Equality

• Educational policies are concerned with government plans for what the education system should achieve and how it should be organised. Gillborn and Youdell identified four aspects of educational opportunity.
• Such policies include an understanding of the structure, role, impact, and experience of access to education, as well as the impact of globalisation on educational policy.
• Key aims

  • The key aims of educational policy:
  • Economic efficiency: improving skills of the labour force.
  • Raising educational standards.
  • Creating equality of educational opportunity.
• • Gillborn and Youdell have identified four aspects of educational opportunity:
  • Equality of access.
  • Equality of circumstances.
  • Equality of participation.
  • Equality of outcome.
• Access and circumstances

  • Equality of access: Everyone should have the same opportunities to access schools of similar quality without unfair selection.
  • Equality of circumstances: Everyone should start school at the same point in terms of home and material circumstance.
• Participation and outcome

  • Equality of participation: Everyone should have the same chances to participate on an equal footing in the everyday life of schools.
  • Equality of outcome: Everyone should have the same chances of sharing the long-term benefits of schooling.
• Focus

  • Generally, educational policies have been concerned with equality of access.
• Access to education

  • Since 1944 there have been attempts to improve the equality of opportunity, these have resulted in:
  • The tripartite system (1944 – early 1970s).
  • The comprehensive system (1970s onwards).
• The tripartite system

  • The tripartite system was the first to provide free secondary education for all children, thus removing the barriers to secondary education arising from the requirement to pay fees.
  • However, access to one of three different types of schools was through the 11+ exam which potentially disadvantaged working class children.
• The comprehensive system

  • The comprehensive system established a single type of school, accessible to all without selection and today nearly all pupils attend a non-selective comprehensive school.
  • These may take the form of academies, free schools, faith schools, and community schools.
• circumstances

  • There are few policies that have attempted to improve equality of circumstances, largely because such inequalities are rooted in the structure of inequality in society as a whole.