sociology education

Social solidarity - Durkheim (f)

Education socialises people to teach them shared norms and values to maintain social solidarity

Schools help maintain social solidarity through assemblies, uniform and attendance

Assemblies - shared space where community is promoted through its topic choice, different people come together

Marxists argue schools are ideologically driven, indoctrinating students into passive acceptance of rules. Assemblies provide false consciousness

Social solidarity (f)

Idea that all members in society feel as a part of something bigger

Bridge theory/Meritocracy - Parsons (f)

Parsons believe that school is the bridge between the family and wider society

• Home teachers, individuals particularistic standards but school teachers universalistic standards to prepare individuals to enter the world of work

Family helps fix status at birth - education helps to achieve status - education is meritocratic

Not all students have an equal chance of succeeding at school consider ; disability, social class, gender, catchment areas.

Meritocracy

System where social advancement is based on individual talent and effort rather than wealth and social class

Marxists argue meritocracy is a myth

Specialised schools - Parsons (f)

Schools teach us skills which are required for a specific future occupation so we can play our role in society to maintain consensus

Eg. To become a nurse, in school they’re are three subjects like maths, English and health and social care

Skills are still required beyond GCSEs to ‘do’ these jobs eg. Training courses

Role allocation - Davis and more (f)

Education shows us who are the best people are for the best jobs by sieving people through education

School allocates students via;

• Awards and certificates

• The exam system - designed to encourage competition, individual achievement and hard work.

Marxists and Feminists

- We aren't all given the same opportunity to succeed.

- E.g. middle/ upper, white, middle aged men dominate powerful jobs / roles in society.

Who defines which jobs are 'better' than others?

Strengths of functionalism

The New Right support the ideas of functionalists and believe that meritocracy makes people responsible for their own achievement.

It helps people to work hard reducing the burden on the state and unemployment benefit.

Weaknesses of functionalism

Rose tinted arguments ignore the inequalities which happen in education which can be negative for some groups with racism, sexism and middle class bias.

We don't always have shared norms and values as we are a multicultural society. Some cultures do not have the same views as others.

Education does not always teach us the specialised skills which we need for work.

Marxism - ISA

Ideological State Apparatus (ISA) - Althusser

ISA - part of society which keeps the bourgeoisie in power by reproducing and justifying inequalities. E.g. education.

Education reproduces inequalities through; unequal access to resources, ethnocentric curriculum, and the "hidden curriculum" that transmits social norms and expectations.

The UK government has made it illegal for teachers to promote anti-capitalist views, proving that education is a tool used by the bourgeoisie to protect capitalism.

Marxism - specialised skills

education teaches us the 'specialised skills' we need to fulfil the futures of our class. Our talents are almost predetermined based on social class labelling and therefore the opportunity for upwards social mobility is limited for the working class.

Too critical - overlooks those can overcome their labelling due to class backgrounds.

Feminists would argue that Marxism overlooks gender inequality in social mobility e.g. glass ceiling.

Marxism - meritocracy

not everyone has an equal chance - the higher a persons social class the more likely they are to get better jobs and grades.

- MERITOCRACY IS A MYTH eg. working class students are disadvantaged since 90% of OFSTED failing schools are in deprived areas.

- Poor OFSTED rating may lead to problems like recruiting the best teachers, so even if the students work hard in lesson, not having a specialist teacher may have a negative impact on their grades. E.g. a PE teacher teaching Maths!

Marxism - correspondence principle

Bowles and gintis

The way we learn things in school correspond / mirror the way we are expected to behave in work.

achieved through the hidden curriculum.

Teacher authority - supervisors

Students are passive and obedient they don't rebel as they are unaware of their exploitation.

Marxism - indoctrination

Althusser, Bowles and gintis

Pupils are 'brainwashed' by the ruling classes to be the ideal workers.

Obedience - intervention sessions 'exploit' the time of students, presented as helping students, when it's helping the education industry meet its targets.

Passive - unquestioning inherent weakness, problems with decision-making in schools.

Students don't see this exploitative nature as they are socialised to respect authority.

• False consciousness: told it's to benefit you, when it benefits the system.

Marxism - strengths

Exposes the myth of meritocracy and use of brainwashing exploited working class into accepting their status because if own efforts and not capitalistic system

Education - ISA legitimising capitalism, through formal and hidden curriculum

Willis L2L has inspired follow up research examining link between gender ethnicity and class in schools

Marxism - weaknesses

Marxists don’t agree on the way in which class inequality is achieved

1) Bowles and gintis - top down determinist view that pupils passively accept indoctrination

2) Willis - bottom down social action view that some students rebel against education system - still work in working class jobs. Girls - absent from research.

Marxism takes a class- first approach to education ignoring other forms of inequality

Social policy - features

1944 education act

Policy Features:

• Introduced compulsory state education up to the age of 14.

• Set up a tri-partite system of 'equal status' schools:

• Grammar

• Secondary Modern

• Technical Schools

• Children would sit an IQ test at 11 that measured their innate ability the 11+)

• Those who passed the 11+ exam would go to a grammar school (approx. 20%)

Social policy - aims

1944 education act

Policy Aims:

• Post-war welfare state - creating a land fit for heroes.

• Beveridge Report - 5 evils: Ignorance

• It wanted to abolish inequalities in state education.

• The 11+ exam was seen as a fair and scientific way to measure ability that a child was 'born with.

Social policy - strength

It provided upward social mobility for the working-class children who passed the 11+ and continues to provide a high-quality education for 5% of UK children that still go to a grammar school.

Social policy - weaknesses

Really only two school choices as technical colleges were too expensive to build and were phased out.

• Secondary modern and technical students were labelled failures and often not allowed to sit formal qualifications as a result of the labelling, wasting large swathes of working-class talent.

• Marxists were critical of the elaborate code that the 11+ was written in excluding working class children and ethnic minorities who spoke in more restricted code. Grammar schools were heavily populated by middle class students dispelling the notion of innate ability.

• Feminists were critical as there were fewer girl's grammar school places meaning that girls required a higher pass rate than boys to attend. It was assumed that most girls would aspire to the expressive role in the family.

• Disparity in grammar school places across the UK - 12% in places, 40% in others.

Social policy - education reform act 1988 - features

Policy Features:

• Testing - SATs to judge quality of schools at age 7 and 11, GCSEs and A-Levels. School performance cab be objectively monitored.

• National Curriculum - All schools teach the same things so that standard comparisons can be made.

• League Tables - School results would be published to help drive up competition and inform parents of the best schools. Also OFSTED inspections (1992/93) would ensure that parents were better informed about the quality of the school attended.

• Open enrolment - parents could send their children to any 'local' state school and not just the nearest school.

Social policy- ERA1988 - aims

Policy Aims:

• Marketisation would increase competition between schools.

Schools would have to improve or have funding cut or be closed.

This will increase choice for parents (parentocracy).

• Local authority run schools were 'failing' children. There were no incentives for schools to improve individually.

Social policy - market and NR

Governments policy since the 1988 Education Reform Act have had marketisation at the core.

Policy examples to Support Marketisation:

• National Curriculum

• SATs Tests, GCSEs and A-Levels

• League tables and Ofsted reports

• Funding formulas based on number of students a school attracts

Social polity - NL - specialised schools

Schools that were supposedly expert in one of 10 subject areas (E.g. sports, business, maths and computing.)

The new Labour government was simply continuing the market forces agenda, giving parents more choice over school with the aim to drive up standards in a parentocracy.

The problem with these special schools, where is that quite often they weren't specialist in that subject. In fact, the funding was given to help them get better in that subject area, giving parents a false impression.

The additional funding did help improve the facilities of the schools, including more specialist PE and IT equipment

Sure Start centres

The centres offer childcare, play sessions, parenting advice and employment coaching. At their peak in 2010, there were 3,600 centres, with a budget of about £1.8bn.

Sure Start was designed to boost the educational & life chances of disadvantaged children e.g. to compensate for the 18-month learning gap between them and their middle-class counterparts.

They had a small positive impact on SATs scores at seven years old.

However, middle-class parents often hijacked these facilities as a subsidised source of childcare, intimidating, working-class mothers.

Social policy - conservative - pupil premium

People premium is additional funding, given to schools to help improve the attainment of disadvantaged groups. Eligibility is for those in care, adopted, on free school meals or income support.

Schools are given additional funding of between £900 and £2400 for the students to help boost attainment for this group of disadvantaged learners because there is a link between deprivation and underperformance at school.

However, most schools use the additional funding to pay for everyday school expenses; it does not have to spent on individual pupil premium students. School funding per child has fallen by 9% since 2010 and the money is often used to help pay for more teachers, TAs, equipment, etc. Parents and guardians are not very aware of the additional funding for their child and cannot hold the schools to account in a supposed parentocracy.

Globalisation

Giddens: Globalisation refers to the increasing interconnectedness of societies.

• Waters: A social process in which constraints of geography on economic, political, social and cultural arrangements have declined.

Globalisation has been facilitated in the past with advances in traditional forms of communication (e.g. television).

• More recently it has been due to the development of information technology including the internet and acceleration in international migration.

Impact of globalisation

Kelly: British education policy aims to allow our students to compete with international students.

• The British economy is global. Skilled workers are required to keep us in the G7 of richest nations.

• Michael Gove and the coalition government used

Britain's falling position on the PISA league tables as justifications for more rigorous primary and secondary school standards and exams.

Globalisation - commodification

Globalisation has led to the commodification of students (Ball).

British universities compete to attract overseas students who pay higher fees. They have also set up universities overseas based on their British 'brands'. Many British students study in foreign universities that specialise in certain fields, e.g. engineering in Germany.

Many British students go to university overseas because it is cheaper given the high cost of tuition in Britain. Students are being treated as a commodity to be bought as sold for profit.

- 50% consider studying abroad due to the cost in the UK, with 14% moving.

Globalisation - multi cultural curriculum

Globalisation has led to a more multicultural curriculum (Holborn).

Schools must teach students about other faiths and cultures beyond the White (81%) and Christian (11%) dominant culture of Britain.

- RE lessons teach about world faiths e.g.

Hinduism and Islam. Geography lessons teach about indigenous cultures.

Multi-culturalism has led to an increased emphasis on equality of all groups (including

SEN, FSM and EAL students) being a priority - OFSTED will evaluate the performance of these vulnerable pupils.

However, the teaching of suggests they are distinct from international values linked to human rights.

Hidden curriculum

Refers to the things that you learn in school that are not explicitly taught. It links to the Marxist concept of the correspondence principle.

For example, students are taught to value extrinsic rewards (exams) in school, so that in the workplace they are willing to stay at the job for money - rather than the intrinsic value of the job.

Arguably, the hidden curriculum is no longer hidden. E.g. we learn about it in Sociology - ironic! Also, not all students conform, think back to Learning to Labour.

Labelling

Labelling theory suggests that teachers judge pupils not by their ability or intelligence, but by characteristics such as appearance, gender behaviour, class and ethnicity.

Interactionists argue that individuals develop a self-concept or view of themselves based on how others react to them (Looking glass self). E.g. how pupils interact with teachers and fellow students can shape their identities, which can in turn influence their educational attainment.

Self-fulfilling prophecy

A self-fulfilling prophecy is a process where labelling someone in a certain way causes them to live up to a label and fulfil the prophecy made about them.

Rosenthal and Jacobson - Pygmalion in the classroom study.

This was a field experiment in. And elementary school. 20% of students were randomly selected and labelled as 'intellectual spurter.' The prophecy was fulfilled, with this group making higher than average process IQ tests are a poor way to measure ability. Teachers weren't observed in the classroom, no in depth, empathetic understanding (verstehen).

The ideal pupil

Refers to the student profile teachers implicitly hold in their minds, representing their expectations of a model student.

Gillborn and Youdell studied 2 London secondary school and found:

Differentiation - Teachers positively or negatively label pupils.

- Working class pupils were more likely to be seen as disruptive, ill-prepared and demotivated.

- Middle class pupils were more likely to be seen as co-operative, well prepared and

Polarisation - Students react to their label. They adopt two opposite 'poles' or extremes.

motivated.

- Working class = lower sets

- Middles class = higher sets

Pro-school subculture

Anti-school subculture

• Observation and interviews give greater understanding -Verstehen. Increased Validity.

• Micro-scale study (2 schools) - not representative / generalisible).

Internal - sub cultures

A pupil subculture is a group of pupils that share similar norms, values and patterns of behaviour.

• Lacey (1970) argues that these develop through differentiation and polarisation.

Pro- school subcultures gain status in academic success. Anti-school subcultures must find alternative means to gain status.

E.g. of subcultureS

- Black Female Subculture (Fuller)

- White female Subculture (Ringrose)

- White, male, working-class Subculture (Willis)

Mac an Ghaill found that there are different types of working-class male subcultures (Academic achievers, macho lads, new enterprisers and real Englishmen).

Material deprivation - external

Material deprivation is the inability to afford basic resources, which can impact a pupil's educational achievement. Pupils are unable to afford things like sufficient food, heating or clothing and educational resources leading to underachievement.

Key stats:

- Middles class children have a reading age 2.5 years ahead of working-class children at age 15.

- 90% of 'failing' schools are in deprived areas.

AO3: this may lead to silt shifting - students may off-role working class students who threaten the school's position on league tables.

Housing - The quality of housing a pupil lives in can affect achievement in school.

- Living in temporary accommodation may involve having to move frequently, resulting in constant changes in school and disrupted education.

- Overcrowding means less room for educational activites, nowhere to do homework, disturbed sleep from sharing beds/bedrooms etc.

External - material deprivation

Howard (2001): Poverty and Poor Diet

• Children from poor homes have lower intakes of vitamins and minerals.

• This may result in more absences from school, more time missed and a lack of concentration in lessons.

The government has tried to compensate for students from low-income backgrounds with EMA in the past, bursaries today, pupil premium funding and student loans for university students.

Criticism from Education Policy.

External - cultural deprivation

Working class Attitudes and Values

- According to cultural deprivation theorists, large sections of the working classes have different goals, beliefs, attitudes and values from mainstream society.

- Working class children internalise the beliefs of their often-deviant subcultures and underachieve.

- Working class jobs require less skills, are less secure, have fewer promotions with wages peaking early.

Sugarman (1970) refers to 4 main aspects of this;

- Fatalism (e.g. L2L), Collectivism, Immediate gratification

Present-time orientation.

Criticism of Cultural Deprivation Theory

• (Keddie): Cultural deprivation is victim blaming. Working class culture is different, not deprived.

• Working class failure is down to the systematic discrimination within a middle-class education environment.

Gender inequality

Females outperform relative to males because: schools are too 'feminised', coursework favours girl, female friends are more likely to be a part of pro-school subcultures, march of progress - more opportunities, and girls are more pressured to do well in their GCSEs/A-Levels (67% Thought it was important for their daughter to go to university.)

Males underperform relative to females because: there are a lack of male role models, they are good at 'practical tasks' and they are more likely to be a part of anti-school subcultures, with lower expectations placed on them.

The attainment of boys compared to girls in GCSEs since 1989 has always been lower. However, by 2019, the gap had widened again to 9% points. Nevertheless, boys are 22% points better today.

Parentocracy

Feminisation of school

Epstein argues that there is a 'poor boys' discourse that blames the school environment for the failure of boys.

90% of primary school teachers are female - meaning that there is a lack of positive role models for boys meaning that the environment becomes alienating. Teachers don't understand masculinity and provide girls with more attention.

However, Abraham argues that deviant boys receive more attention from some teachers.

Mitsos and Browne argue that teachers are less critical of boys than girls

More female teachers and female leaders act as a role model for girls. Girls also produce work timely, of high standard and well-presented, and boys are the opposite creating a self-fulfilling prophecy

Marketisation and League tables have seen schools trying to recruit more girls that outperform boys and exclude more boys who underperform.

Subject choice

Skelton and Francis:

There are considerable differences between boys and girls in subject choice at A-Level. Boys follow technical and science-based courses. Whilst girls follow caring subjects, such as arts, humanities and social science subjects.

Females end up in relatively lower paid and lower status jobs as a result.

•However, more women are now studying medicine, dentistry and law than men.

Subject choices. - single sex schools

single sex schools, the subject choice gap is narrowed showing the importance of peer pressure and teacher labelling on subject choice. E.g. girls in single sex school are 2.5 more times likely to choose Physics at A-Level.

Ethnicity and inequality

Cultural Deprivation

Ethnic minorities can be held back with a lack of reasoning skills, a lack of problem-solving as well as poor language skills. For example, spoken and written communication can be ungrammatical, disjointed and lack abstraction - restricted code.

However, Chinese, Indian and Bangladeshi students are outperforming British students in GCSEs.

Racism in wider society

Education is racist because society is racist

Poverty or material deprivation is often caused or made worse by racism. Rex argues that discrimination in housing often drives ethnic minorities into substandard accommodation in deprived areas - poor housing. (LINK)

Wood argues that discrimination in employment leads to ethnic minorities to low paid work or unemployment.

Ethnic minorities were 50% less likely to receive an interview for a job compared to a white person - lack of upward mobility - catchment areas.

Connolly argues that class, gender and ethnicity overlap in different ways for different students. We overestimate the importance of material deprivation compared to cultural deprivation. Indian and Chinese students who are materially deprived still outperform middle class White children; 86% of female Chinese students on FSM achieved 5A*-C grades compared to 65% of female White students not in receipt of FSM.