Education and Social Mobility

AO1: Social Mobility

It refers to the chances of people from different backgrounds have of attaining different social positions - moving from one social class to another, upwards or downwards.

AO1: Types of social mobility

1. Inter-generational mobility refers to movement between generations.

2. Intra-generational mobility referes to an individual’s mobility over the course of their life.

AO1: Functionalist views

Focuses on how education systems represent a bridge between the family and the economy:

Social Mobility is functionally necessary: People must be allowed to move up and down to ensure the important social positions are filled by the most qualified.

Upward mobility is earned by merit: People fulfill positions on the basis of their knowledge and skills.

AO1: Meritocracy in certain groups

Some groups, such as the working class and ethnic minorities, experience the same systematic disadvantage.

AO1: Benefits of meritocracy

Meritocracy involves open competition for social resources such as educational qualifications or adult employment.

AO1: Social Capital

The extent to which people are connected to social networks and how people take advantage over that.

AO1: Education as a form of ideological control

Education is not a source of social mobility, but rather the means through which the higher classes are able to cement their privileged social status.

It ensures that social inequality is reproduced through a system that appears to be fair, but which is really biased in their favor.

AO2: Harris (2005)

Social mobility develops out the way people are encouraged to perform different roles, some of which are important, skilled, and difficult to learn than others.

AO2: Davis and Moore

The inequalities that flow through social mobility represent ‘an unconsciously evolved device by which societies ensure the most important positions are conscientiously filled by the most qualified people’.

AO2: Paterson and Ianelli (2005)

In Scotland, ‘many studies have shown education, and the acquisition of educational qualifications are important means through which middle-class families pass on their social and economic advantage to their children. In these circumstances, education, rather than promoting greater social mobility, may in fact reduce it’.

AO2: Bowles and Gintis (Neo-Marxists)

Modern education systems are characterized by ‘sponsored mobility’. The upper- and middle-class children enjoy a range of cultural advantages over their working-class peers, such as access to high-quality, high-status private education, which is completely sponsored by their parents’ class background.

AO2: Breen (1997)

Meritocracy only truly occurs at lower levels of society.

AO2: Althusser

The reproduction of capitalism involves each new generation being taught the skills and knowledge required in the workplace.

Schools do not just select, but they allocate and differentiate children in the interests of society as a whole. Their role is to help the children of the ruling class to achieve the levels of education required to follow in their parents’ footsteps.