Educational Policies

• Education Policy before 1988 - The Tripartite system

  • Introduced in 1944 by the butler act to select students for different school types based on their ability and results of 11+ exam:
  • Grammar schools - mostly MC students who passed the 11+ - academic curriculum for non-labour jobs/higher education
  • Secondary modern school - mostly WC students who failed 11+ -curriculum for manual jobs
  • Technical schools - exists in just a few areas, for specific careers
  • Did not promote meritocracy, it reproduced class inequality
  • Gender inequality - girls had to score higher to go to grammar schools
• Education policy before 1988 - Comprehensive school system

  • Introduced in 1965, aimed to overcome the tripartite class divide and make education more meritocratic
  • All pupils attend comprehensive schools and other types of schools were abolished
  • Due to the decision being up to local education authorities to go comprehensive there is still a grammar/secondary divide in some areas
• Education policy before 1988 - Role of comprehensives

  • Functionalists - promote social integration by brining different class together in 1 school
  • They believed comprehensives are more meritocratic as pupils have longer to develop/show abilities
• Education policy before 1988 - Evaluating comprehensives

  • Ford found streaming caused little mixing between WC and MC students:
  • Marxists argue comprehensives are not meritocratic, as labelling and streaming reproduced class inequality. Now the 11+ causes the myth of meritocracy as it looks like chances are more equal and that failure is the individuals fault
• What is Marketisation?

  • Marketisation involves introducing market forces of consumer choice and competition between suppliers into state run areas
  • This creates an education market - reduces state control of education and increases competition between schools and parental choice
• Marketisation - Key policies

  • 1988 Education reform act - make marketisation central to educational policy - introduced national curriculum, GCSEs and league tables
  • 2010 Coalition government - took this further by introducing academies and free schools
  • New right and Neoliberals - favor marketized education as schools have to compete to attract parents, and school will give in to parents need to enroll more students
• What policies promote marketisation?

  • Publishing league tables and OFTSED reports
  • Businesses sponsoring schools
  • Open enrolment - successful schools can recruit more pupils
  • Specialist schools
  • Formula Funding - same funding for every pupil
  • Academies - school opt out of local authority
  • Introduction of tuition fees for higher education
• Marketisation - Parentocracy

  • David - marketized education encourages Parentocracy, which gives them more choice and raises educational standards/school diversity
• Marketisation - Myth of Parentocracy

  • Marketisation legitimizes inequality as well as making it by concealing its true causes and justifying its existence
  • Ball - Marketisation gives a myth of Parentocracy - looks like all parents gave the freedom of choice in selecting school
  • However, Gerwitz shows how this isn't true and that parents choice is affect by class, with the MC being the main one to benefit
• Marketisation - Parental Choice

  • Marketisation benefits the MC due to parental choice - use economic and cultural capital to choose good schools
  • Gerwitz - study of 14 high schools found class differences affect how parents choose schools:
  • Privileged skilled choosers - MC parents, use cultural capital to choose best schools, use economic capital to move to catchment areas
  • Disconnected-local choosers - WC parents with restricted as they have no economic/cultural capital - Less knowledgeable about choices
  • Semi-skilled choosers - WC parents with ambition but lack cultural/economic capital
• Marketisation - New labour and Inequality

  • New labour from 1997-2010 made polices aiming to reduce educational inequalities:
  • Education Action Zones - provided resources to poorer areas
  • Aim higher programs - raise aspiration of under represented groups
  • Education maintenance allowance - payments to low income students to encourage qualification after 16
  • Benn - this is a new labour paradox choosing marketisation even though it causes inequality and then making more policies to tackle inequality - EG, EMA was introduced alongside increased tuition fees
• Marketisation - Evaluation - Reproduction of inequality

  • Critics say marketisation has reproduce inequality
  • Ball - Market policies like exam league tables/formula funding reproduce class inequalities as it creates inequalities between schools
• Marketisation - Formula Funding

  • Where schools funding depends on how many pupils they attract
  • Popular schools get more funding, better teachers and resources which attracts MC students which schools can select to ensure their position in he league table is good
  • Unpopular schools get less funding = poorer resources and teachers, means their position in the league table suffers
• Marketisation - League tables

  • Publishing school results ensure those with good results become in demand and parents will be attracted to them
  • Barret - this encourages cream skimming (good Schools avoid taking less able pupils who damage their league table positions)
  • Schools with a bad league position wouldn't be able to be selective and therefore take less able WC pupils who damage their position and make the school unattractive to MC pupils
• 2010 Conservative government polices - Key points

  • Coalition (2010-15) and Conservative (2015+) started moving away from a comprehensive education system ran by local authorities
  • Policies are influenced by neoliberal/new right ideas - reducing the states role in education via marketisation and privatisation
• 2010 Conservative government - Academies

  • 2010 - schools encouraged to leave local authority control by becoming academies. here the central government takes local authority funding and gives it directly to the academics and gives them control over the curriculum
  • 2017 - 68% of all high schools became academies, some were ran by private education businesses and funded by the state
  • However, Labours original academies addressed disadvantaged schools, but the coalition let any school become an academy which takes the focus off reducing inequality
• 2010 Conservative government policies - Free schools

  • Funded by the state but set up by parents, teachers and faith organisations
  • Free schools say they improve education standards but taking control away from the state and giving it to parents
  • However, Allen argues research from Sweden shows they only benefit educated families
  • England - Free schools take fewer disadvantages pupils (2011 - 6.4% at Bristol free school were eligible for FSM, compared to 22.5% of pupils across the city)
• 2010 Conservative government policies - Fragmented centralisation

  • Ball argues promoting academics/frees had led to increased fragmentation and centralisation over educational provision in England
  • Fragmentation - comprehensive system is replaced by patchwork of diverse provision that are usually from private providers - leads to more inequality in opportunities
  • Centralisation of control - only central government has power to allow schools to be academies/set up free schools. As they are privately funded directly from government too, the role of elected authorities in education is reduced
• 2010 Conservative government policies - Policies to reduce inequality

  • FSM - for all pupils in reception - Y2
  • Pupil premium - money schools get for every pupil from a disadvantaged background
  • However, OFSTED - found pupil premium isn’t spent on those it is meant to help, only 1/10 head teachers said it made a huge difference
• Privatisation of Education

  • Privatisation - transfer of public assets like schools to private companies. Over the years education in the UK has become more privatised
  • Ball - Education become a source of profit. Private companies in the ESI are involved in activities such as building schools, providing supply teachers, OFSTED, career advice and running entire local education authorities
• Privatisation - Education as a commodity

  • Ball - concludes there is a fundamental change happening - where privatisation became a key factor that shapes educational policy
  • Policy is now more focused on moving educational service out of public sectors into private sectors
  • Ball says the overall effect of the state is the role of provider of educational services - more areas of educations are subject to business practices and are bought/sold as assets privatisations expand this over time
  • Marxist Hall - sees Conservative policies as the long march of neoliberal revolution
• Privatisation and Globalisation of Educational policy

  • Private companies in the education service are often foreign - like Edexcel being owned by Pearson in the US
  • Buckingham and Scanton - Uk’s 4 leading educational software companies are owned by global multinationals - original companies sell educations contracts on to banks
  • Some UK, edu-businesses work overseas - private companies are exporting UK educational policies to other countries like OFSTED inspections
  • This means nation states are less important in policy making which is becoming more global
• Privatisation of education - Blurring the public/private boundary

  • Many senior officials in the public sector leave for private sector educational business
  • The companies then bid for contracts to provide schools/local authorities with services like school inspections
  • Pollack - this flow of personnel means companies can buy insider knowledge to help them win contracts
• Privatisation - The Cola-isation of schools

  • Coalisation - private sector is coming into education indirectly like having vending machines in schools and brand loyalty via logos
  • Molnar - private companies target school because they’re a product endorsement - schools have huge goodwill that legitimises anything they associate with
  • However, private sectors involvement has limited benefit - Beder - UK families spent £110k in Tesco in return for 1 school computer
• Education Policies on Gender and Ethnicity

  • Gender - since the 1970s, policies like GIST aim to removed gender differences in education
  • Ethnicity - multi-cultural education policies in the 1980s-1990s aim to promote ethnic minority achievement
  • Stone argues black pupils fail due to low self esteem - Critical race theorists say it is tokenism - picking stereotypes but not doing anything about curriculum inclusivity
  • Social inclusion - minority achievement focus in the 1990s like monitory exam results by ethnicity, changing race relations act to legally ensure school promote racial equality