Educational Policies

• Educational policies

  Initiatives brought in by governments (or proposals by other political parties) that have a significant impact on schools or other aspects of the education system
• Significant educational policies

  • 1944 Education Act
  • Implementation of comprehensive schools
  • Marketization policies of the 1988 Education Reform Act
  • Recent initiatives like Free Schools
• Educational policies often relate to attempting to improve standards or reduce inequality
• 1944 Education Act


  Made secondary education universal and free for the first time, considered part of the founding of the post-war Welfare State
• The 1944 Education Act was brought in before the end of the war, and not by Attlee's reforming Labour government, but by the war-time coalition government, and by a Conservative Education Secretary
• Thinking behind the 1944 Education Act


  Applied educational theories of the time to a new system in which all pupils would take a test at the age of eleven which would decide which school they should go to
• Tripartite system


  Three types of schools established by the 1944 Education Act: grammar schools, secondary modern schools and technical schools
• Very few technical schools were ever built so the system was a two-tier one in most parts of the country
• 11+ test

  Test taken at age 11 that would determine which school children should attend
• The 11+ test traditionally included English, Maths, verbal and non-verbal reasoning, but where it still occurs today it tends to just include verbal and non-verbal reasoning
• The 11+ test aimed to test intelligence and remains in areas that still have selective grammar schools today
• Grammar schools


  State-funded secondary schools that pupils deemed academic would attend based on 11+ results
• Technical schools


  State-funded secondary schools that pupils considered to have a "technical intelligence" would attend based on 11+ results
• Secondary modern schools


  State-funded secondary schools that pupils considered to have "practical intelligence" (in reality, everyone else) would attend based on 11+ results
• The tripartite system was generally viewed by parents and pupils as a test that was passed or failed: those who passed went to the grammar schools and those who failed went to the secondary moderns
• The designers of the 1944 Education Act presented the three types of schools as "equal but different", arguing that academic intelligence was not superior to other types of intelligence just different, but in reality, the academic education was more likely to lead to further study and qualifications, and therefore higher-paid positions in the future
• The Conservative Party's current policy, pushed forward by Theresa May, is to introduce a new generation of grammar schools which they consider will support social mobility
• State grammar schools could provide a path, previously only available to a minority who were lucky to get scholarships to various independent schools, for working-class pupils to access excellent secondary education, gain high qualifications and with that access to university and professional occupations
• At their peak, less than 3% of pupils attended technical schools
• Local education authorities tended to find that they could use existing schools to provide a two-tier system, but that technical schools required building new stock, with specialist equipment and recruiting new specialist staff
• Where technical schools were built they could seem like a consolation prize for those just missing out an a space in the grammar school, rather than "equal but different"
• Very few technical schools were ever built so therefore all pupils, other than the approximately 20% selected for the grammars, attended secondary modern schools
• Secondary modern schools did not have sixth forms and it was generally assumed that pupils would leave these schools to go to full-time employment, initially at 15 and later at 16
• The educational psychological theory that underpinned the idea of there being three different types of intelligence (academic, technical or practical) and that children had one or the other is now broadly discredited
• Many argued that a test at 11 was unfair for a number of reasons: it did not facilitate the way pupils might develop at different ages or demonstrate different skills and aptitudes at different times, and it did not account for pupils having a range of strengths and skills rather than being strictly one thing or another
• Because there were (for the most part) just the two types of school and it was broadly seen as pass or fail, the vast majority of pupils were told at age 11 that they were failures
• Grammar school pupils performed better in public examinations, having been selected on ability, but the label of academic (or not) and the expectation to achieve well (or not) must also play a huge part in that difference
• Grammar schools were overwhelmingly middle-class and secondary moderns overwhelmingly working class, reproducing social class inequalities
• Possible explanations for the class divide in selective education

  • Out-of-school factors and in-school factors at primary school had already impacted so much on pupils that the class divisions in educational achievement were already fully in place by age 11
  • Primary schools in middle-class areas expected significant numbers of their pupils to pass the 11+ and attend the grammar school and therefore prepared pupils for the test, whereas primary schools in more working-class areas did not
  • The 11+ tests favoured middle-class pupils in a number of ways
  • Some working-class parents might not have wanted their child to go to the grammar school
  • Middle-class parents could afford to get private tuition for their children to prepare them for the 11+ test
  • Middle-class parents whose children failed the 11+ test might take their children out of the state sector altogether and pay for them to attend an independent school
• The 11+ was also accused by many of favouring white pupils, as the test was written in an ethnocentric way that disadvantaged pupils from minority ethnic backgrounds
• By the 1960s, many educationalists, particularly on the political left, were keen to replace the tripartite system and the principle of academic selection for something more egalitarian
• Comprehensive schools


  Local schools which do not select pupils on the basis of academic ability: they are mixed ability schools
• There was no single piece of legislation, like the 1944 or 1988 education acts which replaced the tripartite system with comprehensives. Instead it was educational policy over a long period for local authorities to redevelop their school stock in that way
• The real drive for the comprehensive policy came from the Labour government of 1964-1970 and the education secretary Anthony Crosland, but the government that actually closed the most grammar schools was the Conservative one of 1970-74, with education secretary Margaret Thatcher
• Crosland's approach to comprehensivisation

  Belief in equality: both equality of opportunity and more equality of outcome. He wanted to give every child "a grammar school education"
• Increasingly children did not sit a test at 11 and instead went from primary school to the local comprehensive school where children of all ability ranges were accommodated
• Many comprehensive schools had sixth forms (or had close links with a local sixth form college) and therefore opened up the possibility of studying beyond 16 to more pupils
• A few education authorities never implemented the changes and have therefore kept the 11+ and the grammar schools since 1944
• Quite a lot of former grammar schools kept their names when they became comprehensives and so are still called "the grammar school" despite not being selective
• Evaluating the impact of comprehensivisation

  • The comprehensive principle has had longevity and is still the norm in most education authorities in the UK
  • It never quite did what was claimed of it. Arguably it simply moved selection into one school
  • Most comprehensive schools use some system of banding, setting or streaming and, as such, there is still selection in the school
  • Instead of social divisions between schools being based on school selection, they increasingly came to be about location
  • Critics argue that the "one size fits all" approach of comprehensive schools ignores the fact that children are all different
  • Some argue that comprehensive schools prevent meritocracy, while others argue they have provided a path to higher education and professional occupations for a wider range of students