Education

• Working class


  • Parents work longer hours (less help with work)
  • Lower expectations
  • Victim blaming (blaming of working class for poor socialisation of kids) - often is a cause of cultural deprivation
  • Working class subcultures pushing wrong mindsets e.g Fatalism, Collectivism, immediate gratification and present time orientation
  • Language of teachers, WC pupils may not understand
• Sugarman


  WC parents pass on beliefs through primary socialisation, children internalise these
• Bernstein


  Restricted speech codes, short and limited vocab, often more descriptive rather than complex abstract ideas
• Middle class


  • Access to better schools
  • Better expectations
  • Parent help
  • MC parents are more likely to challenge their kids cognitive ability
  • Bernstein - Elaborated speech codes, wider vocab and better grammar
  • Higher qualifications means more awareness of how to help educate them
  • More likely to buy educational toys, books and activities
  • Not all MC children are successful
• Flaherty- money affects attendance + exclusion rates, nearly 90% of failing schools are in deprived areas
• Bordieu


  • Cultural capital - to have knowledge, values, tastes and abilities to meet demands of school
  • Economic capital - is to have money, this can be converted into cultural capital through private school, tutors and textbooks
  • More likely to attain higher with economic and cultural capital
• Compensatory education


  • Operation head start - a programme for deprived areas in the US which aimed to improve parenting skills, nursery facilities and media initiatives to promote values of punctuality, numeracy and literacy
  • Education action zones - programme which dedicated resources to low income inner city areas in an attempt to raise educational attainment
• Labelling theory


  To label or attach a meaning to someone, they're made based on stereotypical assumptions
• Self fulfilling prophecy (SFP)


  Teacher has expectations of student based on certain factors, this then influences the teachers behaviour, this causes the pupils to perform or behave in a certain way due to how the teacher has treated them
• It is caused by a label given to the pupil,pupil often internalises the label due to being treated as the 'label' - e.g useless
• Streaming


  • Teachers often have low expectations and it's hard to move up the streams (sets), students play up to these expectations and SFP occurs
  • Douglas found pupils put in a lower set at age 8 had a lower iq at age 11
• Gillborn and Youdell


  League tables lead to schools focusing their time on pupils who are seen to have 'potential' to get high grades
• In school subcultures


  • Differentiation - teachers characterised based on perception of ability
  • Polarisation - pupils respond by moving towards one of two poles, pro-school subculture or anti-school subculture
  • Ball - he found that when streaming was abolished, polarisation did not occur
• Habitus


  • A learned taken for granted way of thinking and acting within a social class
  • Bordieu - believes MC have the ability to claim their habitus superior, therefore they think their learned way of living is the right way (go to school, work hard get a job)
• Nike identities


  People gaining a status or identity from wearing certain clothes
• Ethnicity in education


  • A lot of ethnic minorities are the poorest in society, therefore are in the working class system
  • This could cause the parents to pass on their negative beliefs on the school system through primary socialisation and their kids then internalise these beliefs leading to negative attitudes towards school
  • Schools can also discriminate against ethnicities through their ethnocentric curriculum (teaching only white history)
  • Language barriers make learning more difficult
• Sewell


  • Lack of 'tough love' from dads
  • Street gangs offer fatherless boys a role model through media image of black masculinity - due to much more likely being involved in matrifocal families
  • Often is prevalent in black children
  • Teachers label ethnic minorities based on racist views, they have much lower expectations
• Marketisation of education


  • It is a system where schools are more competitive against each other and act like businesses, gives the parents to choose the right school as well as the school to decide which students they accept, often discriminating against WC people or ethnic minorities
  • Gillborn - argues that it allows negative stereotypes to influence decisions about school admissions
  • Neo liberalists would agree with this as they see parents and students as consumers with schools as businesses competing
  • The new right agree as well, believe education is failing being run by the state, without marketisation their are lower standards, less qualified workforce
  • However, Ball would argue it gives a hint of parentocracy that all parents have the same choice, this is not true due to class and ethnicity factors
• The new 'IQism'


  Teachers place students in sets not only on the basis of prior attainment, but also on disciplinary concerns and perceptions of their attitude not just 'IQ'
• Ideal pupil


  • Girl, middle class, hard working and polite
  • However Archer claims chinese students achieve in the 'wrong way' by being conformist rather than naturally talented therefore can never be ideal pupil
• Class gap is bigger than gender gap, boys and girls of same class get similar results - Bowles and Gintis agree that the biggest factor is class
• Girls subject choice is different too, often choosing childcare + health and beauty
• Gender gap in education

  • Girls get better gcse results and A levels compared to boys
  • Women are much more likely to go to university
  • 72% of women compared to 62% of men obtain a grade c or a above
  • Increase in positive female role models (more teachers in high positions)
  • Girls now are more future thinking than past, very ambitious
• Sharpe


  • 1974- girls changing ambitions, low aspirations as its perceived as unattractive
  • 1990- career important, like independence
• Feminist perspectives


  • Liberal feminists - Celebrate improvements, Further progress through policy,role models and overcoming stereotypes
  • Radical feminists - Believe system remains patriarchal, Still sexual harassment in schools, Womens career path and options are limited, Women invisible in curriculum e.g history, More men in power than women
• Sewell


  Believes that education system has been feminised, shortage of make primary school teachers
• Policies for boys in education

  • Raising boys achievement project e.g single sex teaching
  • National literacy strategy
  • Reading champions
• Francis


  • Boys more bothered about labelling as its a threat to their masculinity
  • WC class culture associated with toughness
• Ringrose


  Moral panics have been caused due to feminists work in schools, that moral panics about boys underachieving will lead to more male unemployment
• Functionalist view of education

  • Durkheim - education creates social solidarity, community is achieved through passing on culture (shared beliefs and values)
  • Parsons - focal socialising agency, it is the bridge between family and wider society
  • In school and wider society status is achieved
  • School system is meritocratic, success is equal to how hard you work
• Functionalist functions of education

  • Creating social solidarity
  • Teaching skills necessary for work
  • Teaching core values
  • Role allocation and meritocracy
• Marxism further


  • Workforce needs certain attitude and personality to accept alienation and exploitation
  • Correspondence principle - schools mirror the workplace e.g teacher = manager
  • Hidden curriculum - being quiet in classroom, good attendance, seating arrangements
• Bowles and Gintis


  • School is deterministic , working class people get working class jobs
  • Repressive state apparatus - bourgeoisie control proletariat through force e.g police, army , courts
  • Ideological state apparatus - bourgeoisie control people's ideas value and beliefs through the family, media, religion and in education
  • Correspondence principle - school mirrors the workplace (hierarchy in school, motivation and disciplinary methods)
• The myth of meritocracy - School produces ideologies that make people feel inequality is justified and fair so the WC don't rebel against capitalism
• The new right and neo liberalism

  • Schools need to be run more like businesses and compete in a global marketplace
  • Should promote competition, agrees that marketisation means better standards and more qualified workforce
• Social policy


  A construct created by the government to try and improve quality of life in society
• State made school compulsory in 1880 from 5-13
• Tripartite system - children were allocated into one of three types of secondary school according to attitudes and abilities - Grammar schools,secondary school and technical schools
• Free school meal policy for reception to year two
• Privatisation of education


  • The transfer of aspects of school to private companies in the uk and globally, they may be involved in building schools, providing supply teachers, careers advice and ofsted services
  • Many companies are foreign owned and so might not fully understand uk's needs, also the uk's four leading educational software companies are owned by us toy companies
  • Schools are being used as product endorsement however the actual school benefits very little from this
  • Ball - education is being turned into a commodity to be bought and sold