Over 90% of National Education Union Members who were balloted voted for a series of six days of strikes which start today (1st February 2023) and go on approximately every two weeks until the 15th of March.
The main reason teachers are striking is over poor pay and long working hours, which are the main reasons why teachers are leaving the profession.
Teachers have had a real terms pay cut of 20% since 2010 because their annual pay increases haven’t kept pace with inflation and this year the government has only offered a 5% pay increase when inflation is running at 12%, meaning a 7% real terms pay cut.
And the government is currently residing over a recruitment crisis in teaching. There simply aren’t enough people who want to train to be teachers under the current pay and working conditions.
Understaffed schools mean that the teachers who are working have to soak up the difference, mainly by taking on larger class sizes which contributes to their intense work loads.
Overworked teachers and higher teacher to pupil staff ratios ultimately mean children suffer a poorer quality of education. Teachers are not superhuman after all and they can only do so much, hence the strikes.
It must be remembered, despite the rhetoric of the ultra-wealthy, tax-dodging, massive national-debt creating (Liz Truss) and morally bankrupt Tory party that teachers do not want to strike, they are doing so as a last resort because of Tory failure to manage the economy competently so that there is sufficient money to pay public sector workers a wage which reflects the work they do serving the public.
Relevance to A-level Sociology
The fact that it’s not just teachers striking, but also many other public sector workers demonstrates the harms that 40 years of neoliberal policy have done to the UK economy. There isn’t enough money being raised by taxes to pay decent wages for those working in the health and education sectors.
Striking is a good example of collective mass action, the final resort that the working classes have to demand fairer pay and conditions, and if you want to you can show solidarity with ordinary hard working public sector workers by attending one of the local rallies on one of the strike days.
The resources below have been selected to help A-level sociology students and teachers studying (and teaching) an introduction to the concepts of sex and gender in the very first weeks of the two year course.
However the material below should also be useful across the entire two year sociology specification, and especially in the Theory and Methods aspect of the second year of study where Feminism and gender equality is one of the main themes.
good resources for teaching wealth, poverty, income inequality and social class. Useful further reading for students studying A-level sociology!
Here you will find links to some contemporary sources for further reading organised into the following categories
Annually published statistics and reports
News articles from the last five years (often based on the above)
Videos and Documentary resources
Committed organisations dedicated to studying this specific topic.
I will endeavour to update this list at least every three years, but with so much material already on ReviseSociology.com this might be a challenge!
These resources are intended for students studying an introduction to A-level Sociology – for the main blog posts introducing the topic of social class and inequalities please see the relevant links on the introduction to sociology page.
Annual research studies on income and wealth inequalities in the UK
The Heat or Eat Diaries from The Guardian – a varied series written from a mixture of people living in poverty, academics and journalists.
Working class people feel like they ‘don’t’ fit in’ to middle class working cultures – An excellent article from The Conversation based on research into how middle class cultural capital makes working class people feel like they don’t belong in middle class jobs – because of cultural differences rather than their ability.
The Made in Britain Series from The Guardian gives video cameras to those who are themselves living with the cost of living crises and supports them to make videos of their own lives. I’m not sure what research method you could call this – video diaries I guess, with technological assistance from professional film editors?!?
Panorama – Surviving the Cost of Living Crisis (2022)
Why are so many people living in Poverty? News Night (2021)
How does student debt affect life-chances? – Links to education and social class inequalities – and yes, as you may have thought, being in debt because of having to pay fees does have a detrimental affect on your future life-chances.
The Equality Trust – focussing on research on the harmful effects of social inequality on societies and individuals
The Social Mobility Commission – a government funded (but ‘independent’) organisation which monitors social progress (or lack of it) towards (or away from) social mobility.
The problem is, are teachers going to cope with this? When stress levels are already a historic highs:
Being a teacher during the Pandemic has been a horrifically stressful experience for most teaching professionals. Whether schools are closed are open, it means more work for teachers than pre-pandemic, even without extra catch up lessons.
While schools are in full lockdown, teachers still have to manage online lessons for as long as they did while in school, knowing full-well that some students would be paying minimal if any attention during said lessons, which creates a demand/ need to chase such pupils.
And surely things are worse when back in school – if some students are isolating, teachers have to manage the classroom AND those students who can’t attend in person, juggling yet more tasks.
And then there’s having to deal with not just the academic side of things, but the social and mental health problems that come with dealing with a Pandemic overall.
Teacher stress is at an all time high according to a recent survey by education support, so it’s all very well and good putting in place plans to help students catch up, but this might break some teachers.
A few of my favourite starters for A-level Sociology Lessons:
Draw Society
While the drawing task may seem a little juvenile, it is typically quite revealing – you usually get a mixture of pictures which show harmony and conflict/ division and some which are ‘whole society’, while others more individualised, but most of them tend to illustrate on the various different perspectives.
After basic housekeeping, handing out the introductory hand-outs, and a quick discussion about ‘what does the word sociology mean to you?’ I then ask students to ‘draw society’.
I issue students with mini Whiteboards (but paper and pens would work) and simply give them the following instruction (which is on a PPT, and written in the main hand-out)
It takes 5-10 minutes, no more than 10. I then invite students to show and explain their pictures – and then do a quick PPT on perspectives in sociology, using the pictures to illustrate the Perspectives.
NB the reason for quickly introducing the perspectives in Lesson one is to remind students this is a difficult subject, not just about discussing social issues, which is an all too common misconception.
Find someone who Bingo
This icebreaker works a treat: it consists of 20 ‘activities’, 5 of which hardly anyone is going to admit to because they are ‘too deviant’ and people have been socialised into NOT doing them.
The instruction box below is embedded into my main intro hand-out, and on the PPT I use for the lesson:
Intro task – Find someone who bingo Using the sheets provided, stand up, circulate, and try to match at least one name to each of the actions on your bingo sheet. First one to complete three lines of completely different names (no repeats) and shout bingo wins a chocolate bar, if they can identify the people whose names they’ve put down. NB – Yes, it’s an icebreaker, but also relevant to the content of today’s lesson!
This activity is also handy to get students talking to one another for the first time – I let it run until the point where you get a large group of students giggling which each other while at the same time a couple of them are starting to look a bit lost, then it’s time to bring it back together – lasts about 5-10 minutes!
Follow up
Ask students if they’ve got any gaps, and if so why…. This introduces the concept of deviance.
When do you want to get married? Marriage and Divorce starter
• If you want to get married, then why, if not, then why not?
• At what age do you expect to get married?
• Note down 3-5 words you associated with marriage.
Follow Up
Use Socrative to show the class trends, you can compare these to some of the historical trends as they come up in the lesson.
You can ask students how common they think the answers to the qualitative questions are or ask for volunteers to explain their answers. If no one volunteers, ask ‘why might someone has said this’, just be careful to remind students to be sensitive!
Match the crime to the trend
Hand out the ‘intro to crime trends’ supplementary sheet, this only shows the trends, project up the PPT slide which shows the trends and the ‘crime’s they need to match.
Students then match the crime to the trend
Show students the answers – on the PPT, see bundle below.
Get students to rank the crimes in order of how valid they think the statistics are.
Follow Up
You might want to point out that more serious crime is very low, but some of the ‘softer’ crimes have much higher rates.
You should point out that ‘crime stats are socially constructed’ and that there are several reasons why some of these crimes might go unreported.
20 Starters for A-level Sociology
All of the above resources are available in my latest teaching bundle which contains 20 starter activities for A-level sociology lessons. There are five starter activities for ‘introducing sociology’, three for education, two for methods, five for families and five for crime and deviance.
The activities are quite varied, and include a mixture of the following:
Drawing concepts
A Walk-about and finding out from other students’ activity
Brainstorming reasons why/ differences between.
A Making the links dice game
‘What do you think’ personal Socrative intro questions.
One musical intro
Key terms recaps
Applying perspectives starters.
Classic data response
Classic ‘quick recap tests’
I’ve used all of these activities in my own teaching, they are tried and tested and work well with classes of 10-20 or more students.
Over page is an index of all the activities and (in brackets) when in the specification you can employ them.
Most of these activities are paper based, and where this is the case, I’ve included a copy of the ‘worksheet’ here, as well as individual files in a separate folder, clearly labelled.
Some of the activities require a PPT so I’ve included the relevant slides on a separate PPT.
A-Level Sociology Teaching Resources
NB – you get All of these starters and more as part of my A-level sociology teaching resources, available as a monthly subscription, for only £9.99 a month!The subscription includes lesson plans and modifiable student hand-outs and PPTs. Activities such as these starters are embedded into the student learning materials.
I hope you find these resources useful, and happy teaching,
I’ve been consolidating my A-level sociology planning recently, and I’ve concluded it’s useful to have several different versions of module summaries and schemes of work, as below:
A mind map overview/ summary
A Power Point overview/ summary
A brief scheme of work
A long scheme of work
Detailed individual lesson plans.
All of these are based on the AQA’s specification, for the families and households topic.
Mind map overview of education
This is mind map number 1, the Borg equivalent of Unimatrix Zero. There are many other mind maps which branch off it – each colour thread itself becomes the central focus for more mind maps!
Power Point overview of education
Should need no explanation, about as brief as it can get.
Brief education Families Scheme of Work
A very brief version to be displayed in classrooms, an at a glance’ version so students can see where they are in the course and what’s coming next.
Long education Families Scheme of Work
This is a grid consisting of sub-topics, concepts, research studies, assessment and resources for each sup-topic. This more in-depth version follows the AQA specification rigidly and should include everything students need to know.
NB this is slightly different to the overview and lesson plans as some ‘lessons’ go beyond the specification or fuse different areas of it together.
Detailed Lesson Plans
These are really for teachers only, and contain detailed minute by minute lesson plans with aims and objectives, resources and extension ideas.
New Resource: Families and Households teaching bundle for A-level sociology
All of the above are available as part of my ‘sociology of education teaching bundle’. One downloadable bundle including fully modifiable teaching resources in Microsoft Word and PowerPoint. Only £49.95, or as part of a monthly subscription package for £9.99 a month!
The bundle includes:
A detailed scheme of work covering the entire AQA specification for the families and households topic
24 detailed lesson plans (topics below)
Seven student work packs on Perspectives, class, gender, ethnicity and education policies.
PowerPoints to accompany most lessons.
Activities such as role play games, sentence sorts, gap fills.
NB I have had to remove most of the pictures from these materials for copyright reasons, but the idea is that you can always add these in yourself to beautify them!
Lessons covered:
An introduction to the sociology of families and households
The Functionalist perspective on the family
The Marxist perspective on the family
The Marxist/ Feminist perspectives on the family
The Feminist perspective on the family
The New Right view of the family
The Postmodern and Personal Life Perspective on the family
Consolidation Families and households Assessment Lesson – focussing on evaluation skills and essay writing.
Exploring and explaining trends in marriage
Exploring and explaining trends in divorce
Evaluating sociological perspectives on marriage and divorce
Exploring and explaining increasing family diversity – ‘organisational diversity’
Exploring family diversity by social class, ethnicity, and sexuality
Evaluating the view that families are becoming more diverse
Power in relationships: housework and childcare
Power in relationships: perspectives on domestic violence
Is Childhood Socially Constructed?
Evaluating the March of Progress View of Childhood
I’ve been consolidating my A-level sociology planning recently, and I’ve concluded it’s useful to have several different versions of module summaries and schemes of work, as below:
This is mind map number 1, the Borg equivalent of Unimatrix Zero. There are many other mind maps which branch off it – each colour thread itself becomes the central focus for more mind maps!
Power Point overview of education
Should need no explanation, about as brief as it can get.
Brief education Scheme of Work
A very brief version to be displayed in classrooms, an at a glance’ version so students can see where they are in the course and what’s coming next.
Long education Scheme of Work
This is a grid consisting of sub-topics, concepts, research studies, assessment and resources for each sup-topic. This more in-depth version follows the AQA specification rigidly and should include everything students need to know.
NB this is slightly different to the overview and lesson plans as some ‘lessons’ go beyond the specification or fuse different areas of it together.
Linear versions of all of the above.
Some students may prefer the linear versions of the above, which can be quite useful if used as check lists.
Detailed Lesson Plans
These are really for teachers only, and contain detailed minute by minute lesson plans with aims and objectives, resources and extension ideas.
New Resource: Sociology of Education teaching bundle.
All of the above are available as part of my ‘sociology of education teaching bundle’. One downloadable bundle including fully modifiable teaching resources in Microsoft Word and PowerPoint. Only £49.99, or as part of a monthly subscription package for £9.99 a month!
The bundle includes:
A detailed scheme of work covering the entire AQA specification for the Education topic
24 detailed lesson plans (topics below)
Six student work packs on Perspectives, class, gender, ethnicity and education policies.
PowerPoints to accompany most lessons.
Activities such as role play games, sentence sorts, gap fills.
NB I have had to remove most of the pictures from these materials for copyright reasons, but the idea is that you can always add these in yourself to beautify them!
Lessons covered:
An introduction to the sociology of education
The Functionalist perspective on education
The Marxist perspective on education
Neo-Marxism/ Paul Willis’ Learning to Labour
The Neoliberal and New Right perspective on education
The Postmodern view of education
Consolidation Education Assessment Lesson – focussing on exam technique for the different types of question
Exploring education, surveillance and social control.
Social class and education: introduction and the role of material deprivation
Social class and education: cultural deprivation and cultural capital
Social class and education: the role of in school factors
Ethnicity and education: introduction, material deprivation and cultural factors
Ethnicity and education: the role of in-school factors
Ethnicity and education: are schools institutionally racist?
Gender and education: explaining gender differences in educational achievement
Gender and education: gender identity in schools, subject choice and the Radical Feminist Perspective
Education Policies: Historical Context, 1944 and 1965
The 1988 Education Act
New Labour’s Policies
The Coalition and New Right policies
Exploring selection and the priviatisation of education
I’ve just released some extensive revision workbooks and Power Points for sale as part of my sociology teaching resources subscription package, available for only £9.99 a month!
This teaching resource bundle contains work books and Power Points covering eight lessons on the Perspectives on the Sociology of Education
Resources in April’s bundle include
An introduction to the sociology of education
The Functionalist perspective on education
The Marxist perspective on education
Neo-Marxism/ Paul Willis’ Learning to Labour
The Neoliberal and New Right perspective on education
The Postmodern view of education
Consolidation Education Assessment Lesson – focussing on exam technique for the different types of question
Exploring education, surveillance and social control.
Resources in the bundle include:
1 introductory workbook and one much larger workbook on Perspectives on Education.
3 Power Points covering most of the above lessons (not for riots or the corporate crime research lesson.
Eight lesson plans covering all of the above lessons.
Various supplementary hand-outs for some of the above lessons as necessary.
I’m also throwing in some of my revision resources from the Education revision bundle, as they are useful for lesson 7.
Fully modifiable resources
Every teacher likes to make resources their own by adding some things in and cutting other things out – and you can do this with both the work pack and the PowerPoints because I’m selling them in Word and PPT, rather than as PDFs, so you can modify them!
NB – I have had to remove most the pictures I use personally, for copyright reasons, but I’m sure you can find your own to fit in. It’s obvious where I’ve taken them out!
I’ve just released some extensive revision workbooks and Power Points for sale as part of my sociology teaching resources subscription package, available for only £9.99 a month!
This teaching resource bundle contains work books and Power Points covering the entire content of education and research methods of the AQA’s A-level sociology specification.
The resources should be enough to cover at least 8-10 revision lessons on families and households.
Resources in March’s bundle include
One families and households workbook in Word – 43 pages
Two families Power Points – over 100 slides
Short answer questions PDF – three full examples, but lots more on the PPTs
Essay plans in PDF – seven essays, in full.
Basic revision notes in PDF – 63 pages.
The presentations contain some nice visual resources like this!
More resources to come…
I’m making resources available every month as part of this teacher resource subscription package. Please click the link to left for details of the schedule of what’s coming in future months!
I’ve just released some extensive revision workbooks and Power Points for sale as part of my sociology teaching resources subscription package, available for only £9.99 a month!
This teaching resource bundle contains work books and Power
Points covering the entire content of education and research methods of the
AQA’s A-level sociology specification.
The resources should be enough to cover at least 8-10 revision lessons on education and research methods.
Resources in February’s bundle include
One education workbook in Word – 65 pages
Two education Power Points – over 70 slides
One research methods workbook in Word – 60 pages
One Research Methods Power Point – 60 slides
Short answer questions PDF for education and research methods
Essay plans PDF for education, research methods and methods in context.
NB – These aren’t visual, I have had to remove most the pictures I use personally, for copyright reasons, but I’m sure you can find your own to fit in.
The work packs and Power Points contain various activities such as….
Paired concepts
Short answer practice questions
A-Z word matching tasks
10 Mark practice questions
Essay plans and short answer question PDFs
I’m also throwing in PDFs of my short answer practice questions and Essay plans for education research methods, which I normally sell as part of my revision bundles!
More resources to come…
I’m making resources available every month as part of this teacher resource subscription package. Please click the link to left for details of the schedule of what’s coming in future months!
