Many teachers I know give their students ‘model essay plans’ for the classic topics in sociology, which students can use and adapt if they get a question on that general topic area.
For example, an essay plan on the question ‘ assess the view that home based factors are more important than in-school factors in explaining class based differences in education achievement’ might have a model plan as below:
Intro
Home based factors – material
Home based factors – cultural deprivation
Home based factors – cultural capital
In-school factors
Conclusions.
(Obviously one could elaborate on this a lot further!)
Students can then change the order if the question is slightly different, such as on in-school factors, in which case in-school factors would be placed at no/2 after the intro and so on….
HOWEVER, I’m not convinced that such an approach will get students into the top mark band. If you check the 30 mark mark scheme carefully, it refers ‘appropriate material being carefully selected and sensitively applied to the question’. To my mind, carefully using the item and using that to structure the question might be a better way to go!
Take the example of the following question take from the 2016 AS sociology specimen paper. The item is clearly pointing you to address only certain aspects of home factors…..
An item-based structure for the above essay would look like this:
Parenting practices encouraging intellectual development – links to cultural capital theory
More involvement – links to cultural deprivation theory
Evaluative paragraph dealing with material deprivation
Evaluative paragraph dealing with policy
Evaluate using in-school factors, explaining how they are interlinked with school factors!
Make sure you discuss all levels of education!
My thoughts are that this could well be an important strategy when dealing with especially 20 mark essay questions as your time is quite limited on these!
Get ahead with your A-level sociology revision with these cheap online webinars covering the entire A-level sociology specification over a 12 week period.
Please note these have been cancelled due to Coronavirus!
But I will be running the same series in 2021, from March!
A Level Sociology Revision Webinars starting March 2020
The webinars are scheduled for 19.00 every Monday (with one on a Thursday) and will run from Monday 1st of April to Monday 20th June, 2 days before the last exam (crime and deviance with theory and methods). Webinars are scheduled early so that we can get through the entire specification BEFORE the first paper (on May 20th).
NB Registration will only be open during March and the first two weeks of April, then it will close!
Schedule (please see below for a more detailed version)
Thursday 26th March – Education 1
Thursday 2nd April – Education 2
Thursday 9th April – Families and Households 1
Thursday 16th April – Beliefs in Society
Thursday 3rd April – Crime and Deviance 1
Thursday 30th April – Crime and Deviance 2
Thursday 7th May – Research Methods
Thursday 14th May – Social Theories
Saturday 16th May – Education and Theory and Methods 3 (exam on 20th May )
Monday 25th May – Request webinar, content TBC
Monday 3rd June – Families and Beliefs 2 (exam on 2nd June)
Monday 10th June – Crime and Deviance with Theory and Methods 3 (Exam on 10th June).
All of these webinars will last 50 minutes during which I will provide a brief overview of some of the content within each topic, and a discussion of at least three specific exam practice questions. Students will be able to ask questions during the Webinar, via text, and there will also be time for students to ask questions at the end.
I will be conducting the Webinars via Click Meeting, which allows students to download support materials in advance of the seminars, ask questions during the seminars via ‘chat’, and which will also allow students to review the seminar afterwards as they will be recorded and stored on the site. Recordings will be available until the 16th of June (several days after the final A-level sociology exam).
Sample of Webinar 1 from 2019
Webinar Support materials
The first eight revision Webinars are supported by a PowerPoint, revision notes and exemplar exam questions, and the education, families and methods topics (basically the first year content) have gapped revision hand-outs too, so these really are being offered at a bargain price!
Access to all 12 Webinars is only £49.99, which is less than £5 a Webinar.
The link will take you to a registration page for my ‘Permanent Room’ on the ClickMeeting platform. This is the room from which I will be running all revision Webinars from, every Thursday from March 26th, switching to Mondays before the exam, and one on a Saturday.
Once registered you will receive an email from ClickMeeting which will provide you with an access link which will allow you access my permanent room for March-June 2019. (NB I will only be using this at the scheduled times, as outlined in the schedule.)
Following registration I will also send you an email containing all the relevant revision resources for the 12 Webinars. These will also be downloadable during and immediately after each revision session.
Reminder emails will be sent out the day in advance of each of the 12 Webinar Revision Sessions, and also watch out for a bonus ‘introducing revision Webinars’ session on the final Monday in March, to give you an opportunity to familiarise yourself with how ClickMeeting works.
Payment is via PayPal only!
About your Tutor
I’ve taught sociology for 20 years, 16 of those in a successful sixth form college between 2002 and 2018 (10 years as Head of Department).
In 2014 I set up this blog, and managed to save enough off the back of it to quit working for the ‘man’ and now I work independently, developing non-corporate support materials to facilitate the teaching and learning of A-level sociology.
I also see myself as something of a trail-blazer in developing 16-19 online education: in 2019, we should be doing better than 20 teenagers all having to travel to a central location and then ‘sitting in a room’ for an hour or two. To my mind this all seems a bit 19th century. These Webinars are a move towards making A-level education more flexible and decentralised.
Online sociology revision webinars April to June 2019, covering the AQA A-level sociology content : education to crime and deviance!
I will be running a series of A-level sociology revision webinars from April to mid-June 2019. The focus will be on maximising marks in the three AQA sociology exams, as well as reviewing basic content across the main sociology options: education, methods, families, beliefs, crime and theories.
These Webinars will be live events, with 30-40 minutes of structured lecture/ Q n A revision supported by a PowerPoint, followed by 20 mins to deal with student questions and popular requests. Webinars will be recorded and accessible if students wish to go back over them, or if they cannot make a particular session.
The online revision sessions will be fully supported with work packs containing revision notes and activities and plenty of practice exam questions and model answers covering all of the short answer questions, the two types of 10-mark questions and the 20- and 30-mark essay questions.
I’m going to be offering access to these via a subscription through Patreon, so there will be tiered access ranging from £20 a month to £40 a month. If you subscribe to the lower tier, you get access to the revision webinars and resources (NB this is a bargain price!), if you subscribe to the higher level tiers, you get the webinars, resources AND I will provide you with feedback to any practice exam questions you do (basically I’ll mark more essays the higher up the tiers you go).
These Webinars will run on Tuesday evenings at 19.00 GMT, with the exception of the one before the families and beliefs exam, which will be on a Monday, because paper 2 is on a Tuesday!.
There will only be 20 places available* on these webinars. Subscriptions will open on March 1st 2019, but if you want to register your interest early just drop a comment below or email me and I can make sure you get a place.
(*There are more than 30 000 students who study A-level sociology , so these are actually ver rare!)
Quality Guaranteed!
I taught sociology for 16 years between 2001-2018 until I quit recently (because I live frugally I’ve retired from full-time work early) and I’m still an AQA examiner, so I know the content of A-level sociology and the exam rules intimately. I now spend most of my ‘working time’ maintaining this blog and keeping up to date with all things sociology, A-level and exams.
Education and Theory and Methods (exam on 22nd May)
20 May 4
Education and Theory and Methods
27 May
Families and Beliefs
3 June 2
Families and Beliefs (exam on 4th June)
10 June
Crime and Deviance and Theory and methods (exam on 12th June)
A reminder of this years exam dates!
NB the above timetable is from the AQA exam board, other boards may have different times! Click here for the AQA’s A-level timetable.
Influence the content of these webinars – Requests!
What do you want covered in these Webinars? Let me know in the comments below, and I’ll use the feedback to make sure certain topics are covered…. I know what the real bogeymen of A-level sociology are (selection, the fully social theory of deviance, green crime etc.), but I also know different students struggle with different things, so if you’re thinking of ‘attending’ and want something specific covered let me know and I’ll make sure I go over it!
I’ve been designing some sociology of education summary grids to try and summarise the AQA’s A-level sociology of education specification as briefly as possible. I’ve managed to narrow it down to 7 grids in total covering…..
Perspectives on education (Functionalism etc)
In-school processes (labelling etc.)
social class and differential achievement
gender: achievement and subject choice
Ethnicity
Policies
Globalisation and education (I couldn’t fit it in anywhere else!)
Here’s a couple of them… I figure these should be useful for quick card sorts during revision lessons. And let’s face it, there is only ONE thing students love more than filling in grids, and that’s a card sort!
Perspectives on education summary grid:
Education policies summary grid:
Of course I couldn’t resist doing fuller versions of these grids too, but more of that laters!
Eight leading private schools send more pupils to Oxford and Cambridge than three-quarters of all state secondary schools.
These eight schools include some of the most expensive fee-paying independent schools in the country, including Westminster and Eton.
The eight schools sent 1, 310 pupils to Oxbridge fro 2015 to 2017,
Compared to 2,894 state schools which sent just 1, 220 pupils.
Now you might think this is simply due to the better standard of candidates in private schools leading to more applications to Oxford and Cambridge, however the statics below suggest Oxford and Cambridge and Russel Group universities bias their acceptances in favour of Independent schools and selective (grammar) schools and against comprehensives and the post-compulsory sector…..
The statistics above show that…
Only 34% of applications to Oxbridge are made from private schools, but 42% of offers are made to privately schooled pupils
32% of applications to Oxbridge are made from comprehensive schools, but only 25% of offers are made to comprehensively schooled children.
This means you are significantly more likely to get an offer if you apply from a private school compared to a comprehensive school. A similar ‘offer bias’ is found for Russel Group universities.
Why might this be the case?
It could be that the standards of applications are better from Independent Schools (and selective schools), in fact this is quite likely given that such institutions are university factories, unlike comprehensive.
However, it might also just be pure class-bias, especially with the case of Oxbridge, where interviews and old-school tie connections might be significant enough to make the difference, given the relatively small numbers of applicants.
Possibly the best overall theory which explains this is ‘cultural capital‘ theory?
Sources/ Find out More
The Sutton Trust: Access to Advantage (full report)
Many sociologists argue that religious beliefs and organisations act as conservative forces and barriers to social change. For example, religious doctrines such as the Hindu belief in reincarnation or Christian teachings on the family have given religious justification to existing social structures.
Similarly, it is argued that religious organisations such as churches are often extremely wealthy and closely linked to elite groups and power structures.
Applying material from Item B and your knowledge, evaluate the view that religious beliefs and organisations are barriers to social change (20)
Suggested essay plan
Decode
The question asks for beliefs and organization, so deal with both.
Remember you should look at this in global perspective (it’s on the spec).
Remember to use the item. NB all of the material in item is covered in the plan below, all you would need to do in an essay is reference it!
Stay mainly focused on the arguments in the first section below.
Arguments and evidence for the view that religion is a barrier to social change
Functionalism
Parsons argued religions maintains social order: it promotes value consensus as many legal systems are based on religious morals.
It also maintains stability in times of social change (when individuals die), and helps people make sense of changes within society, thus helping prevent anomie/ chaos and potentially more disruptive change.
Marxism
Religion prevents change through ideological control and false consciousness. It teaches that inequality and injustice are God’s will and thus there is no point trying to change it.
Religion also prevents change by being the ‘opium of the masses’. It makes a virtue out of suffering, making people think they will be rewarded in the afterlife and that if they just put up with their misery now, they’ll get reward later,.
Feminism
Simone de Beauvoir – religion is used by men to justify their position of power, and to compensate women for their second-class status. It oppresses women in the same way Marx said it oppresses the proletariat.
The Church (typically a conservative force)
The church tends to be closely tied to existing political and economic power structures: the Church of England is closely tied to the state for example: the Queen is closely related and Bishops sit in the Lords. Also most members and attendees are middle class. It thus tends to resist radical social change.
World Accommodating and World Affirming NBMs
World Accommodating NRMs can help prevent change by helping members cope with their suffering in the day to day.
World Affirming Movements (such as TM) reinforce dominant values such as individualism and entrepeneurialism.
Arguments and evidence against the view that religion is a barrier to social change
Liberation Theology
Some Catholic priests in Latin America in the 70s took up the cause of landless peasants and criticized the inequalities in the region.
However, they were largely unsuccessful!
Max Weber
The protestant ethic gave rise to the spirit of Capitalism (Calvinism and Entrepreneurialism etc.)
Feminism
El Saadawi – It’s Patriarchy, not Islam that has oppressed women… but it is possible for women to fight back against it (as she herself does)
Carol P Christ – believes there are diverse ways to ‘knowing the Goddess’ and criticizes dualistic thinking and the idea that any religion can have a monopoly on truth
Some World Rejecting NRMs
E.G. The Nation of Islam have aimed to bring about radical social change
The New Age Movement
Encourages individualism and pick and mixing of different religions, so encourages diversity and hybrid religions to emerge.
Secularization
Means religion has less power in society, and thus is less able to act as a barrier to social change.
Thoughts on a conclusion
Make sure you distinguish between beliefs and organisations and types of social change
Signposting
Beliefs in Society is one of the options taught as part of A-level sociology, usually in the second year of study.
how many students study A-level sociology? What kinds of results do sociology students achieve?
How many students study A-level sociology in England?
In 2017, there were 32, 269 entries to the A-level sociology exam, up from 26, 321 entries in 2008.
How does this compare to A-level entries overall?
Sociology has grown in popularity compared to the overall A-level numbers. Overall A-level numbers have increased less rapidly during the same period: from 760 881 in 2008 , to 828355 2017.
It’s probably worth noting that these recent trends actually have a longer history, and are shared by other ‘critical humanities subjects’ such as politics and psychology. Please see this post for a brief summary of some recent research findings from the British Sociological Association on this topic.
What kind of people study A-level sociology?
Research suggests that sociology students are significantly more awesome than students who mistakenly choose not to study sociology. There’s no actual data to back this up, but that’s what the available evidence suggests.
Girls (sorry, ‘young women’) are also more likely to study sociology than boys…. approximately 77% of students studying sociology in 2017 were female, and the proportion of girls to boys has actually increased the last decade.
This means that if you’re a straight lad, and you’re relatively nice and mature, then you’ve got more chance of picking up a girlfriend in a sociology class than in pretty much any other subject!
What are my chances of getting an A* in Sociology?
Not great.
Overall, 4.7% of students achieved an A* in A-level sociology in 2017. 18% 43.8% got an B or above, and 72.9% got a C or above. The pass rate was 97.5%
How does this compare to other subjects?
It’s much harder to get an A* or an A in sociology compared to other subjects, a little bit harder to get a B, but your chances of ending up with a C-E grade are about the same as for other subjects.
Boys seem to do much worse than girls in sociology relative to other subjects, perhaps because they’re more distracted (by the girls?)
Where does this data come from?
The Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ) publishes all A and AS level results for all subjects. It show the results by cumulative and actual percentage per grade, broken down by gender.
Just in case you came here looking for information on ‘statistics’ you might like to check out my material on research methods – there’s some pretty good material if you follow the links, even if I do say so myself!
People(*) are more 10 times more interested in ‘how to get an A* or an A grade’ than in ‘how to get a B or C grade’…. at least according to the following comparison of Google searches between April 2017 and March 2018 (I’m being a bit lazy here, sitting on a train trawling my drafts for an easy post!)
This is especially depressing since students are approximately 3* less likely to get an A/A* than they are a B/C grade….
So students may be ‘aiming high’, but most of them won’t get there!
(*I assume students, but I don’t know that for certain, because the above data tells us nothing about who is searching for such information!)
There’s been a 16% increase in A-Level Sociology Exam Entries between the 4 years 2014-2018, according to the latest data on GCSE, AS and A-level entries from Ofqual.
Here’s a print version of the stats in case the above isn’t that legible! (If it’s not, I might try and sort it out laters!).
What’s particularly encouraging about this is that this in the context of declining numbers of 17-18 year olds in the corresponding birth years stretching from 1996-2000, and the corresponding decrease in overall A-level entries.
It’s also interesting to note that more traditional subjects such as History and English are losing out to ‘newer’ more critical subjects such as Sociology. Psychology also saw a similar trend.
A few hints and tips on how I would have answered the crime and deviance with theory and methods exam, June 2018
Answers to the AQA’s A-level sociology crime with theory and methods exam, June 2018… Just a few thoughts to put students out of their misery. (Ideas my own, not endorsed by the AQA).
Please scroll down for links to other papers!
I won’t produce the exact questions below, just the gist…
Q01 – Outline two ways in which gender may influence the risk of being a victim of crime (4)
Difficulty – easy
Men and masculinity – aggressiveness, linked to higher levels male victims of street crime.
Women and domestic violence – linked to patriarchal norms, gender roles.
And then ideally explain how they differentially effect at least two ethnic groups.
Q02 – Three criticisms of the labelling theory of crime (6)
Difficulty – anywhere from easy to difficult…
If you’ve realised this is a ‘stock question’ that’s been waiting to happen for a while, easy, but if you’re not prepared…. it’s tricky to get beyond the ‘deterministic’ criticism.
If you scroll down to the bottom of my 2016 post on the labelling theory of crime, you’ll find five criticisms at the end of it!
Q03 – Analyse two reasons for social class differences in official crime statistics (10)
Difficulty – easy
The item clearly directs you to one application of labelling theory and one application of ‘underlying differences’.
Police and courts more likely to label wc/ Underclass behaviour as criminal – apply Cicourel. Contrast to white collar crime going unnoticed.
Greater motivation due to poverty (risk) and opportunity… link to left realism, opportunity structures.
Q04 Evaluate sociological contributions to our understanding of the relationship between the media and crime (30)
Difficulty – medium
Fair question, difficult/ niche topic.
The item directs you to relative deprivation and moral panics so you can apply strain theory, Marxism, and interactionism – quite easy.
Then New Media – so cyber crime maybe linked to postmodernism.
Of course, anyone whose done the media option will have an unfair advantage here. This is something of a problem, then again I can say the same about any of my students getting a question on globalisation and crime, given that they do the global development option.
Difficulty – easy
Q05 – Outline and explain two disadvantages of using laboratory experiments in sociological research (10)
The statistics above show that…
