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

Tony Sewell – explaining black boys’ underachievement

Tony Sewell suggested an anti-school culture may be responsible for the underachievement of black boys.

In this 1997 study Sewell argues that a culture of hyper-masculinity ascribed to by some (but not all) black boys is one of the main factors explaining the educational underachievement of black boys. This study is an interested counter point to previous studies such as those by Cecile Wright and David Gilborn which emphasised negative teacher labelling as the main explanation for differential achievement by ethnicity.

For an overview of the other in-school factors that explain educational achievement by ethnicity, please see this post.

Dr. Tony Sewell CBE

Street culture and black masculinity

A relatively high proportion of Black Caribbean boys are raised in lone-mother household, with the father being absent. In the late 1990s when Sewell conducted his study, 57% of Black Caribbean families with dependent children were headed by a single parent, compared to only 25% of white families.

This means that many black boys lack a father figure to act as a role model and provide discipline while they are growing up, which makes this group more vulnerable to peer pressure.

Young black men are disproportionately drawn into gang culture which emphasizes an aggressive, macho form of masculinity which emphasizes the use of violence as a means to gain respect, values materialist displays of wealth such as the latest street fashions and crime, rather than ‘hard work’ as a quick and easy (‘smart’) route to financial gain.

Do gang culture and hyper masculinity explain the underachievement of Black Caribbean boys?

According to Sewell, this subculture of black masculinity provides peer support which makes up for their sense of rejection by their absent fathers, and for the sense of racism and injustice they feel from wider society.

Black Masculunities in School

Sewell suggests that this type of black masculinity (what he calls ‘hyper-masculinity) comes into conflict with schools. It leads black boys to rejecting the authority of both the teachers and senior leaders and to them not taking school work seriously as this is seen as effeminate and a bit of a ‘mugs game’ compared to the ease with which you can earn money by committing gang related crime.

Conformists – 41% who rejected hyper-masculinity and saw conforming to school rules and hard work as their route to success

Innovators – 35% who saw education as important but rejected the process of formal schooling as it compromised their identity too much. However, they attempted to stay out of trouble.

Retreatists – 6% of students who kept to themselves, mainly SEN students

Rebels – 18% who rejected the norms and values of school and the importance of education. They saw educational qualifications as having no value because Racism in society would disqualify them from many decent jobs anyway. This is the group which adopted hyper-masculinity and were confrontational and challenging.

Evaluation of Sewell

Sewell has been criticised for blaming black culture for black underachievement, however, he is clear that he is only talking about a minority of boys who adopt hyper-black masculinity.

if you look at the percentages above – only 40% of black boys are conformists, so if we take the other three categories together, there is maybe some evidence here that it’s hyper-masculine identities which are holding black Caribbean boys back.

The study may not apply as much today because fewer Black-Caribbean children are brought up in Lone Parent Households in 2023 compared to when Sewell conducted his research.

One might also criticise Sewell for stereotyping black culture. There really isn’t just one type of black culture, and it’s unlikely that an anti-school street culture was ever that strong among black boys, and less so today than 20 years ago.

I also wonder whether or not Sewell’s work really gets to the root of the problem – Class inequality! Summer schools for black boys funded by charities cannot compete with the advantages the upper middle classes give to their children by sending them to £16000/ year prep. Schools such as Sunningdale. Also, Even if you provide fair and equal opportunities for black boys surely Racism in wider society will still disadvantage them as a group compared to white boys?

NB despite the limitations of Sewell’s analysis the government awarded him a CBE and made him the Chair of the Commission on RacE and Ethnic Disparities. Although some may argue this is just because the government doesn’t take the issue of race discrimination in the U.K. seriously, hence their choice to pick someone who basically blames Black boys and their absent fathers for their own failure.

Sewell’s Solution to the underachievement of Black Boys

Sewell’s argues that the solution to black boys underachievement is to provide them with strict schooling that demands high expectations and, as far as is possible, provide them with positive opportunities that middle class students get through their social and cultural capital that middle class students ; effectively he says that if we do this, then this should make up for the disadvantageous they underachieving boys face. Importantly, Sewell, does not seem to accept that disadvantage is an excuse for failure.

Sewell runs the ‘generating genius’ programme – aimed at improving the educational opportunities of disadvantaged students –

Details of Sewell’s  Experiment –  ‘Generating Genius Programme  -how to raise black boys’ achievement
The aim of generating genius was to get 25 black boys, all from failing schools, interested in science and engineering. Starting in 2006, at age 12-13, these boys spent three or more weeks of their summer vacation working alongside scientists at some of Britain’s top universities, such as Imperial College. Sewell claims that these boys got amazing GCSE results, and now that the first wave have had their university acceptances, at least 3 have made it into Oxford and Cambridge.

Sewell argued that Generating Genius worked because it established the right ethos and high expectations – which effectively combated the disadvantages that his students black boys faced – They also created a ‘science crew’ or a learning crew’ – imitating gang mentality (relevant for boys!) and exposing these children to universities at an early age – made them think ‘university is for me!’ and provided the contacts necessary to get them into those unis.

Limitations to Generating Genius

There are lots of limitations to this’ experiment’ – just a few include –

  1. Lacks representativeness – very small sample of ten boys!
  2. Lack of control of variables means we don’t actually know why the boys improved so much – was it due to the contacts, or did they try harder because this was a unique project and thus they felt ‘very special’? (a problem of reliability)
  3. Ignores white working class underachievement (worse than A-C working class!)
Signposting

This material is primarily relevant to the education option, usually taught as part of the first year in A-level Sociology.

Sources

Sewell, T (1997) Black Masculinities and Schooling: How Black Boys Survive Modern Schooling

Adapted from Haralambos and Holborn (2013) Sociology Themes and Perspectives, edition 8.

The Myth of the American Dream

Part of the traditional American Dream is that anyone, even children from low income families, can work their way through college, get a degree and be upwardly mobile.

However, some recent research suggests that this is no longer the case – a full 50% of American university students from disadvantaged backgrounds drop out of college, and the main reason is because financial constraints means they cannot afford to pay the bills.

Sara Goldrick-Rab conducted a longitudinal study of 3,000 disadvantaged young adults attending various universities in the state of Wisconsin, USA (commenced in 2008), and some of her main findings include:

  • 50% of students from low-income households drop out of college and thus end up with college degree.
  • The experience of university is, for many poor students, quite grim – 24% of students in her study had problems with basic food security, and 13% were homeless.
  • They controlled for the amount of effort students put into their studies – and found that students did not drop out because of lack of effort, but the main reason was literally not being able to pay the bills.
  • Less than 20% of the sample managed to complete a degree within five years.

Goldrick-Rab also argues that there are clear ‘structural’ reasons why poor students cannot afford college:

  • Financial assistance (in the form of the Pell grant) is available to those from households which earn less than $30K a year, but this only covers a third of the cost of college (it used to cover the full amount, but it no longer does)
  • Job opportunities are insufficient to make up the difference – there are too few jobs, employers offer too few hours (they limit hours to avoid having to pay certain in-work benefits) and wages are too low – thus half of all poor students simply can’t earn enough to pay the rent or for food.

Goldrick-Rab concludes that low-income American families are being sold a ‘myth’ – the ‘myth of the American Dream that it is possible to be upwardly mobile by working your way through college – for 50% of poor students attempting to do so will result in no degree and a lot of debt.  They thus have an expectation which is not going to be met.

However, many families and students feel that it is there fault if they fail to complete, and feel a sense of guilt and shame if they do so.

Goldrick-Rab hopes that her research will act as a wakeup call, alerting people to the statistical facts that you only have a 50-50 chance of getting a degree if you’re poor.

She rounds off by suggesting a policy solution – to make the first two years of college free. Interestingly (which dates the research!) she talks hopefully about Obama and Hilary Clinton putting such policies into practice, but given that we’ve ended up with a Trump administration, it’s unlikely that poor kids are going to get access to fairer opportunities any time soon.

Applications/ Relevance

Sources 

Analysis of The Government’s 2014 Report on White Working Class Underachievement

White working class underachievement is persistent and real, but contemporary government reports are potentially biased in that they might fail to take seriously critical (left wing) analysis of issues such as this. Students might like to read the summary below, and check out the actual full report and consider whether or not this report provides a full picture of the causes of white working class underachievement, or whether its agenda is limited by ideological (neoliberal) bias…

A summary and sociological analysis of a recent government report on white working class underachievement….

Summary of the Government Report on White Working Class Underachievement

The summary below is taken from the House of Commons
Education Committee on Underachievement in Education by White Working Class Children, First Report of Session 2014-15

educational underachievement sociology government reportThe possible causes and contributors to white working class underachievement are many and various, and include matters in home life, school practices, and wider social policies. We received evidence on a broad range of policy areas and relevant factors, many of which fell outside education policy. Our report holds a mirror up to the situation—it does not attempt to solve the problem on its own—but it is clear that schools can and do make a dramatic difference to the educational outcomes of poor children. Twice the proportion of poor children attending an outstanding school will leave with five good GCSEs when compared with the lowest rated schools, whereas the proportion of non-FSM children achieving this benchmark in outstanding schools is only 1.5 times greater than in those rated as inadequate. Ofsted’s inspection focus on performance gaps for deprived groups will encourage schools to concentrate on this issue, including those that aspire to an “outstanding” rating.

Our inquiry focused on pupils who are eligible for free school meals, but there are many pupils just outside this group whose performance is low, and it is known that economic deprivation has an impact on educational performance at all levels. Data from a range of Departments could be combined in future to develop a more rounded indicator of a child’s socio-economic status and used to allocate funding for disadvantaged groups. The improvement in outcomes for other ethnic groups over time gives us cause for optimism that improvements can be made, but not through a national strategy or a prescribed set of sub-regional challenges. Schools need to work together to tackle problems in their local context, and need to be encouraged to share good practice in relevant areas, such as providing space to complete homework and reducing absence from school.

Policies such as the pupil premium and the introduction of the Progress 8 metric are to be welcomed as measures that could improve the performance of white working class children and increase attention on this group. Alongside the EEF “toolkit”, our recommendation for an annual report from Ofsted on how the pupil premium is being used will ensure that suitable information on how this extra funding is being used.

An updated good practice report from Ofsted on tackling white working class underachievement would also help schools to focus their efforts. Meanwhile, further work is needed on the role of parental engagement, particularly in the context of early years.

The Government should also maintain its focus on getting the best teachers to the areas that need them most, and should give more thought to the incentives that drive where teachers choose to work. Within a school, the best teachers should be deployed where they can make most difference. Schools face a battle for resources and talent, and those serving poor white communities need a better chance of winning. White working class children can achieve in education, and the Government must take these steps to ensure that that they do.

Analysis

While the summary recognises that a number of factors contribute to white working class underachievement, including policy and home based factors it basically (obviously?) ends up concluding that the problem can be fixed by individual teachers and schools within the existing system, without making any major changes to the current system.

The evidence cited to support this view is that ethnic minorities from poor backgrounds do not significantly underachieve compared to their richer peers (the message being ‘if they can do it, so can poor white kids); and the fact that ‘schools can and do make a difference’.

The suggested strategies to improve the standards of white working class kids include:

  • Schools dealing with the issues in their local contexts (fair enough I guess)
  • Schools ‘sharing best practice’
  • Getting the best teachers to where they are needed the most – which mainly means coastal areas (although there is no mention of how to do this)
  • Yet more monitoring by OFSTED (into how the Pupil Premium is being used)
  • Doing more research on how to engage parents, implying that they are somehow to blame.

What is NOT considered is the broader social and cultural inequalities in the UK and the possibility (some may say FACT) that the education system is actually run by and for the middle classes and white working class kids just see it as ‘not for them’, as this research by Garth Sthal suggests:

(source: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/neoliberal-prerogatives-and-contextualizing-white-working-class-underachievement/)

Garth Stahl worked as an educator in predominantly white working-class and boy heavy schools in London for nine years and recently spent one year researching the educational experiences and aspirations of 23 white working-class boys in order to better understand how they came to understand the educational provision provided to them.

He argues that white working-class underachievement is symptomatic of a much larger social, cultural and economic inequality, which plagues the British education system, in which pupils’ performance has an extraordinarily strong positive association with social class.

A summary of his research is as follows:

  1. Schools negatively label white working class boys as ‘lacking in aspiration’ and write many of them off before the enter the school building, putting them in lowest sets and paying less attention to them, as they believe they have no chance of achieving 5 A-Cs.
  2. White working class boys are well aware of how they are negatively labelled in educational environments, and the poor quality of education they are receiving, and also the constraints of their social class position.
  3. In response, they often excluded themselves from the school’s neoliberal “aspirations” agenda of university entrance and social mobility
  4. They preferred employment that was ‘respectable working-class’ such as trade work which they considered for “the likes of them” and where they would feel comfortable.
  5. The boys were also haunted by a fear of academic failure – they realised that they would be blamed for their failure and thus be made to feel a sense of shame because it (Even though deep down they knew they had less chance of succeeding than their middle class peers).
  6. On the other hand, they also feared academic success. Good exam results would mean pressure to further their education, and to enter into areas that felt foreign, such as university, where they potentially would be made to feel uncomfortable.

Application and Relevance

Taken together these two items show how research which implies that we need system-level change will not be considered in government education policy – and serves to show up the bias and limitations of government reports which feed into social policy.

The Education System in England and Wales

An introduction to the key features of the UK education system, including details of the Department for Education, OFSTED, key stages, exams, the National Curriculum, and some straightforward definitions of the different types of school in the UK.

I wrote this post to give students studying A-level sociology a more focused intro the topic than the Wikipedia entry on education in the UK, which IMO is a bit too formal, and not focused enough on the things people actually want to know about!

This post mainly deals with education in England, I’ll update with a focus on Wales and Scotland as and when I can…

Education in the United Kingdom is overseen by the Department for Education (DfE), which oversees the delivery of education to almost 12 million pupils aged 5-18 in 21 000 state primary schools, 4100 state secondary schools, as well as hundreds of further education colleges, with a total budget of £84 billion in 2015-16.

The DFE works with a further 17 agencies or public bodies, the most well-known of which is probably OFSTED, which has the responsibility for inspecting schools on a regular basis.

Local government authorities (LEAs) are responsible for state-funded schools and colleges at a local level, but in recent years most LEA schools have converted to Academy status which means they are free from local education control and receive their funding directly from central government and do not have to follow the National Curriculum.

There are five stages of education

  • Early Years Foundation Stage (ages 3–5)
  • Primary education (ages 5 to 11)
  • Secondary education (ages 11 to 16)
  • Further education (ages 16 to 18)
  • Tertiary education (for ages 18+).

School Leaving Age

Full-time education is compulsory for all children aged 5 to 18, either at school or otherwise. Children between the ages of 3 and 5 are entitled to 600 hours per year of optional, state-funded, pre-school education. This can be provided in “playgroups”, nurseries, community childcare centres or nursery classes in schools.

Students can leave school at 16 but must then do one of the following until they are 18:

  • stay in full-time education, for example at a college
  • start an apprenticeship or traineeship
  • spend 20 hours or more a week working or volunteering, while in part-time education or training

The National Curriculum

The national curriculum is a set of subjects and standards used by primary and secondary schools so children learn the same things. It covers what subjects are taught and the standards children should reach in each subject.

Academies and private schools don’t have to follow the national curriculum. Academies must teach a broad and balanced curriculum including English, maths and science. They must also teach religious education.

Key Stages, and National Assessments/ Exams

The national curriculum is organized into blocks of years called ‘key stages’ (KS). At the end of each key stage, there are formal assessments of how children have progressed:

Key Stages of UK Education

The General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE)

GCSEs are the main type of exam taken by pupils at the end of secondary education, aged 16, although they may be taken at any age. From 2017, GCSEs will be graded from 9 to 1 with 9 being the highest grade, replacing the old A* to G grading system)

BTECs can also be taken. The difference between BTECs and GCSEs is that the BTEC course is heavily coursework-based.

Most students will sit 8-10 GCSEs or BTEC equivalents.

There are a number of GCSEs available to students – English and Maths are both compulsory, but besides those students can choose from a range of science and humanities subjects, including sociology!

Achieving five or more A*–C grades, including English and Maths, is often a requirement for taking A-levels and BTEC Level 3 at a sixth form college or at a further education college after leaving secondary school.

Types of State-Funded School in England and Wales

The main types of state school include:

Local Education Authority Maintained schools

A local education authority maintained school is one in which the governing body (the head teacher, and governors) are responsible for the day to day running of the school, but the Local Education authority controls the following:

  • It owns the land and buildings, and is responsible for funding and the school.
  • It employs the staff and provides support services, for example, psychological services and special educational needs services.
  • It determines the admissions policies of the school
  • The pupils have to follow the national curriculum

(Voluntary aided) Faith Schools

Voluntary aided faith schools still follow the national curriculum, but they are free to teach what they want in terms of religious education. There are two important differences with regular LEA schools.

  • The land and buildings are usually owned by the religious organisation.
  • The religious organization, through the governing body, has more of a say in employing the staff and setting admissions criteria.

Academies

Academies receive their funding directly from the government, rather than through local authorities. In contrast to Local Education Authorities:

  • Funding goes directly to the governing body of the school from central government.
  • The governing body employs staff directly and can vary pay and conditions from staff member to staff member.
  • The governing body can select its own admissions criteria (in line with national guidelines)
  • The pupils do not have to follow the national curriculum

There are two types of academy: Converter academies – those deemed to be performing well that have converted to academy status; Sponsored academies – mostly underperforming schools changing to academy status and run by sponsors).

Free Schools:

Free schools are essentially a type of academy, but ‘any willing provider’ can set up a free school, including groups of parents.

Grammar Schools:

Grammar Schools are selective schools – they select pupils on the basis of academic ability, typically testing at the age of 10 or 11.

Independent schools

93% of schools in England are funded by state (ultimately paid for by the taxpayer), the remaining 7% are Independent, or private schools, funded privately by individuals, mainly by fees paid by the parents of the pupils who attend them.

Independent schools have more freedoms from government control than state schools.

Somewhat confusingly, some independent schools call themselves ‘grammar schools’ and ‘faith schools’.

Signposting

This was a brief post designed to provide some introductory material on the education system of the United Kingdom, for students studying A-level sociology.

I teach this material as part of an introduction to education, right at the beginning of the sociology of education (SCLY1) module, typically taught in the first year of study.

A related post to be studied alongside this is Education in the U.K. – Key statistics

Please click here to return to the homepage – ReviseSociology.com

Sources/ Find out More

Citizens Advice – Types of School

Full Fact – Academies – what do we know?

Government Web Site – Faith Schools.

Bowles and Gintis: The Correspondence Principle

School corresponds to work: both are hierarchical, both require passive pupils/ workers and both are motivated by external rewards.

Marxists sociologists Bowles and Gintis (1976) argue that the main function of education in capitalist societies is the reproduction of labour power.

They see the education system as being subservient to and performing functions for the Bourgeoisie, the capitalist class who own the means of production: the Bourgeoisie require a workforce that is hardworking, accepts authority, and who won’t kick up a fuss if they are exploited, and the main function of school in capitalist societies is to indoctrinate children into these norms and values.

The education system does this through the hidden curriculum – which consists of the things pupils learn through the experience of attending school, rather than the stated education objectives in the ‘formal curriculum’.

Bowles and Gintis: the correspondence principle

The correspondence theory is the idea that the norms and values pupils learn in school correspond to the norms and values which will make it easy for future capitalist employers to exploit them at work.

Correspondence Principle

Bowles and Gintis say that ‘work casts a long shadow over school’.

There are four ways in which the norms and values of school correspond to the required norms and values of work in capitalist society:

Schools produce a subservient workforce

School produces a mass of uncritical, passive and docile workers, perfectly suited to drudge labour in factories.

In a study based on 237 members of the senior year of a New York high school, Bowles and Gintis found that the grades awarded related more to personality traits rather than academic ability: low grades were related to creativity, aggressiveness and independence, while higher grades were related to perseverance, consistency and punctuality.

The education system was creating an unimaginative and unquestioning workforce through rewarding such traits.

Schools encourage acceptance of hierarchy and authority

Schools are hierarchical organisations – pupils have little say over what they learn, or how the school day is organised, and in day to day life, pupils are expected to obey the authority of the teachers. Later on at work, workers are expected to obey the authority of managers.

Motivation by External Rewards

This is where pupils are taught to be motivated by the qualifications they will receive at the end of school, rather than the ‘joy of learning’ itself, while at work, workers are motivated by the wage packet at the end of the month rather than ‘the joy of working’ itself.

This is probably the most important aspect of the correspondence principle:

In Marxist theory, if people have control over it,  work is actually enjoyable: many people engage in ‘work’ as part of their hobbies: if left to their own devices, people will naturally engage in work because it gives them a sense of satisfaction: as an example think of a car-fanatic who will happily spend hours putting together a car engine, or the whole car itself in his garage, or an allotment owner who will do the same when ‘growing their own’ – if people control the whole process of work, and can ‘see themselves’ in it, they will happily work, even for no pay.

However, work in capitalists societies becomes alienating and exploitative – Capitalists require workers to be like machines, working as part of a ‘production line’ for example, because this means production is more efficient and their profits are thus greater – so rather than individuals or small groups of individuals each setting up their own garages to make cars, or small scale farms growing food for a few dozen people, work becomes larger scale, organised into massive factories, and workers become part of the ‘machine’ of production, where the worker has no control, and work is repetitive and dull. In this industrial-capitalist system of work, workers have no intrinsic motivation to work, they need to be motivated externally, by wages.

Because this is such an unnatural and miserable situation, there needs to be a long process of convincing people this is normal – which is where school comes in – school is about learning to put up with boring lessons, and the motivation for this is at the end – through the qualifications.

Thus capitalism requires school to teach people to not be inquisitive, to just ‘learn what I tell you to learn’ and put up with boredom, to work hard now (study) in order to achieve the grades at the end of the year… there is no reward in education for those ‘doing their own thing’, because this is not what future employers require.

The fragmentation of subjects at school

Learning at school is fragmented into different subjects, split up into maths, English, history, sciences, with lessons lasting only 45 minutes to an hour. Knowledge is thus fragmented into different academic subjects, rather than being holistic’.

This corresponds to the fragmentation of the workforce in later life – workers specialise in particular tasks in the office or the factory, without having an appreciation of the whole.

This fragmentation makes workers easier to control because they are divided, which makes it more difficult for them to unite and challenge their exploitative conditions.

Evaluations of Bowles and Gintis Correspondence Principle

The Correspondence Principle has been criticised for viewing students as passive sponges who just soak up the atmosphere of the school without thinking about it.

Paul Willis’ 1977 study Learning to Labour suggested that students were not passive. In his study of 12 working class lads he demonstrated that they actively rejected school rather than passively believing in authority. They actively resisted authority while at school by forming a counter school culture.

The theory is very much of its time, and almost 50 years old. It may have been relevant to an industrial society but today there are many fewer factory jobs and schools have changed hugely, so it may no longer be relevant to today’s more child-centred and entrepreneurial society.

Having said that, Ken Robinson’s TED talk about schools killing creativity seems to offer broad support for the idea that schools still don’t reward creative thinking even today!

Personally I think the idea of ‘motivation by external rewards’ has some relevance today. It does help to explain why so many people are prepared to put up with soul destroying jobs simply in return for the way, school maybe does help to prepare us for that?!?

Signposting and relevance to sociology

This material is mainly relevant to the compulsory education aspect of first year A-level sociology,

Education in the UK – Key Facts and Stats

Official Statistics on schools, teachers and educational achievement provided by the United Kingdom government provide an overview of the education system. They are useful for providing an ‘introduction to the state of education in the U.K’, before embarking on the core content of any sociology of education course and providing a basis for comparing the U.K. education system to the education systems of other countries, which would be relevant to the module on global development.

I will also provide a brief discussion of the validity and representativeness of the official statistics below, tying this into research methods.

I only deal with state-schools in this post, I’ll do a separate post in future on private, or independent schools in comparison to state schools.

Also, the post below deals primarily with England and Wales, I will add in details for Wales and Scotland when I can.

Education and Training Statistics UK 2020-21

Government spending on Education 2021-2

The government spent a total of £94.9 billion on education in 2020-21, equivalent to 4.5% of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Education and Training Statistics UK 2020-21

For 2020-21 expenditure per education sector broke down as follows:

  • Primary education expenditure – £27.3 billion
  • Secondary education expenditure – £40.0 billion
  • Tertiary education expenditure – £4.9 billion

Spending Per Pupil was £6500 in 2019-2020

The above chart, from the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows us education spending in real terms at 2019-2020 places. We can see that in real terms expenditure per pupil has decreased slightly since 2010, when New Labour left office and the Tories came to power.

There are 32, 163 schools in the U.K.

Education and Training Statistics UK 2020-21
  • There are almost 21000 primary schools
  • There are almost 4100 secondary schools

This means primary schools are lot smaller in scale in that each of them has, on average, fewer pupils in them, and should be more ‘locally based’ for most parents.

Secondary schools are a lot larger, will have many more pupils in them, have more of an ‘education factory’ feel to them and be more widely dispersed, meaning children will have to travel further to them.

This is despite the fact that there are more secondary school aged pupils compared to primary school aged pupils.

There were 10.5 million school pupils in England and Wales in 2020-2021

Education and Training Statistics UK 2020-21
  • There were 5.5 million secondary school pupils
  • There were 4.1 million primary aged pupils
  • This reflects recent demographic trends in the United Kingdom – a baby boom which started in the mid 2000s has seen an increase of 400 000 pupils in the school system as a whole (primary and secondary).

There were 11 600 pupils in Pupil Referral Units in 2021

The number of pupils in PRUs fell from over 15000 in 2015/16 to just just 11 000 by 2020/21

A total of 12.6% of pupils have Special Education Needs in 2021-2022

And four percent of these have a formal statement.

SEN Statistics, gov UK 2022

There has been a slight increase in the number of Special Education Needs pupils since 2015/ 16 – a 1% increase in all SEN pupils and a 1.2% increase in SEN pupils with statements.

I’ve left the following historical data in place following a recent update of this post (updated October 2022) as I think it demonstrates how such statistics in particular are socially constructed…

Between 2010 to 2015 the number of pupils with special educational needs fell from 21% to 15%

NB – if you read this in conjunction with the ‘types of school chart’ above, then it suggests that special educational needs (SEN) students are becoming increasingly segregated into special schools and/ or pupil referral units, rather than being dealt with in mainstream secondary schools.

You might also want to think about the extent to which ‘Special Educational Needs’ and ‘Special Educational Needs with statements’ are socially constructed.

Looking back at 2007, 20% of pupils were officially characterised as SEN, but by 2021 this had fallen to 12.6%.

According to labelling theory this is more likely to be because the formal criteria and processes according to which pupils are given the SEN label have changed over the past 15 years, rather than any underlying changes in the actual number of pupils with Special Educational needs.

At the end of 2020 the proportion of 16-18 year olds in education and work-based learning was 81.2%

Education and Training Statistics

This proportion has been stable (around the 80% mark) since at least 2015.

  • At age 17 the rate was 90.5%.
  • At age 18 it was 62.3% (almost 30% are in work with just under 10% being classified as NEET )
  • Overall only 6.4% of 16-18 year olds are classified as NEET (Not in Employment, Education or Training.

11% of 16-24 year olds classify as NEET

Young People Not in Education, Employment or Training.

NEET stands for ‘Not in Education, Employment or Training’ and the government keeps records of the proportion of 16-14 year olds which fit into this category.

The medium term trend in NEETs is that the proportion has fallen from 16% of 16-24 year olds in 2013 down to 11% in 2017.

The NEET figure has been relatively stable for the last five years, holding at around 11% up until today in 2022.

There were 2.4 million students in UK Higher Education Institutions in 2019-2020

Higher Education Facts and Figures

The number of full time equivalent students studying their first degrees or post graduate degrees has been increasing steadily over the past few years.

Around 1.9 million students are studying undergraduate degrees or equivalent while 0.5 million are studying towards a Postgraduate degree.

The vast majority of students studying towards their first degree are British, almost 80% in fact, but around 40% of students studying PostGraduate degrees in UK institutions are from abroad, and most of those from outside the UK!

There were 465000 Teachers (FTE) in the UK in 2021/22

  • There were 465 000 Full Time Equivalent (FTE) teachers employed in England and Wales in 2021/22.
  • There were 503 000 Full Time Equivalent support staff
  • The total FTE number of staff employed in schools in 2021/22 was 968 000.

30% of teachers drop out after 5 years of qualifying

  • 12.5% of teachers drop out after just one year of qualifying
  • Just over 30% drop out within five years.

How useful are these education statistics?

Such statistics are a useful starting point if we wish to make cross-national comparisons between the U.K. education system and the rest of the world, which would be useful for students of global development, given that education plays a key role in development. Indeed if we wish to compare the relationship between education and development in several countries, statistical rather than qualitative comparisons may be the only way of doing so.

From an arrogant, modernisation theory perspective, these statistics provide an indication of the level of investment required in terms of expenditure and teachers, and the types of outcome that less developed countries should be aiming for.

Most of the education statistics above count as ‘hard statistics’, i.e. there’s little room for disagreement over the ‘social facts’ which they show – for example, it’s hard to argue with the stats on ‘number of schools’ and ‘number of qualified teachers’.

However, others are much softer, and have more validity problems, and can be criticised for being social constructions rather than reflecting underlying reality: the statistics on special educational needs clearly come under this category – there is simply no way the underlying numbers of students with ‘SEN’ have decline from 21 to 15% in 5 years while the number of certificated SEN kids have increased – what’s really happened is that the number of kids which schools categorise as having Special Education Needs has decreased in the last 5 years, probably because the Tory’s cut previously existing funding for this category of student in 2010 (ish).

Signposting and Related Posts

As mentioned above this is introductory material for the education topic. For more posts covering theories of education, education policies and educational inequalities by class, gender and ethnicity, please see my sociology of education page.

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Links to statistics on education in the United Kingdom:

Most of the statistical sets below are updated yearly, or more frequently.

Education and Training Statistics for the U.K. – published by the department for education. In this source you’ll find data on the number of schools, teachers, and teacher-pupil ratios as well as basic educational achievement data by Free School Meals, gender and ethnicity. Published annually in November.

Schools, Pupils and their Characteristics – includes data on pupils in England by PRU, FSM and Ethnicity status.

School Workforce in England – covers teacher numbers and pupil-teacher ratios in primary and secondary schools in England and Wales. The latest figures from November 2021.

Special Education Needs in England – details of children with special education needs, by type of need, and broken down by school type and gender (statistics derived from the ‘schools census’).

Participation in Education, Training and Employment by 16-18 year olds in England: End 2015 – produced by the DFS focusing on 16-18 education and training.

Young People Not in Education or Training – published in August 2022.

The Higher Education Statistics Agency – or HESA for short – collects data on university figures and publishes them online in a very accessible way!

The Institute for Fiscal Studies – section on trends in government expenditure on education

The Association of Colleges produces a useful document of infographics focusing on colleges – ‘Key Further Education Statistics’

Education in America

Key statistics on education in America, and the key features of the American education system including primary, secondary and tertiary education, the national curriculum and the examinations system.

This is part of a new set of posts designed to help students assess how developed countries are in terms of some of the key indicators of development such as economics, inequality, education, health, gender equality, peacefulness and so on…

America is an interesting case study because it is the wealthiest nation on earth in terms of total GDP, and very wealthy in terms of GNI per capita, but these high levels of wealth and income do not translate into social development for all.

This is a summary post at first, to be expanded on later…

America: Key Education Statistics

Core education statistics taken from World Bank data 

  • Pre-primary net enrollment rate – 63.8%
  • Primary enrollment rate – 93.1%
  • Secondary enrollment rate -90.5%
  • Tertiary enrollment rate – 86.7%
  • Out of school children – 1.5 million !
  • Government expenditure on education as percentage of GDP – 5.2%.

Education stats taken from other sources

Pisa Rankings (2015)

  • Science – 24th
  • Maths – 25th
  • Reading – 39th

Key Features of the American Education System 

Kindergarten, Primary, and Secondary Education in America

Schooling is compulsory for all children in the United States, with every child being entitled to a minimum of 12 years publicly funded education. Some states add on an additional year of pre-primary ‘Kindergarten) education, and the school leaving age also varies from state to state: some states allow students to leave school between 14–17 with parental permission, other states require students to stay in school until age 18.

American education

Children attend primary school from the ages of 6-11 where they are taught basic subjects, typically in a diverse, mixed ability class, with one teacher.

Children attend secondary school from the ages of 12-17, which is subdivided into junior high-school and senior high school. Here students are typically taught in different classes for different subjects and are allowed some degree of freedom to choose ‘elective subjects’.

While there is no overarching national curriculum, education in secondary school generally consists of 2–4 years of each of science, Mathematics, English, Social sciences, Physical education; some years of a foreign language and some form of art education, as well as the usual PSHE.

Many high schools provide ‘Honors classes’ for the more academically able during the 11th or 12th grade of high school and/ or offer the International Baccalaureate (IB).

The National (And Hidden) Curriculum

While there isn’t a national curriculum in America, there are some very detailed national common core standards in subject areas such as English and Maths – so why schools aren’t told what books they should actually get students to read, or how to teach maths, the standards dictate that they must spend a certain amount of time teaching these and other subjects…. When I say detailed, they really are – the standards on English stretch to over 60 pages.

In terms of the Hidden Curriculum – 50% of schools require their students to pledge allegiance as part of their daily routine, which I guess is an attempt to enforce a sense of national identity.

If you’re American I imagine this gives you a warm glowing feeling, if you’re not you’re probably fluctuating between an uncomfortable feeling of nausea and wondering WTF this has got to do with ‘liberty’. NB note the doting parents looking on, and that YouTube is full of this sort of thing.  

 

Differential Educational Achievement in America

The education system clearly doesn’t work for everyone equally – around 3 million students between the ages of 16 and 24 drop out of high school each year, a rate of 6.6 percent as of 2012.

Unsurprisingly, there are considerable ethnic differences in educational achievement in America, as this data from 2009 suggests:

ethnicity education America

 

Sources (those not included in links above!)

Wikipedia entry – Education in the United States

An overview of American education

How I would’ve answered the AQA A level sociology of education exam, June 2017

Answers to the AQA’s A-level sociology education with theory and methods exam, June 2017… Just a few thoughts to put students out of their misery. (Ideas my own, not endorsed by the AQA – NB – there is a certain level of subjectivity and irrationality within the AQA, and so they may interpret how you answer questions  to my (rational) interpretation below… )

Sociology A-level Paper 1: Education with Theory and Methods, 2017 

Q01 – Outline two cultural factors that may effect ethnic differences in educational achievement (2 marks)

Difficulty – very easy

Simply pick any two cultural factors and explain how….

  • language barriers
  • parental attitudes towards education (values)
  • parental educational levels
  • family structure

And then ideally explain how they differentially effect at least two ethnic groups. 

Q02 – Outline three ways in which factors within schools may shape gender differences in education (6 marks)

Difficulty – if you’ve just wrote-learnt the ancient Anne Colley etc. stuff then easy, if you didn’t then it’s medium because it’s quite a narrow subject (NB I did anticipate this narrowness!)

Select three in-school factors then explain how…

  • subject counsellors/ teachers labels about typical boys and girls subjects
  • male and female peer groups – peer pressure
  • male dominance ‘physical subjects’
  • Gendered subject images/ resources

Then talk it through with ideally three example of different subjects, discussing both boys and girls.

Q03 – Applying material from Item A, analyse two effects of increased parental choice on pupils’ experience of education

Difficulty – it appears hard, because you think ‘WTF’ but if you think about it, and use the item, it’s easy, because you can talk about pretty much anything from across class, gender and/ or ethnicity. So I’m going to call this ‘medium’ level of difficulty, as it’s half way between the two!

NB – There are really only two hooks here – in bold below…

Point one – ‘parental choice has led to a range of school types’ this means a greater diversity of experience….. contrast different experience of school types – succeeding schools/ sink schools, you could contrast and discuss ethos/ hidden curriculum, you could bring in faith schools and ethnicity, you could bring in specialist schools, free schools, no national curriculum, link all this to postmodernism. Criticse by saying there are still general similarities – e.g. testing/ pressure/ narrowing of curriculum.

Point two parents use league tables to choose – schools want to attract pupils this means more emphasis on results, teaching to the test, the school-parent alliance, cream skimming, working class covert exclusion – selection by mortgage.. just be careful to relate all of this to ‘experience of education’.

Q04 Applying material from Item B and your knowledge, evaluate sociological explanations of the role of education in transmitting ideas and values (30)

Difficulty – medium – this is basically a perspectives question, but the item demands that you address Feminism and PM

Intro – acknowledge the item

P1 – Functionalism (recognise it’s old) and evaluate with P/M.

P2 – Marxism – the stuff about ideology (‘ideas’) – evaluate using P/M

P3 – Feminism – evaluate with ‘girls are improving’, NB – the subject choice stuff from Q2 could be lifted in here to support the view in the item. (Actually quite bad exam design here , mr AQA!)

p4 – Postmodernism – fragmentation, diversity – evaluate with maybe NC/ teaching to the test (which also overlaps with Q3)

Conclusion – something like, oh my lord yes those old perspectives are really dated and we need to recognise education is diverse and complex…

Q05 – Using material from item C and your knowledge of research methods, evaluate the strengths and limitations of using field experiments to investigate the effects of teachers’ labelling of pupils

Difficulty – Medium, because it’s a fairly obscure method, but then again it’s applied to a very obvious topic – you can use R and J’s 1968 labelling experiment throughout (and the item!)

An obvious ‘easy in’ is that you have to be in the school in some way to conduct a field experiment. Lots of level 4 marks available right here.

I’d start with the Theoretical, practical and ethical strengths of the method, always applying to the topic, then do the limitations, the hooks in the item are asking you look at truancy and misbehaviour… you could also address performance… I’d pick up on the fact that truancy is easier to measure than misbehaviour…

The last point in the item is about people refusing to participate, which is just begging you discuss covert research to avoid this, then a whole load of practical and ethical problems which come from doing this IN SCHOOLS.

06 – Outline and explain two practical advantages of using documents in sociological research

Difficulty – Hard, because your average teenager just couldn’t care less about it!

The strategy I’d use here is to pick two different practical disadvantages and then discuss why they’re problematic for different types of public and private documents…

Practical factors include..

  • Access (the obvious one)
  • Time/ money
  • Funding
  • Personal skills of the researcher

Access should be easy – why you might find it difficult to access private documents – diaries/ letters, emails, link to ethics of using them, contrast to public documents.

Time/ money – there’s so many of them, such a diversity – it’s a never ending (time consuming) process to analyse (for example) newspapers, media reports in any depth – then I’d link to problems of sampling/ length of time it take to analyse and so on…

Not an easy question to discuss through – For both points I’d also bang on about interpretivism and positivism as much as possible, talking about how practical problems can undermine validity, representativness, reliability, and use as many examples as possible…

Anyway, just a few thoughts, the last question is probably the most difficult on reflection…

A-Level Sociology Revision Bundle

Education Revision Bundle CoverIf you like this sort of thing, then you might like my sociology of education revision notes bundle – which contains the following:

  1. 34 pages of revision notes
  2. mind maps in pdf and png format – 9 in total, covering various topics within the sociology of education
  3. short answer exam practice questions and exemplar answers
  4. how to write sociology essays, including 7 specific templates and model answers on the sociology of education

How I Would’ve Answered Yesterday’s AS Sociology Exam Paper (7191/1 – Education)

A few thoughts on how the AQA’s 7191 (1) Education AS exam from May 2017 –

If any teacher finds this annoying because they like to keep these papers back for next year’s mock exam, forget it –

  • Any student can find out the questions on social media, very easily
  • The AQA seems to be publishing last years’ exam on their public access web site earlier, rather than keeping them secure.

You can easily just make up yr own exam papers and mark schemes using adobe editor. Also, I’m not giving the exact questions (well, with the exception of Q01) 

Question 01 – Define term hidden curriculum

Boom! Easy starter – in my 13 key concepts for the sociology of education

The norms and values taught at school which are not written down as part of the formal curriculum – for example the norm of respecting authority and being punctual.

Question 02 – Selection policies and social class

Covered here

Some oversubscribed schools select by catchment area – pupils have to live in a house within a certain distance from the school to stand a chance of getting in – this has resulted in covert selection by mortgage – house prices near the good schools increase and so poorer, working class families cannot afford to move into those areas, thus they have no real choice of getting into the best schools.

Question 03 – Three ways in which school mirrors capitalism

Classic Marxist correspondence theory: see here for three ways, explain school – work…

  • hierarchy
  • authority
  • motivation by external rewards
  • even the reproduction of class inequality 

Question 04 – Education policy and ethnic minorities’ experience of education 

Looks awful, but I’m assuming the policies don’t have to be about ethnicity in particular.

Policy 1 – Tony Sewell’s Generating Genius Programme – linked to positive aspirations for black boys, pro-school subcultures. 

Policy 2 – Banding and streaming – linked to institutional racism, Steve Strand, Gilborn and Youdell, educational triage. 

Question 05 – In school factors, the gender gap and educational achievement 

Simple really – It’s covered here and you could’ve bolstered it with this stuff

  • Point 1 – teacher labelling and evaluations 
  • Point 2 – Feminisation of teaching and evaluations
  • Point 3 – Subcultures – laddish ones obviously, also hyper-feminine and evaluations
  • Point 4 – Gender identities – I’d use sexual harassment of girls as an evaluation
  • Overall evaluations using out-of school factors and changing gender roles linked to in-school factors, probably concluding that schools really don’t change very much! 

Question 06 – Questionnaires and class differences in educational achievement.

It’s quite similar to this question here

My answer would have focused on the strengths of the method for making comparisons, and the ease of measuring material deprivation compared to the problems of measuring things like cultural deprivation and cultural capital and gaining access to working class parents. 

I would’ve covered all of Theoretical, ethical and practical of course. 

Interestingly the item didn’t give you very much….

You may have noticed that if you follow this blog, you can pretty much game the sociology exams just by memorizing the content. Personally I’ve no problem with this, being good at exams and being able to think sociologically are two different things, and one of these is a useful life-skill, the other isn’t!

Game on!

AQA AS Sociology Exam Paper 1 (7191/1) – Education and Methods in Context

An overview of the AS Sociology paper 7191 (1), and a few quick hints and tips on how to answer each of the questions…

You will be given a total of 90 minutes to answer this paper and is out of a total of 60 marks (this means 1.5 minutes per mark). There are a total of 6 questions, 5 on ‘pure education’ and 1 on ‘methods in context’.

This is a ‘write in ‘ paper – you get a booklet with the questions, and lined gaps after each question – write your answers in the gaps. If you need to use extra paper, put the question number you are adding to in the appropriate place.

The general structure of the paper is as follows:

  • Q01 – Define the term (2 marks)
  • Q02 – Using one example, briefly explain something (2 marks)
  • Q03 – Outline three ways/ factors/ criticisms (6 marks)
  • Q04 – Outline and explain two ways/ reasons/ criticisms (10 marks)
  • Q05 – Applying material from Item A and elsewhere, evaluate something to do with education (20 marks)
  • Q06 – Applying material from Item B and your knowledge of research methods, evaluate the strengths and limitations of using any of the main six research methods to research any issue in education (20 marks)

General hints and tips

Question 1 – define the concept and give an example. Even though it says define, it’s good practice to do this and then back it up with an example to show you understand it. NB – this could be any concept within education – sometimes they’re obscure, sometimes they’re easier – if it looks unfamiliar, don’t worry about it and just move onto the next questions. (A colleague of mine cynically refers to this question as ‘did you revise this concept the night before the exam? Yes – 2 marks, No – 0 marks)

Question 2 – Is a ‘1+1’ question which is asking you to do two things – firstly, explain how something affects else, and secondly. give an example.

Question 3 – is 3 lots of ‘1+1’ – make sure you explain HOW each point has an effect, or is affected by something. For example, if the question asks you to outline three ways in which cultural deprivation affects educational achievement – state three forms of CD and then explain how, explicitly, this affects educational achievement…

Question 4 – It’s good practice to try and pick 2 very different answers – from different parts of the education module. Explain and develop using perspectives/ research evidence.

Question 5 – You should be familiar with the essay structure – Intro – then PEEC – Overall evaluations, then conclusion. 4 points all internally evaluated. If in doubt, chuck the perspectives at it.

Question 6 – write it like a methods essay (theoretical, practical, ethical) and then chuck in a few topic links where you can – IMO you’ve very little to gain from thinking about this too much – most students just can’t do what the examiners want to get them into the top mark bands, and even if they do, there’s a risk the (underpaid) examiners will mis-read a top band answer as a mid-band answer – do a good methods essay with a few topi links and you’re pretty much guaranteed 13/20.

Finally, and this is very important, if one or more of the questions simply just don’t make sense, don’t panic, it happens, it’s not your fault – it’s the examiner-bots, their programmers haven’t quite perfected their algorithms yet, and they sometimes just chuck out nonsense. If that happens again this year, just look for the key words and write about the general topic area, and you’ll probably get some marks.

Related pages and posts…

For a more detailed look at mainly A-level exam information you might like some of the links on my ‘exams essays and short answer questions‘ page.

Very finally, if it all goes really pear-shaped, have a look at my alternative careers guidance – you don’t even need A levels to pursue these options!

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