Last Updated on October 26, 2026 by Karl Thompson
This post is exam practice. For the theory itself — the four functions, Durkheim, Parsons and Davis and Moore, with evaluation and current evidence — see my main post on the Functionalist perspective on education.
An A-level sociology essay written for the AQA’s 7192/1 specification, exam paper 1. This is the long, ‘overkill’ version of the essay, written using the PEAC system (Point – Explain – Analyse – Criticise). A short version, in essay-plan form, follows the full essay.
This is a practice question, not an AQA past paper question. I’ve checked AQA’s Paper 1 30-mark questions from 2017 to 2024, and none asks you to evaluate the functionalist view on its own. Functionalism is central to several of them, though — see “The real AQA questions this essay prepares you for” at the end. The Item below is one I’ve written in AQA’s style so you can practise applying it.
The practice question with Item
Item B (practice Item written by KT, not from an AQA paper)
Functionalists believe that education performs important positive functions for society. Schools pass on shared values, creating a sense of belonging, and teach the skills that a modern economy needs. Through exams and qualifications, education sorts individuals into the roles that best suit their abilities. However, critics argue that functionalists paint too positive a picture of education, ignoring conflict and inequality.
Applying material from Item B and your knowledge, evaluate the functionalist perspective on the role of education in society. [30 marks]
Introduction
Functionalism is a structural theory associated with Émile Durkheim, writing in France in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Talcott Parsons, writing in America in the 1950s. Functionalist theorists adopt a ‘top-down’ approach, analysing the role which institutions such as schools play in relation to other institutions, such as work and the family, and they generally believe that schools form an important part of a society’s structure. Functionalism is also a consensus theory: as Item B says, functionalists emphasise the positive functions which schools perform for individuals and society, arguing that schools promote social harmony and social order, which they see as a good thing.
Below I will analyse and evaluate four specific ‘functions’ which schools perform according to functionalist theory — social solidarity, skills for work, the bridge between family and society, and role allocation — ultimately arguing that it obscures more than it enlightens our understanding of the role of education in society today.
Education and Social Solidarity
POINT 1: According to Émile Durkheim, the founder of modern functionalism, the first role of education is to create a sense of social solidarity, which in turn promotes value consensus.
EXPLAIN: Social solidarity is where the individual members of society feel themselves to be part of a single ‘body’ or community and work together towards shared goals. According to Durkheim, schools achieve social solidarity through children learning subjects such as history and English, which give them a shared sense of national identity. This in turn promotes value consensus, or agreement on shared values at the level of society. This is the first function in Item B: schools “pass on shared values, creating a sense of belonging”.
ANALYSE: Durkheim thought schools were one of the few institutions which could promote solidarity at a national level — and he may have a point. It is difficult to imagine any other institution which governments could use to socialise individuals into a sense of national identity, and governments clearly still see schools this way: since 2014, schools in England have been required to promote fundamental British Values.
CRITICISE: However, it is debatable whether schools succeed in instilling a genuine sense of social solidarity in most, let alone all, students. A minority of pupils are excluded from school, and absence has risen sharply since the pandemic: in 2024/25, 18% of pupils in England were persistently absent, missing at least one session in ten. If pupils are not in school, then schools cannot promote a sense of belonging; and many of those who are in school are there in body, but not necessarily in spirit. Finally, there is such a diversity of schools — academies, faith schools, private schools, home education — that education is arguably too fragmented to promote solidarity at the national level, which is the postmodernist point that there is no longer a single unified culture for school to pass on.
Education teaches Skills for Work
POINT 2: A second function of education, again according to Durkheim, is that schools teach individuals the specialist skills for work, which are crucial in a complex, modern industrial economy. Schools thus have an important economic function.
EXPLAIN: Durkheim argued that school was an efficient way of teaching individuals these diverse skills while at the same time teaching them to cooperate with each other. Schools thus instil a sense of organic solidarity — solidarity based on difference and interdependence — and school is one of the only institutions which can do both of these things at once within a national economy. This is the second function in Item B: schools “teach the skills that a modern economy needs”.
ANALYSE: The idea that schools have an economic function certainly seems to be true. Basic literacy and numeracy are important for almost any job today, and since the New Right reforms of the 1980s vocational education has expanded, right up to the apprenticeships and T levels of the present day. Cross-national comparisons point the same way: UNESCO figures show that 59% of young people worldwide completed upper secondary education in 2021, but only 27% in sub-Saharan Africa, one of the poorest regions in the world.
CRITICISE: However, correlation is not causation: richer countries can afford more education, so the link may run both ways. Alison Wolf (2002) questioned whether spending more on education is really what drives economic growth. And it is debatable whether schools prepare children for work as well as functionalists suggest. Ken Robinson argued that schools obsessed with standardised testing ‘kill creativity’, which hardly prepares people for the creative industries or for becoming entrepreneurs. Apprenticeships also tell a different story from the one functionalists would expect: in 2024/25, more than half of apprenticeship starts in England were by people aged 25 and over, so the system is retraining adults already in work as much as sorting school leavers into their first jobs.
Education as a bridge between the family and society
POINT 3: Talcott Parsons argued that school acts as a bridge between the family and wider society, through secondary socialisation into universalistic values.
EXPLAIN: Parsons (1959) saw the school class as ‘the focal socializing agency’ after the family. In the family, children are judged by particularistic standards — rules that apply to them as a particular child. In wider society, people are judged by universalistic standards that apply to everyone, such as the law. School prepares children for this by judging every pupil by the same rules and the same exams. It also replaces the ascribed status of the family, which is fixed at birth, with the achieved status of adult society, which is earned.
ANALYSE: Public exams are the clearest example of this. GCSE and A-level scripts are marked by external examiners who have never met the pupils, against the same mark scheme for everyone. When exams were cancelled in 2021 and grades were based on teachers’ judgements of their own pupils, the share of A-level entries graded A or A* rose from 60.8% to 70.1% in independent schools, against 33.1% to 39.3% in comprehensives. Whatever the reasons for that gap, it suggests why Parsons put so much weight on universalistic standards.
CRITICISE: However, interactionists argue that teachers do not apply universalistic standards in practice. Becker (1952) found that Chicago teachers judged pupils against a middle-class ‘ideal pupil’, and Rist (1970) found that a kindergarten teacher had grouped her class within eight days, on the basis of social class. Through labelling and the self-fulfilling prophecy, those particularistic judgements can shape what pupils achieve. Bourdieu goes further: even if the standards are applied equally, they are middle-class standards, so pupils with middle-class cultural capital are rewarded for what they bring from home. Feminists add that Parsons’s account says nothing about gender, even though teacher expectations and subject choice still steer girls and boys towards different futures.
Role Allocation and meritocracy
POINT 4: Finally, functionalists argue that education performs the function of role allocation: it sorts individuals into the jobs that best suit their abilities, on the basis of merit.
EXPLAIN: Davis and Moore (1945) argued that some jobs are more functionally important than others, and that only a limited number of people have the talent to do them. Society offers higher rewards for these jobs to motivate the most able people to train for them, and education does the sorting, through exams and qualifications. Parsons agreed, describing the school class as an agency of ‘manpower’ allocation. For this to be fair, the system must be meritocratic: everyone must have an equal chance, so that those who succeed do so through ability and effort. This is the third function in Item B: education “sorts individuals into the roles that best suit their abilities”.
ANALYSE: There is some evidence for this. In 2024, 67.9% of graduates in England were in high-skilled jobs, against 23.7% of non-graduates, and their median salary was £42,000 against £30,500. Qualifications clearly do sort people into different kinds of work.
CRITICISE: However, the evidence that the sorting is meritocratic is much weaker, and this is where the Marxist criticism in the last sentence of Item B — that functionalists ignore inequality — is strongest. In 2025/26, 27.5% of disadvantaged pupils in England got grade 5 or above in English and maths, against 54.3% of other pupils. Only 6.3% of pupils attend independent schools, yet the Sutton Trust found in 2025 that 62% of senior judges had been privately educated. Melvin Tumin (1953) made the same point about Davis and Moore at the time: “access to education depends upon the wealth of one’s parents”, so inequality stops a society discovering its talent rather than rewarding it. For Marxists such as Bowles and Gintis, meritocracy is a myth that makes inequality look fair, persuading those who fail that it is their own fault.
Evaluating functionalism as a whole
The criticisms above have mostly been about the functions themselves, but there are also criticisms of the theory as a whole. First, it is deterministic: it sees pupils as passive recipients of whatever values school transmits. Willis’s study of the ‘lads’ showed pupils who saw through the school’s values and rejected them, which is hard to explain if school simply socialises everyone into consensus. Second, functionalism ignores the negative side of school — bullying, exclusion and anti-school subcultures — for the minority it does not work for. Third, it is dated. Durkheim was writing over a century ago and Parsons about 1950s America; postmodernists argue that a diverse society no longer has a single value consensus for schools to pass on.
However, functionalism should not be dismissed completely. The New Right agrees with functionalists that school should pass on shared values and prepare pupils for work, and simply disagrees about whether the state is the best way to do it. And school does perform positive functions for most pupils most of the time: most attend, most leave with qualifications, and it is difficult to see how an advanced economy could function without a large education system.
Conclusion
In conclusion, functionalism is right that education performs functions for society: it does teach skills, it does sort people into jobs, and governments clearly still use it to try to build shared values. But the theory obscures more than it enlightens, because it assumes the system is fair. The evidence on class, private schooling and teacher labelling suggests that education sorts pupils as much by background as by ability, which means the functions it performs benefit some groups far more than others. Functionalism describes what education is supposed to do; Marxist, interactionist and feminist sociology describe what it actually does.
Short version of this essay
- Point – simply state something functionalists say about education
- Explain – explain what is meant by the ‘function’ of education mentioned previously
- Expand – this could mean giving examples, evidence, or explaining in more depth
- Criticise – criticise with evidence against or limitations
(P1) Secondary socialisation and value consensus
- The teaching of norms and values after the family, leading to agreement around these norms and values
- Formal curriculum: shared history, shared language, shared religion
- Team sports: working together towards a shared aim
- Ethnocentric curriculum
- Subcultures
- More school types means more diversity — surely that means less value consensus?
(P2) Teaching skills for work — the economic function
- Diverse subjects
- Punctuality
- Vocational courses and apprenticeships have expanded
- Are apprenticeships useful, and who are they for?
- Graduates in jobs that don’t need a degree
(P3) A bridge between home and society
- School prepares us for the world outside the family: it acts like a society in miniature
- Particularistic and universalistic standards
- Doesn’t apply to everyone, e.g. home education
(P4) Role allocation
- Different qualifications sift people into appropriate jobs
- Does this through exams: sifting and sorting (Davis and Moore)
- Meritocracy
- Marxism: not meritocratic — the myth of meritocracy
- Private schools
- Feminism: gender stereotyping and subject choice
Evaluate using other perspectives
- Marxism – agrees with functionalists that school socialises us into shared values, but argues these values benefit the ruling class: we are taught that inequality is natural and inevitable, we believe in the myth of meritocracy, and so we end up passively accepting society as it is.
- Feminism – functionalism ignores the gender divide in school.
- Interactionism – argues functionalism is too deterministic. It sees individuals as passive, but there is a lot of evidence that pupils are active and aren’t just moulded by the school system.
Conclusion – you must point out that this perspective is too optimistic and overgeneralises!
KT’s Commentary
This is the ‘overkill’ version: you would not write all of this in 45 minutes, and you don’t need to. Four points, each with a developed criticise stage, plus a short paragraph of whole-theory evaluation and a conclusion that takes a side, is a top-band answer.
Look at how the Item is used. Each of the first three sentences hands you a function, and the last sentence hands you the criticism. Quoting a few words from the Item at the start of each point is the simplest way of showing the examiner you have applied it.
The other thing to notice is that the criticisms are specific. “Marxists disagree” earns very little on its own. “In 2025/26, 27.5% of disadvantaged pupils got grade 5 or above in English and maths, against 54.3% of other pupils” is evidence an examiner can credit.
The real AQA questions this essay prepares you for
- June 2017, Q04: Applying material from Item B and your knowledge, evaluate sociological explanations of the role of education in transmitting ideas and values. [30 marks] — a 28/30 student answer with examiner commentary
- June 2021, Q04: Applying material from Item B and your knowledge, evaluate the view that the education system is meritocratic. [30 marks] — see are schools meritocratic?
- June 2024, Q04: Applying material from Item B and your knowledge, evaluate the usefulness of Marxist perspectives in understanding the role of education. [30 marks] — functionalism is the obvious perspective to evaluate Marxism with
- June 2020, Q02: Outline three functions that the education system performs for society. [6 marks] — worked answer
Sociology of Education Revision Bundle
If you like this sort of thing, then you might like my sociology of education revision notes bundle, which includes essay templates and model answers on the sociology of education. It’s written by Karl Thompson, who taught A-level sociology for eighteen years and spent twelve as an AQA examiner, marking all three papers on the current specification.
Signposting
This essay is based on these class notes on the Functionalist perspective on education, with more depth on Durkheim and Parsons.
For more essays, please see my main post on exam advice, short answer questions and essays.
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