educational policy and inequality

- no state schools
- only for minority- fee paying schools or churches and charities for the poor

1833

social class

- mc --> academic curriculum for careers in the preoffessions

- wc --> basic numeracy and literacy skills for factory work and get an obedient attitude to bosses

1944 education act

you would be selected and placed based on abilities, identified by 11+

Secondary modern - general education for less academic students. (75% of all students)
Secondary technical - practical education e.g. crafts and skills (5% of students)
Grammar school - Education for the more academic (20% of all students)

offered academic curriculum and accsess to non manual jobs and higher education
mainly mc

offered non academic curriculum and access to manual work for those who failed the 11+

- channelled WC and MC pupils to different schools that provided unequal opps
-girls needed to gain higher marks on the 11+ to get into grammar school

had ideology that ability is inborn

Introduced in 1965, aimed to overcome class divide of TS & make education more meritocratic. 11+ be abolished & grammars & secondary moderns replaced by comprehensive schools that all pupils within area would attend.
Left to local education authority decide where to go comprehensive & not all did = grammar secondary modern dividestill exists.

- promote social integration
- meritocratic as it gives people's a longer time to develop and show abilities

Found little social mixing between WC and MC pupils mostly due to streaming

- not meritocratic
- reproduce his class inequality between generations through the continuation of streaming and labeling
- the myth of meritocracy legitimates class inequality by making unequal achievement seem just unfair because failure looks like the fault of the individual

the process of where by services like education are pushed towards operating like a business based on supply and demand. Students are considered consumers rather than pupils.

-reducing direct state control over education
-increasing both competition between schools and parental choice of school

- conservative government- thatcher, 1988 ERA
- new labour followed similar policies emphasizing standards, diversity and choice (1997)
- conservative Liberal Democrat coalition government took marketization further by a creating academies and free schools (2010)

- favour marketisation
- say that schools now have to attract customers by competition
-schools provide customers with what they want will thrive

- 'Ruled by parents'. The concept is associated with marketisation of education which is based on the ideology of parental choice.
- power shifts away from producers to consumers which is argued to encourage diversity among schools, give parents more choice and raise standards

- League tables
- Ofsted inspections
- Business sponsorship of schools
- Funding formula
- schools being able to opt out of local authority control

- Ball and Whitty
- policies like league tables and the funding corner reproduces class inequalities by creating an equalities between schools

This means schools that achieve good results are more in demand because parents are attracted to those with good rankings

schools w worse positions can't be selective then take less able pupils so the results are poorer and they are unattractive to middle-class parents

cream skimming and slit shifting

'Good' schools can be more selective of pupils and recruit high achieving, mainly middle-class pupils who gain an advantage

'Good' schools can avoid taking less able pupils who are likely to get poor results and damage the school's league table position.

Off-loading pupils with learning difficulties, who are expensive to teach and get poor results.

Schools are allocated funds by a formula based on how many pupils they attract.

More popular schools get more funds, can afford better qualified teachers and better facilities attracting more middle class applicants.

unpopular schools lose income to match teacher skills of other schools so fail to attract pupils w reduced funding

they have economic and cultural capital to choose good schools for their children

Gerwitz

Professional middle-class parents who possess the economic and cultural capital to take full advantage of the choices available.
They understand how admissions systems work, had the time to research and visit schools, and could afford to move children around, for example by paying extra travel costs.

Working-class parents who are restricted by a lack of capital. They do not understand admissions procedures well, are less confident in dealings with schools, are less aware of choices and therefore cannot manipulate the system.
Limited funds limit distance, and many are more concerned with safety and facilities than league tables.

Working-class parents who are ambitious for their children, but still lack the cultural capital needed to make sense of the education market.
Often they rely on others' opinions of schools. Sometimes they are restricted by a lack of capital and are unable to get their children into the desired schools.

- Stephen Ball (1994) argues that it makes appear that all parents have the same freedom to choose which school they send their children to
- reality is that some parents are more able to take advantage of choices

- leech and campos
- gerwitz

- Labelling deprived areas as Education Action Zones, they were given extra funding to support them
- Aim Higher Programme, raises aspirations of the under-represented minorities in higher education
- EMA'S, allowance given to students of low-income families to help them stay in education post-16 to gain better qualifications
- National Literacy Strategy

1997-2010

BENN sees contradiction between policies and theirb commitement to marketisation. For example, they introduced EMA'S to encourage poorer students to stay in education but raised tuition fees (university)

- funding was taken from local authority budgets and given directly to academies by the government
- had control over the curriculum
- unlike labour, the coalition government removed the focus on reducing inequality by allowing any school to become an academy

Schools set up by charities, teachers and businesses or parents but funded by the state. They were introduced by the coalition government after 2010.
-supporters claim they improve educational studies by taking away control from the state and giving power to parents
- it claims to provide the opportunity if they are unhappy with schools in the local area

Only6.4% of pupils at Bristol free school were eligible for free school meals compared with 22.5% of pupils across the city, showing free schools take less disadvantage pupils

Ball - promoting academies & free schools = increased fragmentation & centralisation of control over educational provision.

comprehensive system is being replaced by patchwork of diverse provision involving private providers that leads to greater inequality in opportunity

central government has power to allow or require schools to become academies or free schools to be set up. These are funded directly by central government. Rapid growth has greatly reduced til of elected local authorities in education.

Free school meals for reception to year two
People premium

Ofsted found that only one in ten head teachers said it had significantly changed how they supported people from disadvantaged backgrounds
- spending in education has been cut: School buildings spending cut, Sure Start centres closed, EMA abolished, tuition fees becoming 9,000
- cutting short start and the EMA has reduced opportunities for working class people's andincreased university fees discouraged them from answering higher education

It involves the transfer of public assets like schools to private companies
- it leads to education becoming a source of profit for capitalists in the Education Services industry
- for example large-scale school building projects often use private sector companies who provide capital to design build finance and operate services
- Ball shows that these companies make up to 10 times as much profit as they do on other contracts
- local offers do this becauseit's the only way of building new schools because of a lack of funding by the central government

Senior officials in the public sector like headteachers leave to set up work for private sector education businesses
- these companies then bid for contracts to provide services to schools and local authorities
- pull up calls this inside and knowledge

Many private companies in the ESI are foreign owned, like how Edexcel is owned by Pearson (US)
- money contracts for es in the UK are sold by the original company to others
- some UK edu businesses work overseas

This means the private sector is penetrating education indirectly e.g. vending machines on school premises, sponsorship and development of brand loyalty through displays of logos

found a Cadbury sport equipment promotion was scrapped after it was revealed pupils would have to eat 5,400 chocolate bars for a set of vollyball posts

- Ball- a change is taking place in which privatisation is becoming the key factor shaping educational policy.
- Policy is increasingly focused on moving educational services out of the public sector controlled by the nation-state, to be provided by private companies instead.
- In the process, education is being turned into a commodity to be bought and sold in an education market.

- NL and NR agree with functionalists that education should be meritocratic and promote social integration but are critical in the role of the state in performing these functions
- they feel this leads to bureaucratic self-interest this stifling of initiative and new standards so the education system must be marketized which will make schools more responsive and raise educational standards

2 types of marketisation:

- an internal market within the state education system
- the privatisation of state education

In the 19th century, females were largely excluded from higher education and often had to achieve a higher mark than boys in the 11+ in order to obtain a grammar school place.
Since the 1970s, policies such as GIST have been introduced to try to reduce gender differences in subject choice.

Assimilation
Multicultural education
Social inclusion

Policies in the 60s and 70sfocused on the need for ethnic minority pupils to assimilate into mainstream British culture as a way of raising their achievement, especially for EAL

Minority groups already at risk of underachieving already speak English and the real cause of underachievement lies in poverty or racism

Through 80s and 90s and aimed to promote the achievements of ethnic minority pupils by value in all cultures in the school curriculum, raising their self-esteem and achievements

- Stone says black pupils don't fail because of lack of self-esteem so MCE is misguided

- critical race theorists see it as tokenism which picks out stereotypical features of minority cultures for inclusion in the curriculum but fails to tackle institutional racism

- the new right criticise it for perpetuating cultural divisions. They believe that education should promote a shed national culture and identity which minorities should be assimilated

Policies to raise achievement in the late 90s
Such as:
- detailed monitoring of exam results by ethnicity
- EAL programs
- amending the race relations act to place a legal Duty on schools to promote racial equality

- Mirza argues that instead of tackling the structural causes of ethnic inequality like poverty and racism, educational policy still takes a softer approach that focuses on culture behaviour and the home

- Gilborn argues that institutionally racist policies in relation to the ethnocentric curriculum, assessment and streaming continue to disadvantage minority ethnic group pupils