Category: education

Sociological perspectives on the role and functions of education in society; the significance of in-school processes such as teacher labelling and subcultures for pupil identities; explanations for differences in educational achievement by social class, gender and ethnicity; the impact of education policies of marketization, selection and privatisation, and the globalization of education

Educational Technology – Increasing Inequality and Other Potential Problems

Does the increasing use of educational technology enhance the ‘learning experience’ for learners, or does it just reinforce existing social problems such as inequality of educational outcomes? Personally I’m sceptical about the benefits of educational technology. 

In its recent report, OFCOM describe young people as prolific users of digital media, with the vast majority of young people perceiving digital technologies in highly positive ways, and approximately 25% reporting that they see ICT as the key to their future career. (OFCOM 2013, see also Logicalis 2013).

This widespread enthusiastic adoption of digital technologies is met by equally enthusiastic encouragement by business leaders, many of whom voice optimism that such technologies can help maintain UK economic competitiveness in the global knowledge economy. Gantz and Reinsel (2012) for example note that CIOs, data scientists and digital entrepreneurs already know that there is huge, untapped potential in the rapidly expanding collection of digital bits, although this will require the tagging and analysing of big data if this is to be realised, while Lent (2102) suggests the long established blurring between consumption and production is accelerated by the web which opens up new capacities for self-generated value, pointing to a new entrepreneurial spirit amongst today’s younger generation, which should be embraced.

This optimism seems to be mirrored by the DFES1 which has an overwhelmingly positive view of the future role of ICT in schools and colleges, noting that it has transformed other sectors, and that pupils need ICT to equip them with future-work skills. In DFES literature, ICT seems to be presented as a neutral set of technologies through which individual students can be empowered, with emphasis on the benefits such technology can bring to schools, such as more personalised learning, better feedback, a richer resource base and the possibility of extending the learning day.

Following Ball (2013) this optimistic tone surrounding ICT fits with the neoliberal reorientation to economic global competitiveness as part of a global flow of policy based around a shift towards a knowledge based high skills economy, and in terms of broader (‘classic’) sociological theory these optimistic voices correspond to the largely optimistic theories of disembedded individualisation (following Dawson 2012) originally advanced by Giddens and Beck in early 1990s, in that digital technology is constructed as something which can enhance the capacity for young people to employ agency and craft innovative transitional choice-biographies (Giddens, 1991, p5, Beck 1992, p135-6). If there is any truth in this, we should, over the next few years, see several hundreds of thousands of young digital entrepreneurs engaging in cyber-reflexivity and creating innovative online solutions to the systemic problem of decreasing youth employment opportunities, irrespective of their class-location (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002, p39).

There are, however, several factors which suggest that this vision of the (dismebedded) individualised cyber-reflexive entrepreneurial future is either naive or ideological. Firstly, the extent to which today’s so called ‘digital natives’2 are genuinely innovative digital entrepreneurs rather than simply being ambivalent-consumers of digital products remains unclear3; secondly, cyberspace is far from a neutral arena, in reality I think it is more accurate to view it as a field of action in which the type of agency employed (e.g. whether productive/ entrepreneurial or banal/ consumptive) will be influenced by factors such as cultural capital and social networks; thirdly, this vision overplays the actual opportunities available for using digital media as a route to career success or self-employment – for example little mention is given to the problematic fact that millions of young people in Asia will be entering the ‘flat’ digital-labour market in the coming decade, able to survive off much lower returns than their UK competitors; fourthly, there seems to little interest in operationalising what kind of opportunities will be opening up for digital entrepreneurs in the future – there may well be hundreds of thousands more 20-somethings with their own digital-companies by 2020, but it is uncertain what side of the high skills low skills informational economy (referred to by Apple 2012) the majority of tomorrow’s digital workforce will find themselves; and finally there is the possibility that this is the latest discourse innovation in the denigration of teachers and state education through constructing technologically reticent staff as a barrier to progress, as well as paving the way for further privatisation with the forthcoming renewal of the ICT curriculum being fully endorsed and part-authored by Google, Microsoft, and IBM4.

It is also the case that I see little evidence of digital innovation in my mundane workaday reality – instead what I mainly see is digital-addiction, banal banter, and browsing for shoes, with today’s digital youth seeming largely content to construct themselves through digital-consumption and self-expression. Many of today’s students attach huge significance to such aspects of their lives (browsing for clothes and shoes is a favoured activity in tutorial, as are discussions about the post-exam trip to Malia, photos from the previous year’s trips being standard as social networking profile pictures). It is also apparent that the mobile devices through which many young people access online culture are themselves fetish-objects, central to young people’s experience of being themselves (as researched by Jotham 2012), that young people generally remain uninterested or unable to engage with the more technical aspects of these technologies5 which might actually equip them with the skills to be digitally-entrepreneurial, and that mobile devices link young people to heavily commodified space (Bolin 2012) which connects users directly to corporate (read neoliberal) protocols (Snickars and Vonderau, 2012).

It follows that youth engagement with digital media seems much more likely to centre around what Kenway and Bullen (2008) call the corporate curriculum (2008) which normalises the libidinal economy, a hyperreal realm of carnivalesque jouissance fuelled by desires based on values associated with lifestyle commodity aesthetics rather than the work ethic or responsibility, with any sense of ‘digital entrepreneurship’ being limited to the self-conscious commodification of the self through personal branding via social networking sites (Marwick 2011).

I also think that many students struggle as a result of what Bauman (2013a, 2013b) refers to as the pointillist experience of time online… ‘marked as much by the profusion of ruptures and discontinuities…. more prominent for its inconsistency and lack of cohesion than for its elements of continuity and consistency…. broken up, or even pulverized, into a multitude of ‘eternal instants’. This concept has been developed by Niehaus (2012), exploring what he calls ‘iTime’, describing this experience as being structured by an addictive hunt for frissons, short instants of excitement and pleasure; with each moment ever-more packed with contents, references, and tasks which taken together are likely to take precedence over the linear, single-minded time of one activity.’ This process is likely to be accelerated through multitasking, through which 16-24 year olds manage to squeeze in the equivalent of 9 hours and 30 minutes of data consumption per day (as noted by Davis 2013).

According to Bauman (2013b), those young people who are distracted by pointillism and the jouissance of the corporate curriculum, engaged in what he would call ‘banal’ cyber-reflexivity, are afflicted with a ‘fatal coincidence of the compulsion/ addiction of choosing with the inability to choose’, and if Bauman is correct, those who are more engaged with such aspects of digital media are probably less-likely to have thought about their long-term futures, and be less able to construct the kind of entrepreneurial ‘choice’-biographies that DFES champion (Bauman, 2012).

While there is a lack of critical research available on the use of digital media in an educational context (as Selwyn 2014 notes), there is some evidence that higher levels of ‘social’ use of digital technologies could be correlated with lower levels of engagement  with educational opportunities. Fisher’s (2009) personal experience of teaching in an FE college was that FE students who were heavy users of communications technologies were more likely to get bored of standard, offline lessons, Junco (2011) has theorised that the negative correlation between the frequency of posting updates on Facebook and final GPA could have been due to due to cognitive overload, given that the former variable was not negatively correlated with time spent engaged in college work, while Hall and Baym’s (2012) analysis of mobile maintenance expectations uncovered that once established mobile technologies can encourage high levels of ‘mundane maintenance’ to meet communicative obligations within a friendship group.

Possible avenues for research….

There’s definitely scope for further research to examine the extent to which student use of digital technology6 encourages the production neoliberal subjectivties, and the scope for and meaning of resistance to such subjectivities. One possible avenue might be to look at the extent of ‘digital entrepreneurship’ (for example, ability to code and create software or use software to generate innovative products) compared to other more common uses of digital media (such as information-seeking, maintaining social networks and game-playing).

My own feeling is that it would be useful to employ Bauman’s theoretical framework7 to explore the extent to which different forms of (socially embedded) digital-reflexivities stratify young people into (different types of) digital-producers and digital-consumers, although there is potential for this to be a ‘sociology of education’ type study, which might usefully draw on the theoretical work of Bordieu, exploring how digital reflexivities are embedded in social networks and influenced by cultural capital, and how these reflexivities influence students’ ability to meet the performative demands of further education.

Works cited

Apple,M (2010) Global crises, social justice and education, Routledge: New York.

Ball, S (2013) The education debate, Kindle Edition.

Bauman, Z (2013a) Dividing time, or Love’s Labour’s Lost, Thesis Eleven 2013 118: 3

Bauman, Z (2013b)  The art of life, Kindle Edition (originally published 2008).

Bauman, Z (2012) On education: Conversations with Riccardo Mazzeo, Polity Press: Cambridge.

Beck, U (1992) Risk society: towards a new modernity, Sage: London.

Beck, U and Beck-Gernsheim, E (2002) Individualisation, Sage: London.

Bolin, G (2012) Personal media in the digital economy, in Snickars, P and Vonderau, P (2012) Moving data: The iphone and the future of media, Columbia University Press: New York.

Davis, M (2013) Hurried lives: Dialectics of time and technology in liquid modernity. Thesis Eleven 118:7.

Dawson, M (2012) Reviewing the critique of individualization: The disembedded and embedded theses. Acta Sociologica 55: 305.

Fischer, M (2009) Capitalist realism: Is there no alternative? Kindle Edition.

Gantz, J and Reinsel, D (2012) The digital universe in 2020: Big data, bigger digital shadows, and biggest growth in the far east, IDC. (Accessed online January 25/ 2014 – http://www.emc.com/leadership/digital-universe/iview/index.htm).

Giddens, A (1991) Modernity and self identity: Self and society in the late modern age, Polity: Cambridge.

Hall, J and Baym, N (2012) Calling and texting (too much): Mobile maintenance expectations, (over)dependence, entrapment, and friendship satisfaction. New Media and Society 2012 14: 316.

Jotham, V (2012) iSpace? Identitiy and space – A visual ethnography with young people and mobile phone technologies. PhD Thesis, University of Manchester, Faculty of Humanities.

Junco, R (2011) Too much face and not enough books: The relationship between multiple indicies of Facebook use and academic performance. Computers in Human Behaviour, 28: 1 (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563211001932, accessed 24/01/ 2014).

Kenway, J & Bullen, E (2008) ‘The global corporate curriculum and the young cyberflaneur as global citizen’ in Dolby, N & Rizvi, F (eds.) Youth moves – Identities and education in global perspectives, Routledge, New York.

Lent, A (2012) Generation enterprise: The hope for a brighter economic future, the RSA. (http://www.thersa.org/action-research-centre/enterprise-and-design/enterprise/enterprise/generation-enterprise, accessed 25/ 01/2014.)

Livingstone, S (2008) Taking risky opportunities in youthful content creation: teenagers’ use of social networking sites for intimacy, privacy and self-expression, New Media and Society, 10: 293.

Logicalis (2013) Realtime generation (http://www.uk.logicalis.com/knowledge-share/reports/real-time-generation-2013/, accessed 22/01/ 2014).

Marwick, A (2011) I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience, New Media and Society, 13: 114.

Niehaus, N (2012) Whenever you are, be sometime else’. A philosophical analysis of smartphone time (https://www.academia.edu/3664754/Whenever_you_are_be_sometime_else._A_philosophical_analysis_of_smartphone_time, accessed 22/ 01/ 2014).

Selwyn (2014) Making sense of young people, Education and digitial technology: The role of sociological theory. Oxford Review of Education 38:1.

1http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/teachingandlearning/curriculum/a00201823/digital-technology-in-schools accessed 16/01/2104, updated 18 October 2013

2Despite the fact that recent research by the Open University suggests the concept bears no relation to empirical reality, the DFES and business analysts still seem all too willing to use it.

3 In my own college, reporting of 60+ hours a week use of digital-media is not uncommon, but the majority seem to simply use digital media for communication with significant-peers, entertainment or consumer-related information-seeking purposes, and thus it seems likely that most 16-19 year olds are currently more accurately characterised as digital-consumers rather than genuinely innovative digital-producers/ or a range of diverse prosumer hybrids.

4https://www.gov.uk/government/news/harmful-ict-curriculum-set-to-be-dropped-to-make-way-for-rigorous-computer-science DFES 11/01/2012, accessed 16/01/2013

5for example, Livingstone (2008) reported that teenage users of a variety of social networking sites were unsure of what aspects of their profiles were private, which requires a ‘deeper’ level of technical awareness than that required to maintain a profile, but in itself is hardly a ‘deep’ level of technical knowledge.

6I use the term broadly at this stage, although I realise I may need to limit the study to certain types of digital-engagement.

7If that’s even possible given his love of ambivalence?

Grammar Schools – Arguments For and Against

Grammar schools have been in the news this week – Theresa May’s plans to reintroduce grammar schools is actually one of the most unpopular policies in her party  but despite this opposition, and more opposition from nearly everyone who knows anything about education, she seems hell-bent on bringing the grammar school back into the state system, so it looks like we’re going back to selective state education.

Hands up – I went to a state grammar school in Kent – so I’m a living, breathing example of someone from a working class background who benefited from a state-grammar education.

And get  this for a ‘school motto’ – ‘Knowledge is a steep which few may climb, while duty is path which all must tread’ (talk about hegemonic!) 

Despite appreciating the leg-up, I’m not so sure it’s a good idea to expand grammar schools nation wide, despite widespread parental support for the policy.

What are grammar schools?

In short, they are schools which focus on providing an academic education based on selection by ability, typically through an entrance test at the age of 11.

The term ‘scholas grammaticales’ was first use in the 1500s when monarchs, nobles and merchants founded schools for ‘poor scholars’. In Tudor times, pupils were taught to read and speak Latin by learning classical texts from heart. School days spanned from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. and boys caught speaking in English were punished.

The big expansion of grammar schools came with the 1944 Butler Education Act, which launched the tripartite system – every pupil sat an IQ test at the age of 11 which determined which of three types of school they went to for the next 4-5 years –

  • Grammar schools were established for those ‘interested in learning for its own sake’
  • Technical schools for those ‘whose abilities lie markedly in the field of applied science or art’
  • Secondary modern schools for those who ‘deal more easily with concrete things and ideas’.

There was supposed to be ‘parity of esteem’ between these three types of school – which means difference but equal in principle.

How successful was the system?

Basically it was great if you were one of the 20% pupils who made it into a grammar school,  which tended to have a public school type ethos and prepared students for ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels, there is also  a commonly held view that these schools offered a ‘ladder of opportunity’ to bright, working class students, although this may be a comforting myth, rather than the reality (see below).

On balance, there seem to be more failings of the tripartite system:

  1. There was no parity of esteem because the secondary moderns were poorly resourced and pupils were taught a watered down curriculum.
  2. The system branded anyone who attended a secondary modern as a failure from the age of 11.
  3. The 11+ didn’t measure intelligence – it was easy to coach children to get higher scores, which benefited the middle classes.
  4. There was no equality of opportunity – In the 1940s and 50s few secondary modern pupils took public exams and when they started to take them, they were typically limited to CSE exams rather than O levels.

Why was the Tripartite System Abolished?

The county of Leicestershire was the first to experiment with a new comprehensive system in 1957, to placate the parents of children who had failed the 11+, and by the late 1950s, there was mounting evidence that the 11+ was a flawed measure of intelligence and that secondary moderns provided a sub-standard of education.

In 1965 the then Labour government issued a circular requesting that all Local Education Authorities abolish  the 11+ and move to a non-selective, comprehensive system – effectively meaning they had to abolish grammar and secondary moderns and establish comprehensives.

However, it was only in 1976 that Labour brought in an education act that formally required all counties to go fully Comprehensive.

How did some grammar schools survive? 

Some local authorities dragged their feet and clung on until the Tory election victory of 1979, when Thatcher repealed the 1976 act. England today has 164 state grammar schools – Kent is one of the few which is wholly selective.

Arguments for reintroducing grammar schools 

  1. Proponents say they will provided a ladder of opportunity for poor, bright kids.
  2. Possibly the best argument – we’d see the withering away of private schools – whose going to pay £10K a year when you can get a similar quality of education for free?
  3. Comprehensives are not good enough – we need more, quality education to prepare our brightest kids to compete in a global job market.
  4. We already have selection by mortgage, grammar schools may help remedy this.
  5. There is strong parental support for more grammars.

Arguments against grammar schools

  1. Number 1 is a myth – the reason so many bright working class kids seemed to benefit from a grammar school education in the 1960s was because of a change in the class structure at that time – basically the decline of working class jobs and the increase in middle class jobs meant there was more opportunity to go up the class ladder. This no longer applied.
  2. It’s unfair on those who don’t get into them.
  3. The 11+ favours those who can afford private tuition – so all we’re going to see is the reproduction of class inequality, then again, if we have quotas, this may not be the case (fat chance of that actually happening fairly though?)
  4. Standards are currently improving, so do we need to disrupt schools AGAIN with ANOTHER policy upheaval?

 

White Working Class Underachievement

A recent parliamentary report has found that poor white boys and girls do worse in schools than children in other ethnic groups.

How much worse do poor white children do?

The report uses students who received free school meals (FSM children) as an indicator of poverty:

  • 32% of FSM white British children get five good GSCEs, compared to…
  • 42% of FSM Black Caribbean children
  • 62% of FSM Indian children
  • 77% of FSM Chinese children

The achievement gap between poor white children and rich white children is much larger than the corresponding gap between poor and rich children from other minority groups, and the gap widens as white children get older.

How has educational performance changed over time?

The achievement rates of poor white kids has actually improved signficantly in the last decade – in 2008 only 15% of white pupils on Free School Meals got 5 good GCSEs, which has now doubled – the problem is that pupils from more affluent backgrounds have also improved, meaning the ‘achievement gap’ has stayed the same for white kids – today 65% of better off white children get 5 good GCSEs compared to only 32% of FSM white children, meaning a and achievement gap of 33%.

This trend is different for ethnic minorities – poor minority children have closed the gap on their wealthier counterparts. For Indian and black students the gap between rich and poor is only 15%, and for Chinese students it is 1.4%.

This has led some to conclude that there must be cultural differences influencing the way poor white British children approach their education.

Do Cultural Differences Explain why White Working Class Underachievement?

The cliche is that the children of immigrant parents are put under greater pressure to study, and the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England suggests some supporting evidence for this view:

White working class boys and girls are more likely to have anti-school attitudes than other minority groups, they play truant less, and they spend less time doing homework – an average of 2.54 evenings a week compared to 3.13 for black African and 3.29 for Indian children.

There is less support for the idea that white working class parents and their children lack aspiration – For a start, 57% of British people identify themselves as working class, while it is only the 12.5% on Free School Meals who are doing very badly at school – so it is more a case of there being pockets of underachievement rather than the whole of the working class underachieving.

There is also evidence that working class children, especially young children, have high ambitions.

Schools (and leadership) Can Make a Difference

There are plenty examples of academies which have been set up in deprived areas which have helped local working class kids get good GCSE results.

In 2003 New Labour launched ‘The London Challenge’ to drive up standards, and invested £80 million in leadership, targeting failing schools – about 80% of schools in London now have ‘outstanding leadership’ according to OFSTED and 50% of children in London on Free School Meals get 5 good GCSEs, irrespective of ethnicity.

The problem is that this initiative might not work outside of London – London has a prosperous economy which makes it easier to attract the best leaders and teachers, and also benefits from the positive impact of immigrant families.

The Geographical Aspect to Underachievement 

In 2013 the chief inspector of schools, Michael Wilshaw, identified a geographical shift in educational underachievement – away from big cities and crowded, densely packed neighbourhoods, to deprived coastal towns and rural, less populous parts of the country.

Such towns suffer from fragile, seasonal economies, an inability to attract good staff, a lack of jobs for young people, and scant opportunities for higher education – all of which contributes to a vicious cycle of underachievement, perpetuated further by the ‘brain drain’ – anyone that does get qualifications leaves because there are no opportunities to use them in the local area.

In such areas, simply building swish new academies don’t seem to be enough to improve results – In 2005, the so-called worst performing school in the country, Ramsgate School, was transformed into the new, £30 million Marlowe Academy. SIx years later, it fell into special measures.

Summarised from ‘The Week’, 2nd August 2014. 

 

 

AS and First Year A Level Sociology – Whole Course Overview

An overview of the entire course for AS and first year A level sociology covering the following ‘modules’:

The overview below is taken directly from the AQA’s scheme of work and broken down further into more sub-topics to make it more teachable/ learnable. Within each ‘module’ there are about 7 sub-topics, and any of which could (although not necessarily) form the basis of one essay question, so you need to be able to write on each sub-topic for a solid 30 minutes.

This will relevant to most teachers and students teaching the AQA syllabus, unless you do an alternative option to families and households (which I don’t cover!)

My advice is that students generally need at least one side of revision notes for each of the subtopics below, with three-five points/ explanations/ examples and with evaluations (e.g. one side for Functionalism, another for Marxism etc…)

Education

Education brief

  1. Perspectives on Education

    1. Functionalism

    2. Marxism

    3. Neoliberalism and The New Right

    4. New Labour (a response to the New Right)

    5. Postmodernism

  1. In school process and education

    1. Teacher Labelling and the Self Fulfilling Prophecy

    2. School organisation (banding and streaming)

    3. School Type, School Ethos and the Hidden Curriculum

    4. School Subcultures

    1. Pupil Identities and the Education System

  1. Education Policies

    1. The strengths and limitations of successive government education polices:

      1. 1944 – The Tripartite System – brief

      2. 1965 – Comprehensivisation – brief

      3. 1988 – The 1988 Education Reform Act

      4. 1997 – New Labour’s Education Policies

      5. 2010 – The Coalition and the New New Right’s Education Policies

    1. Evaluating Education Policies

      1. To what extent have policies raised standards in education?

      2. To what extent have policies improved equality of opportunity?

      3. Perspectives on selection as an educational policy

      4. Perspectives on the increased privatisation of education

      5. How is globalisation affecting educational and educational policy?

  1. Social Class and Education

    1. Material Deprivation

    2. Cultural Deprivation

    3. Cultural Capital Theory

    4. In-School Factors

    5. The strengths and limitations of policies designed to tackle working class underachievement

  2. Gender and Education

    1. Out of school factors which explain why girls do better than boys in education

    2. In-School factors which explain why girls do better than boys in education

    3. Explanations for gender and subject choice

    4. Feminist Perspectives on the role of education in society

    5. The strengths and limitations of policies designed to tackle gender differences in educational achievement

  3. Ethnicity and Education

    1. Cultural factors which might explain ethnic differences in educational achievement

    2. In-School Factors which might explain ethnic differences in educational achievement

    3. The strengths and limitations of policies designed to tackle ethnic differences in educational achievement

Methods in Context

Here you need to be able to assess the strengths and limitations of using any method to research any aspect of education.

The different methods you need to be able to consider include –

1. Secondary Documents

2. Official statistics

3. Field Experiments

4. Lab experiments

5. Questionnaires

6. Unstructured Interviews

7. Overt Participant Observation

8. Covert Participant Observation

9. Non Participant Observation

The different aspects of education you might consider are

• Researching how the values, attitudes, and aspirations of parents contribute to the achievement of certain groups of children

• Why boys are more likely to be excluded than girls

• Why white working class boys underachieve

• Exploring whether teachers have ‘ideal pupils’ – whether they label certain groups of pupils favourably!

• Assessing the relative importance of cultural deprivation versus material deprivation in explaining underachievement

• Assessing the success of policies aimed to improve achievement such as ‘employing more black teachers’

Families and Households

AS Sociology Families and Households

  1. Perspectives on Families

1.1 Functionalism

1.2 Marxism

1.3 Feminisms

1.4 The New Right

1.5 Postmodernism and Late Modernism

1.6 The Personal Life Perspective

  1. Marriage and Divorce

2.1: Explaining the trends in marriage

2.2: Explaining the trends in divorce

2.3: Perspectives on the consequences of declining marriage and increasing divorce

2.4: Examining how marriage, divorce and cohabitation vary by social class, ethnicity, sexuality and across generations.

3. Family Diversity

3.1 – The underlying causes of the long term increase In Reconstituted families, Single parent families, Multi-generational households, Single person households and ‘Kidult’ households.

3.2 Perspectives on the social significance of the increase of all of the above (covered in 3.1).

3.3 – The extent to which family life varies by ethnicity, social class and sexuality.

4. Gender Roles, Domestic Labour and Power Relationships

4.1. To what extent are gender roles characterised by equality?

4.2. To what extent is the Domestic Division of Labour characterised by equality?

4.3. Issues of Power and Control in Relationships

4.4. To what extent has women going into paid work resulted in greater equality within relationships?

5. Childhood

5.1 – To what extent is ‘childhood socially constructed’

5.2 – The March of Progress view of childhood (and parenting) – The Child Centred Family and Society?

5.3 – Toxic Childhood and Paranoid Parenting – Criticisms of ‘The March of Progress View’

5.4 – Is Childhood Disappearing?

5.5 – Reasons for changes to childhood and parenting practices

Topic 6 – Social Policy

6.1 You need to be able to assess the effects of a range of policies using at least three key perspectives

• The New Right

• New Labour

• Feminism (Liberal and Radical)

6.2 You need notes on how the following policies affect men and women and children within the family

• Changes to the Divorce law

• Tax breaks for married couples

• Maternity and paternity pay

• Civil Partnerships

• Sure Start – early years child care

Topic 7: Demography

7.1: Reasons for changes to the Birth Rate

7.2: Reasons for changes to the Death Rate

7.3: The consequences of an Ageing Population

7.4: The reasons for and consequences of changes to patterns of Migration

Research Methods

Factors effecting choice of research method copy

  1. The Factors Affecting Choice of Research Method – Theoretical, Ethical and Practical Factors.Introduction to Research Methods – Basic types of method and key terms

  1. Secondary Quantitative Data – Official Statistics

  1. Secondary Qualitative Data – Public and Private Documents

  1. Experiments – Field and Laboratory

  1. Interviews – Structured, Unstructured and Semi-Structured

  1. Observational Methods – Cover and Overt Participant and Non-Participant Observation

  1. Other methods – e.g. Longitudinal Studies

  1. Stages of the Research Process

Crucial to the above is your mastery of the TPEN structure

  1. Theoretical factors – Positivism, Interpretivism, Validity, Reliability, Representativeness

  1. Practical factors –Time, Money, funding, opportunities for research including ease of access to respondents, and the personal skills and characteristics of the researcher.

  1. Ethical factors – Thinking about how the research impacts on those involved with the research process: Informed consent, ensure confidentiality, be legal and ensure that respondents and those related to them are not subjected to harm. All this needs to be weighed up with the benefits of the research.

  1. The Nature of the Topic studied. Some topics lend themselves to certain methods and preclude others!

 

Education as a Strategy for International Development

What is the state of global education? What are the barriers to providing universal education for all, and how important is education as a strategy for international development and economic growth? Can western models of education work for developing countries, or are more people-centred approaches more appropriate and/ or desirable?

Education: Global Goals

Ensuring inclusive and quality education for all is objective number four of the United Nation’s new Sustainable Development Goals.

Four specific challenges are identified:

  • Enrollment in primary education in developing countries has reached 91 per cent but 57 million children remain out of school
  • More than half of children that have not enrolled in school live in sub-Saharan Africa
  • An estimated 50 per cent of out-of-school children of primary school age live in conflict-affected areas
  • 103 million youth worldwide lack basic literacy skills, and more than 60 per cent of them are women

Some of the specific targets for 2030 include:

  • Ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes
  • Ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education
  • Ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university
  • Eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for the vulnerable, including persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples and children in vulnerable situations

However, we remain a long way off these targets:

  • 750 million adults – two thirds of them women – remained illiterate in 2016. Half of the global illiterate population lives in South Asia, and a quarter live in sub-Saharan Africa.
  • Coronavirus has had a disproportionately negative affect on students in developing countries – as a much higher proportion lack computers to allow home education.

Education in Developing and Developed Countries: A Comparison

Looking at the global picture is one thing, but looking at statistics country by country provides a much better idea of the differences between developed and developing countries in terms of education.There are a number of indicators used to measure progress in education and just some of these include:

  • The primary enrollment ratio.
  • The mean number of years children spend in school.
  • Attendance figures (at primary and secondary school and in tertiary education).
  • Literacy rates (which can be for youth or adults).
  • National Test Results (e.g. GCSE results)
  • Performance in international tests for international comparisons – such as the PISA tests.
  • The percentage of GDP spent on education

(The main sources for data on education come from the United Nations, UNICEF, and The World Bank.)

A selected breakdown of some of these statistics shows the enormous differences in education between countries:

 EthiopiaKenyaIndia The UK(6th in world) 
     
Youth Literacy Rate Male62.00%82.00%88.00%100%
Youth Literacy RateFemale 47.00%80%74.00%100%
Primary attendance 65.00%74.00%Male 98%Female 85%100%
Secondary attendance 16.00%40.00%Male 58%Female 48%100%
GDP PPP$1200$1800$4000$36000
%of GDP spent on education4.70%6.00%3.30%5.8%

In the UK, The government spends nearly £90 billion a year on education, employing over 400 000 teachers (all of whom have to be qualified)and over 800 000 people in total in the education system. Education is compulsory from the ages of 4 to 18, meaning every single child must complete a minimum of 14 years of education, and the majority of students will then go on to another 2-3 years of training in apprenticeships or universities. In the primary and secondary sectors, billions of pounds are spent every year building and maintaining schools and schools are generally well equipped will a range of educational resources, with free school meals provided for the poorest students.

Since the 1988 education act, all schools are regularly monitored by OFSTED and thus every school head and every single teacher is ultimately held to account for their results, and the system is very much focused on getting students qualifications – GCSEs and A levels, of which there is a huge diversity. At the end of secondary school, around 70% of students have 5 good GCSEs, but even those who do not achieve this bench mark have a range of educational and training options available to them.

It might sound obvious to say it, but there is also a generalised expectation that both students (and staff) will attend school – attendance is monitored regularly and parents can be fined and even sent to jail if their children truant persistently.

In addition to getting students GCSEs, schools are also required to a whole host of other things – such as teach PSHE lessons, prepare students for their future careers,foster an appreciation for multiculturalism,monitor ‘at risk students’ and liaise with social services as appropriate. Schools are also supposed to differentiate lessons to take account of each individual students’ learning needs.

Of course there are various criticisms of the UK education system, but after 16 years of schooling the vast majority of students come out the other end with significantly enhanced knowledge and skills. Finally, it is worth noting that girls do significantly better than boys in every level of the education system.

Things are very different in many poorer countries around the world – For a start the funding difference is enormous, more than a hundred times less per pupil in the poorest countries; many school buildings are in a terrible state of repair, and many schools lack basic educational resources such as text books. Attendance is also a lot worse, especially in secondary school, and in some regions of India 25% of teaching staff simply don’t show up to work (while reporting very high levels of job satisfaction). A third significant difference is that there is no OFSTED in developing countries, and so schools aren’t monitored- teachers and schools aren’t held accountable for student progress, which is reflected in the fact that a huge proportion of students come out of the education system with no qualifications.

How Can Education Promote Development? 

There is no doubt that education can promote development…

Firstly, education can combat poverty and improve economic prosperity. For every year at school education increases income by 10% and increases the GDP growth rate by 2.5%.Teaching children to read and write means they are able to apply for a wider range of jobs – and potentially earn more money, rather than being limited to subsistence agriculture.

Secondly education can be used to improve health.School can be used to pass on advice about how to prevent diseases and thus improve health and they can also be places where free food and vaccinations can be administered centrally (as is the case in the UK) – improving the health of a population.

Thirdly, education can combat gender inequality.This is illustrated in the case study of Kakenya Ntaiya, who, at the age of 11 agreed with her father that she would undergo FGM if he allowed her to continue on to secondary school, which she did, eventually winning a scholarship to study in the United States. There she learnt about women’s rights and returned to her village in Kenya and set up a girls only school where currently 100 girls are protected from having to undergo FGM themselves.

Fourthly, education can get people more engaged with politics. You need to be able to read in order to engage with newspapers and political leaflets and manifestos, which typically contain much more detailed information than you get via radio and televisions. Thus higher literacy rates could potentially make a country more democratic – democracy is positively correlated with higher levels of development

Barriers to Providing Education in Developing Countries

There are many barriers to improving education in developing countries which means that development through education is far from straightforward…

Read the section below and complete the table at the end of the section. 

Firstly, poverty means that developing countries lack the money to invest in education -this results in a whole range of problems – such as very large class sizes, limited teaching resources, a poor standard of buildings, not enough teachers – let alone the resources to monitor the standards of teaching and learning.

This is well illustrated in this video of Khabukoya primary school in a remote region of Kenya, near the Ugandan border.

Kenya spends 6% of its GDP on education and has a comparatively good level of education for Sub-Saharan Africa – yet this school appears to have been forgotten about. The school has 400 students and yet only one classroom with a concrete floor and desks, with all other classrooms having mud floors, and being so small that students are practically sitting on top of each other. Funding is so limited that the school relies of volunteer labour to partition the too-few classrooms they have, a task which is being done with mud and water, and to make matters worse half of the students are infected with jiggers, a parasitic sand flea which burrows into the skin to lay its eggs, which causes infections which are often disabling and sometimes fatal.

Secondly, the high levels of absenteeism in primary and especially secondary schools is a major barrier to improving literacy. Most developing countries have enrollment ratios approaching 100%, but the actual attendance figures are much lower. Even in India, a rapidly developing country, the female secondary attendance rate is 50%, while in Ethiopia, it is down at 16%.

Thirdly, the persistence of child labour– The International Labour Organisation notes that globally, the  number of children in labour stands at 168 million(down from 246 million in 2000) and 59 million of these are in Sub-Saharan Africa.Agriculture remains by far the most important sector where child labourers can be found (98 million, or 59%), but the problems are not negligible in services (54 million) and industry (12 million) – mostly in the informal economy.

Fourthly, poor levels of nutrition in the first 1000 days of a child’s life significantly reduces children’s capacity to learn effectively – malnutrition leads to stunting(being too short for one’s age) which affects more than 160 million children globally and more than 40% of under-fives in many African countries including Somalia, Uganda and Nigeria. According to the World Health Organisation children who are stunted achieve one year less of schooling than those who are not.

Fifthly, War and Conflict–The United Nations notes that 34 million, or more than half all children currently not in education, live in conflict countries, making conflict one of the biggest barriers to education. Many of these children will be internally displace refugees, but on top of this there are approximately 7 million children living as refugees in non-conflict countries (stats deduced from this Guardian article) and most of these receive a poor standard of education. In conflict countries, the vast majority of humanitarian aid money is spent on survival, with only 2% going towards education.

One of the most interesting examples of conflict preventing education (at least ‘western education especially for girls’) is the case of Boko Haram in Northern Nigeria– A terrorist organisation who gained international notoriety in 2014 when they kidnapped 200 girls from their school dormitory.

Sixthly, Patriarchal cultural values– means many girls the world over suffer most from lack of education.Pakistan and India are two countries which have significant gender inequalities in education provision – In India (one of the BRIC nations) the percentage of girls attending school lags 10% points behind that of boys, a situation which is even worse in Pakistan, the country is which Malala Yousafzai was shot by the Taliban for attending school. In this video she describes some of the fear tactics the Taliban use to prevent girls going to school – such as bombing schools which allow girls to attend and public floggings of women who allow their daughters to attend school.

Although the starkest examples of gendered educational opportunities are to be found in Asia, there is also inequality in Africa and this blog post talks about gendered barriers to education in East Africa

A seventh barrier is the lack of teachers to improve education –the link has a nice interactive diagram to show variation by country.Somewhat ironically this link takes you to an article which discusses how increasing primary education has led to problems as this has led to an increase in demand for secondary education – which many African countries are too poor to provide!

Finally, an eighth barrier is widely dispersed populations in rural areas means children may have difficulty getting to school.

Is a Western Style of Education Appropriate to Developing Countries?

Many of the education systems in developing countries are modelled on those of the west – in that they have primary, secondary and tertiary sectors, they emphasise primary academic subjects such as English, Maths, Science and History and they have external systems of exams which award qualifications to those who pass them. The idea that a Western style of education is appropriate to developing countries is supported by Functionalists/ Modernisation Theorists and generally criticised by Dependency Theorists and People Centred Development Theorists.

Functionalist thinkers (Functionalism is the foundation of Modernisation Theory) argue that Western education systems perform vital functions in advanced industrial societies. These functions include (a) taking over the function of secondary socialisation from parents (b) equipping all children for work through teaching a diverse range of academic and vocational subjects, (c ) sifting out the most able students through a series of examinations so that these can go on to get the best jobs and (d) providing a sense of belonging (solidarity) and National Identity. Functionalists thinkers such as Emile Durkheim and Talcott Parsons saw national education systems with their top-down national curriculums and examinations as being essential in advanced societies.

It follows that Modernisation Theorists in the 1950s also saw the establishment of education systems as one way in which traditional values could be broken down. If children in developing countries are in school then they can be taught to read and write (which their parents couldn’t have done in the 1950s given the near 100% illiteracy rate at the time), and the brightest can be filtered out through examinations to play a role in developing the country as leaders of government and industry.

According to modernisation theory, school curriculums should be designed with the help of western experts and curriculums and timetables modelled on those of Western education systems – with academic subjects such as English, Maths and History forming core subjects in the curriculums of many developing countries.

However, there are a number of criticisms of the Modernisation Approach to education.

Dependency theorists have pointed out that most people in developing countries do not benefit from western style education. According to DT, education was used in many colonies as a tool of control by occupying countries such as Britain, France and Belgium. The way this worked was to select one quiescent minority ethnic group and provide their children with sufficient education to govern the country on behalf of the colonial power. This divisive legacy continued after colonies gained their independence, with school systems in developing countries proving an extremely sub-standard of education to the majority while a tiny elite at the top could afford to send their children to be educated in private schools, going on to attend universities in the USA and Europe, and then returning to run the country as heads of government and industry to maintain a system which only really benefits the elite, while the majority remain in poverty.

One potential solution to the exclusion faced by the majority of children from education in the developing world comes in the form of Non Governmental Organisations such as Action Aid, who are best known for their Sponsor a Child Campaign, in which any individual in the west can pay £20/ month (or thereabouts) which can fund a child through education. One example of a homegrown version of this charity is the Parikrma Humanity Foundation which essentially ignores the daunting numbers of uneducated children and just focuses on educating one child at a time from the slums of India, to a relatively high level, so that they can escape their poverty for good.

People Centred Development theorists criticise Modernisation Theory because of the fact that Western style curriculums are not appropriate to many people in developing countries. In short, the situations many people in poor countries find themselves in mean they would benefit more from a non-academic education, and more over one that is not explicitly designed to smash apart their traditional societies. According to PCD if people from the west want to help with education in developing countries, they should find out what people in developing countries want and then work with them to meet their educational needs. One excellent example of this is the Barefoot education movement which teaches women and men, many of whom are illiterate, in North West India to become solar engineers and doctors in their own villages, drawing as far as possible on their traditional knowledge. There is one condition people must meet in order to become teachers in this school – they must not have a degree.

It might also be the case that modern technology today means that Western Education systems are simply not required in developing countries. Bill Gates (Head of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the largest Philanthropic charitable organisation in the world which controls over $30 billion of assets, and has a similar amount pledged by wealthy individuals) – who (again unsurprisingly) believes that developing online education courses will change the face of global education in the next 15 years because they can be accessed by anyone with a smartphone. One of the leaders in the development of online courses is the Khan Academy- whose strapline is ‘You can learn anything… for free.

An interesting experiment which suggests this might just work is Sugata Mitra’s ‘hole in wall experiment’  in which he simply put computers in a hole in a wall in various slums and villages around India and just left them there – children picked up how to surf the internet in a matter of days, and even learned some rudimentary English along the way. Mitra’s theory is that children can teach themselves when they work in groups, and his intention is to develop cloud based educational material which will enable children to teach themselves a whole range of subjects.

One problem with leaving education to People Centred Development Approaches or leaving it to children to educate themselves on the internet is that this will probably leave children in poorer developing countries lagging behind in terms of the skills and qualifications required to compete for the best paying jobs in the international job market. In comparison to developing countries, developed countries spend a fortune on their education systems and children spend considerably longer in education, and there is an undeniable link between the successful education systems in South East Asia and the hours invested in education by South East Asian children in countries such as China, South Korea and Singapore and the rapid growth of these economies over the past decades. The problem with this approach is that its success may well be related to the culture of the region which emphasises the importance of individual effort in order to achieve through education.

Relevance to A-level Sociology

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Is it worth doing a degree?

Is it worth spending £30, 000 or more and three years of your life doing a degree?

If we limit our analysis to purely financial considerations and if we focus on ‘median earnings’ – then yes, on average, it is definitely still worth doing a degree: graduates currently earn about £8K a year more on average than non graduates (graduate labour market statistics 2015)

graduate-earnings

However, the gap between the earnings of graduates and non-gradates is closing – in 2005 graduates earned about 55% more than non graduates, while in 2015 they only earned 45% more.

graduate-earnings-2015

If this trend continues, then a degree will be worthless by 2045, at least if we measure the value of a degree purely in economic terms.

A recent YouGov survey (May 2017) found that only 61% of students felt that their degree was worth the money, so possible this is evidence that what students feel is coming into line with the more objective financial trends above…

Of course there’s a whole load of other factors you need to consider to answer the above question fully! But I wanted to keep this post focused on just one dimension.

Further reading

Sociological Explanations of Educational Underachievement

This post attempts to demonstrate what sociology is by examining how the discipline approaches one particular issue – why some children do worse at school than others…from a sociological perspective, educational failure is not simply down to the individual!

The easiest way to illustrate the sociological imagination, and to demonstrate how sociologists ‘do sociology’ is to look at an example of how Sociology approaches a particular social issue – such as the the issue of educational underachievement. Most Sociologists regard this as a social problem because leaving school with few or no formal qualifications is strongly related to a future of unemployment and/ or low-skilled and low-paid work.

This post has primarily been written for students studying A-level sociology, to read as part of a two week introduction to sociology.

Why do some children fail where others succeed?

The most obvious place to look for this answer is the the children themselves – either their educational failure is a matter of low intelligence or lack of aspiration and individual effort, in which case either there’s not a lot else that anyone could do (in the case of low intelligence), or it’s down to the individual student to pull their socks up (in the case of low aspiration or effort).

A second common place to look is the individual school which could be ‘letting the students down’ – either the teachers are not committed enough, or the school is badly managed, in which case new teachers or management are required.

While Sociologists do not dismiss either of the above explanations as factors related to educational underachievement, they argue that they do not look deeply enough at the underlying causes of this problem, and if you dig deeper (using statistical methods, and more of that later), you will see that there are more significant factors related to differential educational underachievement – such as the level of income of parents, the values of parents.

Poverty and Educational Underachievement

There is in fact a very strong relationship between the amount of income and wealth parents have and how well their children do in school. To put it bluntly, the poorer someone’s parents are, the more likely their children are to get poor GCSEs.

This is because poverty acts as a limiting factor on educational achievement. Poverty leads to material deprivation which in turn is related to such things as poor diets, which means higher levels of illness, and fewer bedrooms in the household which means there is less likely to be a private study-space, and later on, being from a poor background means teenagers are more likely to take up part-time jobs while studying A levels or degrees, which means less study time.

At the other end of the scale, a higher income can mean private tuition or even private schools. Think about it – parents wouldn’t pay £10 000 a year if private schools didn’t work!

What all the above means, is that OBJECTIVELY, all other things being equal, if you take two students, one rich kid and one poor kid, and the poor kid is ill more often, can’t concentrate on homework because he has to share a room with his younger brother, and does 15 hours work a week while doing A levels, while the rich kid has none of the above barriers and has a couple of hours private tuition a week, it is hardly surprising that the rich one is going to get better results.

Parental Values and Educational Underachievement

A second factor which influences how well a child does at school is the values of the parents – it is parents, after all, who teach their children about the value of education, or not; about the importance of sacrificing pleasure now in order to study, or not; and who inspire them to go to university (which requires decent A levels), or not!

It is similarly parents who read to their children when they are young, or not; help children with homework, or not; and police children through their 11 years of formal schooling, or let them run wild on the streets – don’t forget that once you factor in holidays, weekends, and weekday morning and evenings children actually spend far more time outside of school than in it, which suggests parenting (or lack of it) is going to have far more of an impact on how well a child does than schooling.

Numerous studies have shown the importance of Primary Socialisation (the teaching of norms and values in the family) in explaining differential educational achievement – and there are significant differences in the how rich and poor, and male and female children are socialised.

Working class children are more likely to suffer from what sociologists call ‘cultural deprivation‘ – they are more likely to grow up thinking that ‘university is not for the likes of them’ because their parents never went and thus don’t talk about it, which helps to explain why fewer working class teenagers opt to go to university, even when they get good A levels.

While girls are read to more often than boys, which might explain the 10% gender-gap in English GCSE results. Ethnicity also matters. You’ve probably heard of the stereo-type of the fearsome Chinese ‘tiger parents’ who demand their children make enormous effort in school – well, research backs this up – Chinese parents are the most demanding parents, and it works, British-Chinese children outperform every other ethnic group in GCSEs.

All of the above illustrate the importance of not relying on individual level explanations for social phenomena – how well an individual does in school is not just down to their individual talents, it is partly a result of their socialisation, of their background, and social class, gender and ethnicity all have their independent, and combined influences on how well a child does in school.

Still the above isn’t enough to explain differential educational achievement – you also need to look at issues of POWER within the education system.

Power within the Education System

It shouldn’t surprise you that the education system is shaped and run by educated people, typically from wealthy backgrounds, and it is these people and their children who have benefited from various changes in policy over the past century: our education system has changed considerably since WW2, but the middle classes have always come out on top – so it seems that education is primarily about ‘the reproduction of class inequality’ – a mechanism whereby middle class children can do well and go on to get well-paid middle class jobs, while working class children are defined as failures and go on to get low-skilled, lower paid jobs.

The most obvious example of this lies in the existence of private schools, some of which cost up to £30K a year – only 7% of children go to private schools, but over 50% of all the high-paying professional jobs are taken up by these 7% – jobs such Doctors, lawyers, journalists and so on.

The above point of view is mainly associated with the Marxist Perspective on Education.

Conclusions… why do some children underachieve in education?

So to summarise the lessons from the above example – Sociologists do not accept that an individual fails (or succeeds) at school simply because of their individual talents, they succeed or fail at least partly because of their background – the amount of money their parents have, and the values their parents instil in them, which together influence how well the child can do in school, and looked at even more deeply, it seems that the education system is set up to empower the middle classes over the generations, because no educational policies have been put in place which have really broken down inequalities over the decades.

Lessons to learn from the above, and what Sociology does next…

Firstly you are better equipped to find out more about why some kids fail and other succeed – There are of course those from deprived backgrounds who do succeed, and Sociologists recognise that people are not determined by their backgrounds, rather they are steered down certain paths by them, and the question of how such children do succeed is of interest to sociologists as is the question of what we should do about the above unjust situation.

Secondly – learning the above should be empowering – because you now know that the system is not fair – don’t necessarily assume that just because someone has failed at school they are stupid or lazy, and vice-versa about someone who has done well.

Thirdly – there is the question of what we do with the above knowledge – eventually you’ll need to decide whether you work within the system to make it fairer, or whether we need complete systemic change, or whether there’s nothing we can do, and so go and do something else instead!

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This post has primarily been written for students studying A-level sociology, to read as part of a two week introduction to sociology.

This particular topic is taught as part of the Sociology of Education module.

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The Privatisation of Education

A summary of endogenous and exogenous privatisation in England and Wales since the 1988 Education Act, and evaluations.

Education in England and Wales has become increasingly privatised since the 1980s. The 1988 Education Act introduced endogenous privatisation through marketisation and New Labour, the Coalition and the Tories since 2015 have pursued exogenous privatisation through setting up academies and getting more private companies involved with running educational services.

This post covers the following:

  • what is privisation?
  • State and private education in the U.K.
  • Increasing privatisation
  • Exogenous and Endogenous education
  • Arguments for the privatisation of education
  • Arguments against the privatisation of education.

What is Privatisation?

Privatisation is where services which were once owned and provided by the state are transferred to private companies, such as the transfer of educational assets and management to private companies, charities or religious institutions.

The UK government spends approximately £90 billion a year on education, which includes to costs of teacher’s salaries, support workers, educational resources, building and maintaining school buildings, and the cost of writing curriculums, examinations and inspections (OFSTED), which means there is plenty of stuff which could potentially be privatised.

Most aspects of education in the UK have traditionally been run by the state, and funded directly by the government with taxpayer’s money, managed by Local Education Authorities (local councils). However, with the increasing influence of Neoliberal and New Right ideas on education, there has been a trend towards the privatisation of important aspects of education, both in the UK and globally. In other words, increasing amounts of taxpayer’s money goes straight to private companies who provided educational services, rather than to Local Education Authorities.

Private and State Education in the UK

The U.K. has always had private schools, also known as independent schools. These are fee paying schools which are entirely funded by the parents (or other wealthy benefactors) who pay annual fees to send their children to them.

Only the very wealthiest of parents (7%) can afford to send their children to independent schools and most parents (93%) rely on state funded education, which is funded tax payers, which has been the case since the Foster Act introduced free education for all children from the age of 10 in 1870.

Successive education acts gradually expanded the scope of state education throughout the late 19th and early to mid 20th centuries and by the 1970s Britain had one of the most broad ranging comprehensive education systems in the world, delivering free education to every 5-16 year old entirely funded and delivered by the state and managed by Local Education (government) authorities.

During this time Independent schools continued to exist and wealthy parents were free to send their children to them if they could afford the fees, so we’ve always had a ‘purely private’ education system, just only available to the minority.

The Privatisation of State Education

When the New Right conservative government came to power in 1979 they looked at State education, thought it was inefficient and sub-standard compared to the quality of education being delivered by independent schools.

They started a process of privatising state education and this process continued under New Labour (1997-2010) and the Coalition Government (2010 – 2015) and has been carried on to the present day under the current New Right Conservative government.

Endogenous and Exogenous Privatisation

Ball and Youdell (2007) distinguish between endogenous privatisation (privatisation from outside) and exogenous privatisation (privatisation within the education system)

Endogenous privatisation involves the establishment of a market in education – giving parents the right to choose which schools to send their children to and making schools compete for pupils in a similar way to which companies compete for consumers.

Exogenous Privatisation involves both British and international companies taking over different aspects of the UK education system, so the government gives money to private companies to run services related to education rather than the state running these services directly.

Endogenous Privatisation

Endogenous privatisation refers to ‘privatisation within the education system’ – it involves the introduction of free-market principles into the day to day running of schools. This is basically marketization and includes the following:

  • Making schools compete for pupils so they become like businesses
  • Giving parents choice so they become consumers (open enrolment)
  • Linking school funding to success rates (formula funding)
  • Introducing performance related pay for teachers
  • Allowing successful schools to take over and manage failing schools.

Broadly speaking endogenous privatisation was achieved through the 1988 Education Act, and was just tweaked to run more efficiently in following decades (for example by allowing successful academies to take over failing schools and by tweaking league tables so that schools couldn’t ‘game’ them).

Refer to the post on the 1988 Education act for the strengths and limitations of this type of privatisation!

Exogenous Privatisation

Exogenous privatisation is where private companies take over the running of aspects of educational services from the state.

Exogenous privatisation is what we’ve seen a lot more of since the New Labour government came to power in 1997 and introduced academies and then went on to outsource a lot of education services to private companies, a process which has been continued since and to the present day.

Examples of exogenous privatisation include…

  • The setting up of Academies. Since New Labour, the establishment of Academies has meant greater involvement of the private sector in running schools. Academies are allowed to seek 10% of their funding from businesses or charities, which increases the influence of private interests over the running of the school, and some recent academy chains such as the Academies Enterprise Trust are run by private companies, and managed by people with a background in business, rather than people with a background in teaching.
  • The Building and maintaining school buildings – Under New Labour A programme of new buildings for schools was financed through the Private Finance Initiative (PFI). Private companies did the building, but in return were given contracts to repay the investment and provided maintenance for 25-35 years. The colleges, schools or local education authorities had to pay the ongoing costs.
  • Running examination systems – The UK’s largest examinations body Edexcel is run by the Global Corporation Pearsons. Pearsons runs the exam boards in over 70 countries, meaning it sets the exams, it pays the examiners, it runs the training courses which teachers need to attend to understand the assessment criteria, and increasingly it writes the text books.
  • The Expansion of the Education Services Industry more generally. This is related to the above point – There are more International Corporations involved in education than ever before – two obvious examples include Google and Apple, both of which are well poised to play an increasing role in providing educational services for a profit.

Arguments for Privatisation

The main perspectives which argue for privatising education are Neoliberalism and The New Right.

The Neoliberal/ New Right argument is that state-run education is inefficient. 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 privatised, and New Right Policies have led to greater internal and external privatisation.

The main argument for endogenous privatisation is that the introduction of Marketisation within education has increased competition between schools and driven up standards.

The main argument for exogenous privatisation is that private companies are used to keeping costs down and will run certain aspects of the education system more efficiently than Local Education Authorities, even if they make a profit. Thus it’s a win-win situation for the public and the companies.

Arguments against the Privatisation of Education

If private companies have an increasing role in running the education system this may change the type of knowledge which pupils are taught – with more of an emphasis on maths and less of an emphasis on critical humanities subjects which aren’t as profitable. Thus a narrowing of the curriculum might be the result

Stephan Ball has also referred to what he sees as the cola-isation of schools – The private sector also increasingly penetrates schools through vending machines and the development of brand loyalty through logos and sponsorships.

There might be an increasing inequality of educational provision as private companies cherry pick the best schools to take over and leave the worst schools under Local Education Authority Control.

If we want universal education for all in our current very unequal society, the state probably has to be involved in some way. If we abandoned state education altogether and moved to a purely independent school system based on fees then millions of children would get no education at all because millions of parents lack the means to pay fees because they are too poor.

Simon et al (2022) (1) compared for profit early years providers with not for profit early years providers in England and Wales during the period of 2014-2018. They found that private providers were far more likely to have high levels of debt, poor accounting and spent less on wages proportionate to the funding they received from government.

They theorised that for profit nursery chains were deliberately putting nurseries at risk of bankruptcy in order to extract government money to parent companies. (Presumably if the nurseries did go bankrupt the government would just have to bail them out!).

The main perspective which criticises the privatisation of education is Marxism.

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For more links to my posts on the sociology of education please see this page, which follows the AQA A-level specification.

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Selection Policies in Education

Selective Education policies are those which allow schools to select pupils on the basis of academic ability or other criteria. The classic example of a selective education policy was the 1944 Education Act which introduced the 11 plus test and pupils were selected on ability – those who passed were selected for grammar schools, those who failed went to secondary moderns.

The opposite of selective education is comprehensive education – where schools just take in any students, irrespective of criteria, however, factors such as ‘selection by mortgage’ means selection goes on by other means in a comprehensive system.

This post explores how the issue of selection applies to the following policies:

  • The 1944 Education Act/ Tripartite system
  • Comprehensives
  • The 1988 Education Act
  • Selection since 1988
  • Independent schools and selection.

It asks two questions:

  1. How do schools select pupils? (ability, aptitude, faith, catchment area, covert selection and social class)
  2. What are the effects of selection on equality of educational opportunity? (basically selection seems to benefit the middle classes)

Students might like to review policies on education before reading this post.

The 1944 Education Act

The 1944 Education act is a good example of a policy which selected students for different types of school by ability

The 1944 Education Act established three types of secondary school – Grammar, Technical and Secondary Modern. The three schools provided different types of education –

Grammar schools provided an academic education – all students would be entered for the new ‘O’ levels at age 15. 15 -20% of pupils attended grammar schools.

Technical schools provided a more vocational education – only about 5% of schools were technicals and they eventually faded out.

Secondary Moderns provided a more basic education, and pupils were not expected to sit exams. 80% of pupils attended these schools.

It was thought at the time that pupils had a certain level of ability which was fixed at age 11, and so a special Intelligence Quotient (I.Q.) test was designed to select which type of school different abilities of student would go into. Those who passed the 11+ went to grammar schools, those who failed went to secondary moderns.

Criticisms of the 1944 Education Act

– Pupil’s ‘intelligence level’ was not fixed at 11, ‘late developers’ missed out on the opportunity to get into a grammar school and sit exams.

– Those who attended secondary moderns were effectively labelled as failures.

– The system led to the reproduction of class inequality – typically middle class students passed the 11+ and went to grammar schools, got qualifications and higher paid jobs, and vice-versa for the working classes.

Comprehensive Schools

Introduced in 1965 Comprehensive Schools meant the he abolition of the 11+, and the end of grammar schools and secondary Moderns.

In 1965 the 11+ and the three types of school above were abolished, and so selection by ability at the age of 11 was effectively abolished too – grammar schools and secondary moderns were replaced by ‘comprehensive schools” – which means there is ‘one of type’ of school for all pupils, and these schools are not allowed to select by ability – they are forbidden from doing so by ‘The Schools Admissions Code’

Today, although many schools are called ‘Academies’ or ‘Free Schools’ or ‘Faith Schools’, they are all effectively comprehensives, and so do not select on the basis of ability.

Selection Policies since the 1988 Education Act

The 1988 Education Act introduced open enrolment – in which parents are allowed to apply for a place in any school in any area. A a result the best schools become over-subscribed, which means popular schools have to have policies in place to select students. The Schools Admissions Code states that schools cannot select on the basis of social class, but covert selection means that they often do just this!

Selection policies in oversubscribed schools

If a school is oversubscribed then pupils are selected on the basis of certain criteria, whicih much comply with the School Admission Code. The following are the most commonly used criteria for selecting students:

1. Selection by Catchment Area – the closer a student lives to the school, the more likely they are to get into the school.

2. Sibling Policies – those with brother’s and sisters who already attend the school are more likely to get a place

3. Selection by Faith – this only applies to faith schools – faith schools may select a proportion (but not all) of their pupils on the basis of religious belief and the commitment of their parents (how often they attend church for example).

4. Selection By Aptitude – where pupils are selected on the basis of their ‘aptitude’ in certain subjects. Most schools today are ‘Specialist schools’ – which means they ‘specialise’ in a certain subject and are allowed to select up to 10% of their pupils on the basis of their aptitude in a certain subject.

Criticisms of Admissions and Selection Policies since 1988

One major criticism of selection by catchment area is that this results in selection by mortgage – the house prices near to the best schools increase, and so over the years, only wealthier parents can afford to move into the catchment areas of the best schools.

Tough and Brooks (2007) use the term ‘covert selection’ to describe the process whereby schools try to discourage parents from lower socio-economic backgrounds from applying by doing such things as making school literature difficult to understand, having lengthy application forms, not publicising the school in poorer neighbourhoods, and requiring parents to buy expensive school uniforms. The end result of this is that middle class parents are more likely to apply for the best schools (because they have sufficient cultural capital to be able to complete the application process) and lower class parents are pushed out of the best (oversubscribed) schools.

Selection since 2010 – The Pupil Premium

One recent policy change which encourages schools to select disadvantaged pulses on the basis of low household income is the Pupil Premium – schools selecting these pupils get an extra £600 per year per student. NB This represents a recent modification to the school’s selection code, and is one of the few elements of selection policy which may do something to reduce inequality in education, rather than increase it!

Finally – Don’t forget Independent Schools

It’s worth mentioning that 7% of children attend independent, or fee paying schools – many of these schools will have admissions tests (like to old grammar schools) but of course selection is initially based on the ability of parents to pay – and the most expensive schools in the country cost in excess of £30K a year in fees.

Signposting

This post has primarily been written for students of A-level sociology and this topic is part of the compulsory education module which students will usually study in their first year.

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Globalisation and Education

This post explores five ways in which globalisation has changed education in the U.K. including increased competition for jobs from people abroad, the increasing influence of global ICT companies, and increasing multiculturalism in education.

Globalisation refers to the increasing interconnectedness between societies across the globe.

Globalisation and Education

Three dimensions of Globalisation

This post examines how economic and cultural globalisation and increasing migration have affected education in the United Kingdom, before we look at the consequences we review these three aspects of globalisation!

Economic globalisation

is the globalisation of trade, production and consumption. Most of what we consume in the UK is produced and manufactured abroad, for example, often through Transnational Corporations, or companies which operate in more than one country, such as Shell. As a result of globalisation we have seen a decline in manufacturing jobs in recent years, because these have moved abroad (to countries such as China) and most jobs in the UK are now in the service and leisure sectors.

Cultural Globalisation

refers to the increasingly rapid spread of ideas and values around the globe. This is mainly brought about as a result of the growth of ICT – communications technology which makes it possible to communicate with people in other countries instantaneously. Cultural globalisation includes everything from the spread of music and fashion and consumer products and culture to the spread of political and religious ideas.

Increasing migration

is also part of globalisation – with more people moving around the globe for various reasons. Sometimes this is voluntary, with people moving abroad for work or education, other times it is involuntary – as is the case with refugees from conflicts or climate disasters. As a result of increasing immigration, the UK is now a much more multicultural society than in the 1950s.

Five ways in which globalisation has affected education in the U.K.

1. Increased competition for jobs abroad meant the New Labour government increased spending on education in order to try and give children skills to make them more competitive in a global labour market. New Labour wanted 50% of children to enter Higher Education, although this goal was never achieved.

2. Part of economic globalisation is the establishment of global ICT companies such as Google and Apple. These powerful institutions are now involved in writing curriculums, and online learning materials for various governments around the world. Thus education is increasingly shaped by Transnational Corporations, who make a profit out of providing these services to government. If you have an exam with the edexcell exam board for example, that would have been written by Pearsons (along with your text book), a global corporation.

3. Increasing migration has meant education is now more multicultural – all schools now teach about the ‘six world religions’ in RE, and we have many faith schools in the UK serving Muslim and Jewish students. In more recent years schools have had to respond to increasing numbers of Polish children entering primary and secondary schools.

4. Increasing cultural globalisation challenges the relevance of a ‘National Curriculum’ – what is the place of the Nation State and the idea of a ‘national curriculum’ if we live in an increasingly global culture. It also challenges what type of history and literature we should be teaching.

5. Finally, the growth of global ICT companies and global media more generally challenges the authority of traditional schooling and possibly teachers. What role does a traditional school model have when you can get all your information for free on YouTube, the Student Room and so on….

Signposting and Related Posts

For students of A-level sociology this material is relevant mainly to the sociology of education topic, and it is also relevant to the globalisation aspect of the global development module.

This post should also be of interest to anybody studying education at degree level, trainee teachers and anyone with a general interest in globalisation and social change.

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Revision notes on globalisation…

If you like this sort of thing and want some more context on globalisation, then you might like these revision notes on globalisation, specifically designed for A-level sociology. 

Globalisation cover

Nine pages of summary notes covering the following aspects of globalisation:

– Basic definitions and an overview of cultural, economic and political globalisation
– Three theories of globalisation – hyper-globalism, pessimism and transformationalism.
– Arguments for and against the view that globalisation is resulting in the decline of the nation state.
– A-Z glossary covering key concepts and key thinkers.

Five mind-maps covering the following:

– Cultural, economic, and political globalisation: a summary
– The hyper-globalist view of globalisation
– The pessimist view of globalisation
– The transformationalist/ postmodernist view of globalisation.
– The relationship between globalisation and education.

These revision resources have been designed to cover the globalisation part of the global development module for A-level sociology (AQA) but they should be useful for all students given that you need to know about globalisation for education, the family and crime, so these should serve as good context.

They might also be useful to students studying other A-level or first year degree subjects such as politics, history, economics or business, where globalisation is on the syllabus.