Applying material from Item B and your knowledge, evaluate the usefulness of Marxist perspectives in understanding the role of education (30 marks)

Last Updated on October 20, 2026 by Karl Thompson

This 30-mark question appeared on the June 2024 AQA A-level sociology Paper 1 (7192/1): Education with Theory and Methods. It is a good test of whether you can apply an Item rather than just write everything you know about Marxism.

Have a go at planning it yourself first. If you need to revise the theory, see my post on the Marxist perspective on education.

The Question and Item

Read Item B below and answer the question that follows.

Applying material from Item B and your knowledge, evaluate the usefulness of Marxist perspectives in understanding the role of education. [30 marks]

Question reproduced from AQA A-level Sociology 7192/1, June 2024, for educational purposes. © AQA.

How to Approach This Question

The key word is usefulness. You are not being asked simply to describe Marxism – you need to judge how far Marxist ideas help us understand what education does, and where they fall short.

Item B gives you four hooks, and a top-band answer picks up all of them:

• Schools transmit ideology that benefits the ruling class – use Althusser and the hidden curriculum.
• Schools reproduce class inequalities in the next generation – use Bowles and Gintis, Bourdieu and contemporary evidence.
• Marxists generally see pupils as passive – use Willis and Giroux to evaluate this.
• Functionalists argue that education is meritocratic and benefits everyone – use this for the counter-argument, and the myth of meritocracy for the Marxist reply.

The essay below is written using the PEAC system: Point, Explain, Analyse, Criticise.

Introduction

Marxists see capitalist societies as divided into two main classes: the bourgeoisie, who own the means of production, and the proletariat, who sell their labour and are exploited. As Item B suggests, Marxists see the education system as supporting capitalism: it is part of the superstructure through which the ruling class maintains its power, by transmitting ruling-class ideology and reproducing class inequality. Traditional Marxists such as Althusser and Bowles and Gintis tend to see pupils as passive in this process, while neo-Marxists such as Willis give pupils a more active role. In this essay I will argue that Marxist perspectives are very useful for understanding how education reproduces class inequality, but much less useful for understanding pupils’ experiences, gender and ethnicity, or the changing needs of today’s economy.

Education Transmits Ruling-Class Ideology

Point: Item B states that Marxists claim schools transmit ideology that benefits the ruling class. The clearest version of this argument comes from Louis Althusser (1970), who saw education as an ideological state apparatus.

Explain: Althusser argued that the ruling class controls society through two kinds of apparatus. The repressive state apparatus – the police, courts and army – works through force. The ideological state apparatuses, including religion, the family, the media and education, work through ideology, persuading people that capitalism is natural and fair. Althusser thought education had replaced the Church as the most important ideological state apparatus in modern capitalist societies. School takes children from every class for years, teaching them skills alongside the ruling ideology, and then sends them out at different stages to fill different positions in the class structure.

Analyse: This is useful because it explains why a deeply unequal society is stable: people accept inequality because they have been taught to see it as normal and deserved, so force is rarely needed. Althusser’s point that school presents itself as neutral is particularly important – pupils don’t experience school as propaganda, which is what makes it effective.

Criticise: However, Althusser’s argument is theoretical rather than based on research in schools, and it is highly deterministic. It assumes pupils absorb whatever they are taught. Many students leave school sceptical of authority, and some study sociology, which teaches them precisely these critical ideas – hardly what a ruling-class ideological apparatus would choose to do. From a different angle, some Marxists see the expansion of academies run by trusts, which some describe as part-privatisation, as evidence that business interests are gaining more direct influence over schools, which would support Althusser’s general point.

The Hidden Curriculum and the Correspondence Principle

Point: Bowles and Gintis (1976) argued that the main role of education in capitalist society is to produce an obedient workforce, through what they called the correspondence principle.

Explain: They argued that the hidden curriculum – what pupils learn simply from the experience of going to school – corresponds to the norms of the capitalist workplace. The passive subservience of pupils to teachers corresponds to the subservience of workers to managers; acceptance of the school hierarchy prepares pupils to accept hierarchy at work; and motivation by grades rather than the joy of learning corresponds to motivation by wages rather than the joy of the job. They drew on evidence from an American high school suggesting that grades rewarded obedient personality traits, while creativity and independence were penalised.

Analyse: This links to the part of Item B about ideology: the hidden curriculum is one of the main ways ideology is transmitted, because the lessons are learnt through routine rather than taught openly. It also helps explain why so many people put up with boring, low-paid work without challenging it.

Criticise: However, the correspondence principle was developed from American evidence in the 1970s, when many more school leavers went into factory work. Today’s economy has many more jobs that require creativity, flexibility and independent thinking – the creative industries alone accounted for about 2.5 million UK jobs in 2025 (DCMS). Postmodernists argue that education has become more diverse and individualised to meet these needs. On the other hand, the continued importance of exam results suggests that motivation by external rewards is still very much part of school life.

Education Reproduces Class Inequality

Point: Item B states that schools reproduce existing class inequalities in the next generation. This is probably the most useful part of the Marxist perspective.

Explain: Middle-class parents use their material and cultural capital to get their children into the best schools and the top sets, so their children get better qualifications and go on to middle-class jobs, while working-class children are more likely to get a poorer education and end up in working-class jobs. Bourdieu argued that schools reward the cultural capital of the middle classes – their tastes, knowledge and ways of speaking – which working-class pupils are less likely to have.

Analyse: The evidence for this is strong and recent. In 2025/26 only 27.5% of disadvantaged pupils in England achieved grade 5 or above in English and maths, compared with 54.3% of other pupils (DfE). Private schools are even clearer evidence: around 6% of pupils attend them, yet the Sutton Trust (2025) found that 62% of senior judges had been privately educated. Wealth buys educational advantage, which then turns into occupational advantage, just as Marxists predict.

Criticise: However, other explanations of class differences in achievement do not rely on Marxist theory. Cultural deprivation theorists blame working-class values and parenting rather than the capitalist system, and interactionists focus on processes inside schools, such as labelling and setting. The New Right would argue that the problem is poor-quality state schools, not capitalism, and that more competition and choice would raise standards for everyone.

The Myth of Meritocracy

Point: Item B notes that functionalists argue education is meritocratic and gives all pupils the opportunity to succeed. Marxists argue that this is a myth which legitimates class inequality.

Explain: Bowles and Gintis argued that schools teach pupils that success depends on ability and effort, so those who fail believe it is their own fault. In reality, class background and money shape how well you do. The myth of meritocracy therefore justifies inequality and makes the working class less likely to challenge the system.

Analyse: This is useful because it directly answers the functionalist claim in Item B: if the system were meritocratic, we would not expect such a persistent link between class background and results, decades after free secondary education for all. Functionalists see role allocation as fair sifting and sorting by talent; Marxists see it as sorting by class, disguised as talent.

Criticise: However, the education system is not entirely closed: many working-class pupils do succeed and some move up the class structure. Policies such as the Pupil Premium are designed specifically to help disadvantaged pupils, which suggests the state does not simply serve the interests of the ruling class. And many pupils are very aware that the system is unfair, which suggests they are not fooled by the myth at all.

Are Pupils Passive? Willis and Neo-Marxism

Point: Item B states that Marxists generally see pupils as passive. Neo-Marxist Paul Willis (1977) challenged this in his study Learning to Labour.

Explain: Willis studied 12 working-class boys – ‘the lads’ – in a Midlands school. They formed a counter-school culture: they rejected academic work, valued ‘having a laff’ and saw manual work as real work. They were far from passive; they saw through the school’s claim to offer them equal opportunity.

Analyse: However, Willis argued that their resistance still reproduced class inequality: by rejecting school, the lads left with no qualifications and went straight into the manual jobs capitalism needed. So Willis keeps the Marxist conclusion – education reproduces class – while rejecting the idea that pupils are passive. This makes his version more useful than traditional Marxism, because it explains both resistance and reproduction.

Criticise: Henry Giroux (1983) argued that reproduction theories are too deterministic and leave too little room for human agency. Willis’s own study also has limits: the main sample was only 12 white boys in one school, studied in the 1970s, and it says little about girls.

Evaluation Using Other Perspectives

Feminists criticise Marxism for focusing on class and ignoring gender. Girls now outperform boys at GCSE and are more likely to go to university, which a theory based on class alone cannot explain, and the hidden curriculum may transmit patriarchal values as well as capitalist ones. Similarly, Marxism has relatively little to say about ethnic differences in achievement, which other sociologists explain through factors such as an ethnocentric curriculum or teacher labelling.

Functionalists, as Item B notes, argue that the values taught in schools benefit all members of society. Value consensus, social solidarity and specialist skills are arguably in everyone’s interest, not just the ruling class’s.

Conclusion

Marxist perspectives are most useful for understanding how education reproduces and legitimates class inequality. The evidence on class gaps in attainment and on private schooling strongly supports them, and the myth of meritocracy is a convincing reply to the functionalist claims in Item B. They are less useful for understanding pupils’ agency, gender and ethnicity, or the needs of a modern, flexible economy. Neo-Marxism, especially Willis, is more useful than traditional Marxism because it recognises that pupils actively resist school while still explaining why class inequality is reproduced. Overall, Marxism is one of the most useful perspectives on the role of education, but only when combined with insights from other perspectives.

Short Version of This Essay

• Introduction: Marxism, bourgeoisie and proletariat, education as part of the superstructure; traditional v neo-Marxism; state your argument.
• Ideology (Item B): Althusser, ideological state apparatus. Criticise: theoretical, deterministic; academies as possible support.
• Hidden curriculum: Bowles and Gintis, correspondence principle. Criticise: 1970s, American, creative economy, postmodernism.
• Reproduction (Item B): cultural capital, Bourdieu, DfE gap, private schools. Criticise: cultural deprivation, interactionism, New Right.
• Meritocracy (Item B, functionalism): myth of meritocracy v role allocation. Criticise: social mobility, Pupil Premium, pupils aware of unfairness.
• Passive pupils (Item B): Willis, counter-school culture. Criticise: Giroux, small sample, no girls.
• Other perspectives: feminism, ethnicity, functionalism.
• Conclusion: useful on class reproduction; limited on agency, gender, ethnicity; neo-Marxism most useful.

The Mark Scheme

AQA MARK SCHEME: Question 04 June 2024 7192/1 mark scheme — the 25–30 band descriptor reproduced for educational purposes, © AQA]

KT’s Commentary

The mark scheme’s top band asks for conceptually detailed knowledge of a range of Marxist ideas, applied accurately to the Item, with explicit evaluation. In practice, that means three things.

First, application. The Item hands you the structure – ideology, reproduction, passive pupils, the functionalist counter-view – and the weakest answers I’ve marked ignore it and write a generic ‘everything I know about Marxism’ essay. That caps you, however much you know. Name the Item explicitly at the start of each section, as the essay above does.

Second, range. The mark scheme lists concepts such as the ideological state apparatus, the correspondence principle, the myth of meritocracy and cultural capital, and sources including Althusser, Bowles and Gintis, Bourdieu, Willis and Giroux. You don’t need all of them, but you do need more than Bowles and Gintis on their own, and you need to distinguish traditional Marxism from neo-Marxism.

Third, the word ‘usefulness’. The mark scheme credits evaluation through debate with other perspectives – functionalism, feminism, the New Right, interactionism – and through considering what values education transmits. A list of criticisms tacked on the end won’t do this; each section needs a judgement about how useful that particular Marxist idea is, and the conclusion needs to come down on one side.

For more advice on how to write 30-mark essays, see my sociology revision and exam advice page.

Signposting and Related Posts

This essay was written as a top-band answer to a 30-mark question from the education section of the AQA’s A-level sociology Paper 1 (7192/1): Education with Theory and Methods.

The full knowledge post relevant to this essay is The Marxist Perspective on Education. You might also like Bowles and Gintis’ correspondence principle and Paul Willis: Learning to Labour.

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