Education - policy and inequalities

2010 Academies Act

All schools were encouraged to leave local authority control and become academies.
- funding given directly to academies by the central government.
- academies were given control over their curriculum.
- by 2017, 68% of all secondary schools had converted to academy status.

1944 Education Act

Introduced free schooling until 15, the tripartite system, and the 11+. The Tripartite system consisted of: Grammar schools for the more able kids who passed the 11+, teaching subjects appropriate for university (around 20% of pupils got in), Secondary Modern schools for children who failed the 11+, offering more basic education (75-80% pupils attended), and Technical schools for students with more aptitude for technical subjects, teaching vocational courses.
Promoted meritocracy because education was dictated based on academic performance. However, the tripartite system reproduced class and gender inequality, and legitimised the ideology that ability is inborn.

1965 Comprehensive Education Act

Comprehensive system introduced to increase social and class integration - wanted to make education more meritocratic.
However, the local authority could decide whether to 'go comprehensive'; grammar schools still existed which maintained inequality.

Ford

Found little social mixing between WC and MC pupils, largely because of streaming.

1988 Education Reform Act

Marketisation, parentocracy, league tables, national curriculum, national tests at 7, 11+, 16.
Made schools more standardised nationally and changed power relationships in education.

New Labour (Blair and Brown)

Similar policies to conservative government; emphasised standards, diversity and choice.

Coalition government

Took marketisation even further, creating academies and free schools.

Neoliberals and New Right

The state education system fails to prepare young people adequately for work. Marketisation means that schools have to attract customers by competing with each other in the market. Schools that provide customers with what they want will thrive, and those that don't will 'go out of business'.

Ball and Whitty (DISAGREE WITH NEOLIBERALS AND NEW RIGHT)

Marketisation increases inequalities. Exam league tables and formula funding reproduces class inequalities by creating inequalities between schools.

Parentocracy

'Ruled by parents'. Parents are in charge of the education system.

David

Marketised education is a parentocracy.

Ball and Gewirtz (myth of parentocracy)

Marketisation legitimises inequality. MC parents are better able to take advantage of choices.
Leech and Campos: MC parents can afford to move into catchment areas of more desirable schools.
Parentocracy is a myth that doesn't give all parents more choice.

Bartlett

League tables ensure that schools which receive good results are more in demand because parents are attracted to good schools. Good schools are oversubscribed which gives them an ability to choose the students they enrol.
This encourages:
- cream skimming (enrol good students).
- silt shifting (don't enrol bad students).
Opposite applies for schools with poor results; they're generally left with the silt-shifted students who get poorer grades.

Formula funding

Schools allocate funds based on how many pupils they attract. Popular schools = more funds, be more selective, attract high-achieving MC students.
Unpopular schools = lose income.

Institute for Public Policy Research

Competition-orientated education systems produce more segregation between children of different social backgrounds.

Gewirtz

Differences in parent's economic and cultural capital leads to class differences in how far they can exercise choice of secondary school
- Privileged-skilled choosers (have the capital to get their child into good schools).
- Semi-skilled choosers (ambitious for their child but don't have the cultural capital to understand the enrolment system),
- disconnected-local choosers (don't understand the enrolment system and don't care which school their child goes to - generally the closest one or the ones which their friends are gong to).

Education Action Zones (EAZs)

Set up in 1998 to raise the motivation and attainment of pupils in deprived, low income, inner city areas. Aimed to give low-income students equal opportunities and better support to help them succeed.
These areas were given extra resources to fund breakfast clubs, homework clubs and summer literacy and numeracy schemes.
Funded by central government with additional funding from local businesses.

The Aim Higher Programme

To raise the aspirations of groups under-represented in higher education.

Educational Maintenance Allowance

Students from low-income backgrounds would receive up to £30 per week for attending further education. This encourages low-income students to stay in education so that they can gain better qualifications (reduce class inequalities).

National Literacy Strategy

Policies are of a greater use to disadvantaged groups, as they help to reduce inequalities.

City Academies

Fresh start for struggling inner city schools (with mainly WC students) which are re-branded and re- launched.

Benn - The New Labour Paradox

Labour introduced EMA to encourage WC pupils to stay on in education but also introduced tuition fees for higher education. Links to Callender and Jackson - WC are 5x less likely to apply to university because they are debt-averse. Shows that there is a contradiction between Labour's policies and its commitment to marketisation.

Free schools

Schools set up by charities, teachers and businesses or parents - rather than local authority - but funded by the state. They improve educational standards by giving power to parents.

Allen

Reseach from Sweden (20% of schools are free schools) suggests that they only benefit children from highly-educated families.

Ofsted

In many cases, Pupil Premium is not spent on the students it's supposed to help.
- only 1 in 10 teachers said it had significantly changed how they supported pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Pollack - blurring the public/private boundary

Flow of personnel allows companies to buy 'insider knowledge' to help win contracts, as well as side-stepping local authority democracy. AGAINST PRIVATISATION.

Buckingham and Scanlon - globalisation of education policy.

The UK's four leading educational software companies are all owned by global multinationals.

Molnar

Schools are targeted by private companies because 'schools by their nature carry enormous goodwill and can thus confer legitimacy on anything associated with them'. This means that private businesses view schools as a form of product endorsement.

Beder

Benefits to schools and pupils of private sector involvement in education are often very limited.
- households spent £110,000 in Tesco supermarkets in return for a single computer for schools involved in the scheme.

Marxist perspective on the privatisation of education

Privatisation and competition do not drive up standards; this is a myth used to legitimise the turning of education into a source of private profit.

Assimilation Policies (1960s-'70s)

Focused on the need for pupils from minority ethnic groups to assimilate into a mainstream British culture as a way of raising their achievement. This helps those whose first language isn't English.

Criticism of Assimilation Policies

Some minority groups are at risk of underachieving already speaking English. The real cause of underachievement lies in poverty or racism.

Multicultural Education Policies (MCE)

Aimed to promote the achievements of children from minority ethnic groups by valuing all cultures in the curriculum. This was intended to raise minority pupils' self-esteem and achievements.

Stone (DISAGREE WITH MCE POLICIES)

Black pupils do not fail for lack of self-esteem.

Mirza

Little genuine change in policy. Instead of tackling structural causes of ethnic inequality, educational policy still takes a soft approach that focuses on culture, behaviour and the home.

Gillborn

Institutionally racist policies in relation to the ethnocentric curriculum, assessments and streaming continue to disadvantage minority ethnic groups.