

  3. Introduced more vocational courses and more work placement schemes

  4. Introduced a National Curriculum of compulsory subjects for all 5- to 16-year-olds

  5. Established OFSTED to inspect schools

  6. Allowed schools to opt out of their local education authority and become grant-maintained schools

  7. Allowed parents to choose which school to send their child to

  8. Introduced league tables to help parents choose schools

  9. Increased testing and exams for pupils
• Sociologists like Whitty (1998) argue that middle-class parents have an advantage in an educational market
• Constant testing can be stressful for students, and can encourage labelling and self-fulfilling prophecies
• Ball (1995) claimed that the new National Curriculum was the 'curriculum of the dead', because its emphasis on the core subjects was outdated