Educational Policies
Educational Policies
Introduction to Policies and Selection Policies
What is Policy?
Plans and Strategies introduced by the government.
Examples:
11+ exam
Ebacc
National Curriculum
Sets
Tuition fees
Education compulsory until 18
Pupil Premium
The aims of educational policy are responses to:
Equal opportunities (eg. achievement for all)
Selection and choice (eg. type of school, selection policies, parentocracy)
Control of education (eg. influence of government, local councils, etc.)
Marketisation and Privatisation (eg. operating in the ‘education market’)
Education policy in Britain before 1988:
Selection: the Tripartite System:
Introduced in 1944 The Education Act was supposedly based on the idea of meritocracy.
Achieved status through own efforts and abilities (not ascribed eg. social class).
Named so as children were to be selected and allocated one of three types of secondary schools.
These were to be tested through means of the 11+ exam.
Did it work?
Technical schools only existed in particular areas, so in reality there was a bipartite system.
Legitimated class inequality through ideology that ability is inborn.
Reproduced class inequality by channelling two social classes into different schools.
Reproduced gender inequality - discrimination against girls by asking for higher marks on 11+ than boys to obtain a place in a grammar school.
Comprehensivisation - 1965 onwards:
Introduced by the Labour government and PM Harold Wilson.
Aimed to overcome inequality and the class divide of the tripartite system and make education meritocratic again.
11+ abolished along with grammars (...) replaced with comprehensive secondaries.
Ultimately up to local education authorities (LEAs) to ‘go comprehensive’, most chose not to in conservative constituencies.
School catchment areas were introduced rather than selection (postcode lottery).
Streaming within schools - still gave middle-class pupils an advantage.
Teacher labelling is often a side effect in comprehensives.
Selection today:
Selection by Ability
Assessed by performance on an intelligence test at the age of 11 (11+ exam).
This was the main form of selection under the tripartite system but is now forbidden other than in state-funded grammar schools that remain in some parts of the UK.
Private schools are also notorious for this selection method.
Another form is the use of streaming and setting pupils according to ability.
Selection by Aptitude
This is the idea that students are selected based on their potential for certain subjects.
Specialist schools, which includes nearly all state-funded secondaries, are allowed to select up to 10% of students based on aptitude for a subject (eg. performing arts, sport, etc.)
This process is not used by many schools.
Selection by Faith
Faith schools and those of religious character may select a proportion of pupils based on their religious beliefs and commitment of their parents.
This is more popular in primary schools, but can include secondaries.
Marketisation Policies
Starter:
4 reasons why governments introduce education policies:
Equal Opportunities
Selection and Choice
Control of Education
Marketisation and Privatisation
The tripartite system had 11 year olds take an exam in order to determine the secondary schools they go to:
Grammar Schools (academic)
Secondary Modern (non-academic)
Technical Schools (skill-based)
Comprehensivisation aimed to overcome inequality, which eradicated the tripartite system and aimed to make education more meritocratic.
What is marketisation?
1988 Education Reform Act introduced by the conservative government with Thatcher (New Right) as Prime Minister.
Introduced Market Forces in Education:
Competition (league tables).
Consumer choice (who can choose?)
Power to parents rather than teachers and school - parentocracy.
Continued by 1997 Labour Government.
2010 further steps such as academics and free schools.
Favoured by New Right as makes schools raise standards to attract ‘customers’ in competition.
Features of Marketisation:
Publication of exam results and Ofsted reports.
Business sponsorship of schools.
Open enrollment - no catchment.
Specialist schools - to widen parental choice.
Funding per pupil - same for all.
Can opt out of LEA - become academics.
Schools compete to attract pupils.
Tuition fees for higher education.
Parents can set up a free school.
David (1993):
Marketised education is a parentocracy.
Power is shifted away from teachers and schools and moves to the consumers (parents)
Argues marketised education encourages diversity among schools and parental choice raises standards of education.
Ball and Whitty (1994, 1998)
Marketisation has many criticisms, including the creation and reproduction of class inequality.
League Tables:
High achieving schools can be more selective.
Lower position schools are unable to be selective.
Cream-skimming and silt-shifting.
Cream-skimming = selecting higher ability students who gain the best results and cost less to teach.
Silt-shifting = offloading students with learning difficulties who are expensive and get poor results.
Funding Formula:
Better schools: more funding and better teachers and facilities.
Unpopular schools: lose income; difficult to match schools.
Reproduction of Inequality:
Parental Choice:
Gerwitz (1995):
Middle-class parents are advantaged by choice (linked to their economic and cultural capital).
Privileged-skilled choosers (professional middle-class - possess cultural capital).
Disconnected local choosers (working-class - lack of cultural capital).
Semi-skilled choosers (ambitious working-class - limited cultural capital).
Myth of Parentocracy:
Marketisation reproduces and legitimates inequality.
Ball: only appears to be a choice - cultural capital determining the amount.
Gerwitz: middle-class can take advantage of the choice.
Leech and Campos: middle-class can afford to move close to better schools and into catchment areas.
Parentocracy appears to make the system fair but it is a myth.
New Labour and Inequality:
Much of New Labour’s policy built on previous initiatives but some key themes:
Widening diversity and choice.
Raising standards and addressing underachievement.
Reforming the post-compulsory sector.
Policies included:
Education action zone - increased funding.
Aim higher.
EMA to support low-income students.
National Literacy Strategy.
Creation of academics where schools fail.
Increased funding.
Criticism of New Labour:
Benn’s New Labour Paradox (2012)
Contradiction between policies to tackle inequality and its commitment to marketisation.
Cost of Education:
EMA to help with FE.
But still fees for higher education.
Grammar and Fee Paying Schools
Inequality reproduction and legitimation.
New Labour didn’t abolish them.
Coalition Government Policies from 2010:
Academies
Academies were given control over curriculum.
By 2017, 68% of secondary schools were academies.
Some academies are run by private educational businesses and funded directly by the state.
Free Schools
Run by parents, teachers, faith organisers or businesses rather than the local authority.
People normally create free schools when they are unhappy with the local state schools.
Free schools are free from the national curriculum.
Allen (2010) - In Sweden (20% of the schools are free schools) - only benefits children from highly educated backgrounds and families.
Fragmented Centralisation
Ball (2011) argues that the increase of promotion of academies and free schools has led to fragmentation and centralisation of control over educational provision in England:
Fragmentation - Comprehensive system replaced by a patchwork of diverse provision that leads to greater inequality in opportunities.
Centralisation of Control - Central government alone has power to require schools to become academies or allow free schools to be set up.
Policies to Reduce Inequality:
Free School Meals for all children in reception, year one and two.
Pupil Premium - Money that schools receive for each pupil from a disadvantaged background.
Evaluation:
Only 1/10 head teachers said that pupil premium had significantly changed how they supported pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.
The cutting of Sure Start and EMA has reduced opportunities to working-class pupils. In addition, an increase of tuition fees may have discouraged some working-class pupils.
The Privatisation of Education:
Blurring the Public/Private Boundary
Senior officials in the public sector now leave to set up or work for private sector education businesses.
These companies bid for contracts to provide services to schools and local authorities.
For example, two companies set up in this way hold 4 of the 5 national contracts for school inspection services.
Privatisation and the Globalisation of Education Policy
Many private companies in the education services industry are foreign-owned. Edexcel is owned by the US educational publishing and testing giant Pearson.
Buckingham and Scanlon (2005) - UK’s 4 leading educational software companies are all owned by global multinationals (Disney, Mattel and Hambro (US), and Vivendi (France)).
Many contracts for educational services in the UK are sold on by the original company to others such as banks and investment funds.
The Cola-isation of Schools
Private sector is penetrating education indirectly by vending machines on school premises and development of brand loyalty.
Molnar (2005) - Schools are targeted by private companies because ‘schools by their nature carry enormous goodwill and can thus confer legitimacy on anything associated with them’. In other words, they are a kind of product endorsement.
Ball - The benefits are very limited. For example, a Cadury’s sports equipment promotion was scrapped after it was revealed that pupils would have to eat 5,440 chocolate bars justo qualify for a set of volleyball posts.
Beder (2009) - UK families spent £110,000 in Tesco supermarkets in return for a single computer for schools.
Education as a Commodity
In the process of privatisation, education is being turned into a ‘legitimate object of private profit-making’, a commodity to be bought and sold in an education market.
Privatisation means the state is losing its role as the provider of educational services.
Ball - ‘More and more areas of education are now subject to business practices and financial logics, and bought and sold as assets and made part of investment portfolios. The possibilities of privatisation continually expand, and the ratcheting up of policy over time opens up more education services for profit.’
Similarly, Marxist such as Hall (2011) see Conservative government policies as part of the ‘long march of the neoliberal revolution’.
Hall sees academies as an example of handing over public services to private capitalists, such as educational businesses.
The neoliberal claim that privatisation and competition drive up standards is a myth used to legitimise the turning of education into a source of private profit.
Neoliberalism and Privatisation:
Neoliberal and New Right perspectives both share the functionalist view that education must be meritocratic, and must promote social integration.
However, they argue that the state’s involvement leads to bureaucratic self-interest, the stifling of initiative and low standards.
To overcome these problems, the education system must be marketised, and raise educational standards.
There are two types of marketisation:
Type 1: an internal market within the state education system:
Established by 1988 Education Reform Act.
Directed state schools to act more like private businesses, eg. competing for pupils.
However, schooling was still largely delivered by the state, mainly through local authority schools.
Type 2: the privatisation of state education:
In a privatised system, the state ceases to be the actual provider of educational services. Instead, private companies or voluntary organisations deliver education and the state is reduced to two roles:
It commissions educational services, putting them up for contract and deciding which private bidder gets the contract.
It acts as regulator, setting targets and monitoring performance to ensure that the private providers meet certain standards eg. through Ofsted inspections.
This form of marketisation began in the late 1980s in a fairly limited way but the trend has steadily accelerated as more areas of the education system have opened up to be private businesses.
Policies on Gender and Ethnicity:
Gender:
In the 19th century, females were largely excluded from higher education. More recently, under the tripartite system, girls had to achieve a higher mark than boys in order to obtain a place in a grammar school.
Since the 1970s, policies such as GIST and WISE have been introduced to try to reduce gender differences in subject choice.
Ethnicity:
Policies aimed at raising the achievement of children from minority ethnic backgrounds have gone through several phases:
Assimilation policies in the 1960s and 70s focused on BAME pupils to assimilate them into mainstream British culture, especially by helping those for whom English was not their first language.
Critics argue that some minority ethnic groups who are at risk of underachieving, such as African Caribbean pupils already speak English and that the real cause of their underachievement lies in poverty and/or racism.
Multicultural Education (MCE) policies through the 1980s and into the 1990s aimed to promote the achievements of children form minority ethnic groups by valuing all culture in the school curriculum, therefore raising BAME pupils' self-esteem and achievements.
Stone (1981) argues that black pupils do not fail for lack of self-esteem, MCE is misguided.
Critical race theorists argue that MCE is mere tokenism. It picks out stereotypical features of minority cultures for inclusion in the curriculum, but fails to tackle institutional racism.
The New Right criticise MCE for perpetuating cultural divisions. They take the view that education should promote a shared national culture and identity into which minorities should be assimilated.
Social Inclusion of pupils from minority ethnic groups, and policies to raise their achievement, became the focus in the late 1990s. Policies include:
Detailed monitoring of exam results by ethnicity.
Amending the Race Relations ACt to place a legal duty on schools to promote racial equality.
Help for voluntary ‘Saturday Schools’ in the black community.
English as an Additional Language programmes.
However, Mirza (2005) sees little genuine change in policy. Education should tackle the structural causes of ethnic inequality such as poverty and racism, educational policy still takes a ‘soft’ approach that focuses on culture, behaviour and the home.
Similarly, Gillborn argues that institutionally racist policies in relation to the ethnocentric curriculum, assessment and streaming continue to disadvantage minority ethnic group pupils.
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