The pluralist view of the media

media owners are driven by profit, journalists are free from direct control and audiences control content through consumer demand.

Pluralists argue that power in democratic, free market societies is spread out among diverse competing interest groups, and not concentrated in the hands of a minority economic elite, as Marxists suggests. According to pluralists media owners are driven by profit, and journalists are free from direct control, providing audiences with the content they want. They thus see media content as determined mainly by consumer demand.

Pluralism media sociology mind map .png

Media content driven by profit

Pluralists argue that in democratic, free market economies different media companies must compete for customers, and so they must provide the kind of content those customers want in order to make a profit and survive. If a company fails to provide the kind of news and entertainment that people need and want, customers will simply stop buying their media products and go elsewhere, forcing that company out of business.

It follows that control over media content ultimately lies with consumers, not the owners of media, because the owners need to adapt their content to fit the demands of the consumers.

Media owners primarily want to make money and so they would rather adapt their media content to be more diverse and keep money coming in, rather than use their media channels to publish their own narrower subjective views and opinions.

Media content thus doesn’t reflect the biased, one sided views of media owners, it reflects the diverse opinions of the general public who ultimately pay for that media content. The public (being diverse!) generally don’t want one-sided, biased media!

Consumers determine content

From the pluralist perspective audiences are active rather than passive and not easily manipulated. They are free to select, reject and re-interpret a wide range of media content, and they increasingly take advantage of new technologies and new media to produce their own content.

It is thus ultimately the consumers of media/ the wider audience who determine media content rather than the media owners.

Journalists not controlled by owners

Finally, pluralists point out that on a purely practical level media owners of large global corporations cannot personally determine the content of all their media products, there are too many products and too many global-level management issues to keep them occupied. Thus producers, editors and journalists have considerable freedom to shape media content, free from the control of the big bosses.

Supporting evidence for Pluralism

The strongest support for Pluralism is OFCOM’s research into viewing trends. The latest research from 2023 shows that viewing habits are more diverse and fragmented than ever.

Infographic showing the decline of broadcast TV in the UK 2021 to 2022.

Criticisms of Pluralism

  1. Ultimately it is still owners who have the power the hire and fire journalists and they do have the power to select high level editors who have similar views to themselves, which may subtly influence the media agenda.
  2. It still requires a lot of money to establish a large media company, and ownership remains very concentrated. There is relatively little journalism which is both independent and widely consumed.
  3. Owners, editors and most journalists share an upper middle-class background and a conservative worldview.
  4. The pressure to maintain profits has led to narrowing of media content – more towards uncritical, sensationalist entertainment and less likely to be critical and independent.

Signposting and related posts

This content has primarily been written for students of A-level media studies and those studying the media option as part of their A-level in Sociology.

To return to the homepage – revisesociology.com

The challenges of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Ebola recently resurfaced in Democratic Republic of Congo, and has now infected more than 2500 people in the Eastern part of the country, near the border with Uganda.

ebola congo 2019.PNG

Ebola is one of the world’s most infectious and deadliest diseases: as of 22nd July 2019 the World Health Organisation reported 2503 cases in this latest outbreak, with 1764 deaths. (Source: Relief Web).

The World Health Organisation first declared an Ebola outbreak in the DRC in August 2018, but the number of cases have increased dramatically since Spring of 2019. This is now the second largest Ebola outbreak after the 2014-16 epidemic in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, which killed 11, 300.

Health workers have a new vaccine which appears to work to deploy to help keep the disease under control but they face the following barriers to treating people:

  1. There is ongoing conflict in Eastern DRC. This extends to attacks on health care facilities – there have been around 200 such attacks reported which have killed 5 people.
  2. Local people are being displaced as a result of the conflict – at least 300 000 so far, and some of these are heading across the border to Uganda, where there have been some reported cases of Ebola.
  3. There is a local rumor that aid workers are actually infecting people with Ebola because they are ‘paid by the corpse’ – and in a country mired by corruption and conflict, I guess this sounds plausible.

It remains to be seen whether the Ebola outbreak can be kept under control: the ongoing conflict and local suspicions are certainly going to hamper efforts, and it seems aid agencies are going to have to spend a lot of time working with locals and building trust in order to keep things under control!

Relevance to A-level Sociology 

This recent tragedy should be of interest to any students studying the Global Development module in A-level sociology. The case of Ebola in the DRC illustrates the relationship between conflict and health problems and it also shows some of the local challenges Aid agencies face when trying to deliver emergency aid.

Additional Sources 

The Week, 29 June 2019

Does Prison Work? The Stats suggest not!

What can prison population statistics tell us about Crime Control in the UK?  Is Prison an effective strategy for controlling crime?

These are questions that should be of interest to any student studying the Crime and Deviance option within A-level sociology.

Scotland, England and Wales have high prison populations 

Prison population england.PNG

In England and Wales we lock up 40% more people than in France and almost twice as many people as they do in Germany, which are broadly comparable countries.

Yet there is no link between the prison population and levels of crime 

prison population and crime rate.PNG

  • England and wales have seen a rising prison population and a rising then a rapidly falling crime rate
  • Finland has seen a declining prison population and a rising and then a gradually declining crime rate.
  • Canada has seen a broadly level prison population and yet a relatively stable crime rate.

Most people are serving short sentences for non-violent offences 

what people are sentenced for.PNG

Nearly 70% of the prison population are in for non-violent offences – which means that 30% are in for violent offences. In those prisons where the two populations are mixed, this must be awful for some of those non-violent offenders.

People are getting sentenced for longer 

long sentences for serious offences.PNG

I’m not sure what’s underlying this rise in more serious offences …. the most obvious long-sentence crime of murder has decreased in recent years, so maybe this is for violent gang related and terrorist related crimes which involve in harm rather than death ? Something to research further!

Does Prison work?

In short, if controlling crime is what you hope to achieve, then no it doesn’t because nearly 50% of those sent to prison are recalled within 1 year of being released.

reoffending rates England 2019.PNG

However, there are more reasons why you might want to lock people up other than just rehabilitating them and preventing future offending – there is an argument that they just deserve to be punished whether they reoffend or not.

How do community service orders and suspended sentences compare to prison?

it seems that both of these are more effective at preventing reoffending, but the difference isn’t that great:

  • 63% of people who serve sentences of less than 12 months reoffend compared to
  • 56% of those who receive community orders and compared to
  • 54% of those who receive suspended sentences.

reoffending community service compared prison.PNG

HOWEVER, this may be due to the fact that those avoiding jail have different circumstances and/ or different characters to those who do go to jail – they might just be the kinds of people less likely to reoffend already!

Conclusions 

Overall these prison statistics suggest that while we like to lock people up in England and Wales, there is little evidence that doing so prevents crime.

Maybe we should be looking for cheaper and more effective solutions – such as early intervention (initially expensive but cheaper than several years in and out of jail), or public shaming for example?

Sources 

This post is based on data taken from ‘Prison the facts, Summer 2019‘, published by the Prison Reform Trust.

Generation Anxious

700 000 children in the U.K. are currently registered with an emotional disorder, that’s 7.2%, of 5-19 year olds, or about 1 in 13, according to a recent survey by NHS Digital.

emotional disorders NHS

And that’s just those children who have been formally diagnosed. That figure of 7.2% represents those children who have reached the clinical diagnoses threshold – where their distress impairs them so much that it gets in the way of their daily functioning.

The Children’s society says there are many who can’t get help because their problems are not serious enough, maybe as many as 3-4 times the above figure.

Mental health disorders have a huge economic impact, costing the UK 4% of GDP.

In this blog post I summarize a recent podcast from Radio Four’s ‘Bringing Up Britain: Generation Anxious’ which explores why so many of today’s children suffer with anxiety.

The show explores various possible contributors such as social media, pressurized exams, genetics and parents passing on their own worries to their children, as well as changing cultural norms which remove children’s agency.

What is anxiety?

Anxiety is the buzz word of the moment, but the anxiety which stops children going to school is different to butterflies in tummies before going on stage at the school play. The word covers both, a human experience we all feel and a clinical diagnosis.

The later type of ‘ordinary’ anxiety can be helpful in some senses, and anxiety is a normal response to stress and entirely normally developmentally – e.g. up to the age of three separation anxiety is normal as are phobias for pre-school children, and for teens there is a heightened sense of awareness of our selves and how others see us.

In order to be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, the level of distress must be so debilitating that one cannot function – it’s where you can’t face going out because you’re so anxious.

There are also different types of anxiety: such as social anxiety – not being able to be scrutinized without going bright red, and generalized anxieties – about anything that can go wrong, for example.

If you get serious anxiety as a child, it harms your development – you’re behind your peers and with schoolwork, and it’s reinforcing – the more you get behind, then the more there is to be anxious about!

Anxiety Increases with age, more common with girls, strong link to deprivation and family history. It’s also affect by personality types – some are more cautious and socially shy.

What is it that’s making children feel more anxious?

Social context is important – not so long ago, children would be out playing at ages 6-7, away from their parents, developing a sense of their own agency, but we’ve now starved them of these chances to be independent in primary school – primary schools forbid children to travel their alone – hence why secondary school is now seen as more of a challenge!

It could also be parents are increasingly transferring their anxieties onto their children – linked to the fact that there are too many experts telling parents what to do and the increased pressure on ‘getting parenting right’ – anxious parents makes anxious children: they do share an environment, after all!

A recent column in The Times likened GCSEs to a type of child abuse, but increased exam pressure is dismissed as being linked to increasing anxiety, because we’ve been doing them for thousands of years, and they’re probably less stressful now than they were 30 years ago.

However, it doesn’t help that children are more sensitive about the future nowadays and that more creative subjects which many children prefer are now squeezed out in favour of English and Maths.

The show also considers the effect of Social Media – it makes sense because your social media presence is fundamentally linked to your social identity – and it doesn’t switch off, and this is especially likely to impact teens at the time of life when they’re thinking about their identities.

However, there is a lock of good evidence of the relationship between social media usage and anxiety levels: its just cross sectional but we don’t know what comes first, we don’t know what kind of social media activity teens are involved in and we don’t have longitudinal data.

Socioeconomic factors also play a role – giving time to children, both physically and emotionally is important for their development, but the lower an income you earn, then the more time you need to spend working, and the less time you have for your children.

Body Image and anxiety

There does seem to be evidence of a relationship between body image and anxiety.

A recent Mental Health Foundation Survey found that ¼ people aged 18-24 believed that reality TV shows such as Love Island makes them worry about body image.

1/3rd of young people worry every day about their body, feeling things such as shame.

Over 1/5th 17-19 year old girls have anxiety depression or both. Around 11-14 there is a relationship between obesity and anxiety, but the relationship is complex.

How to help children control anxiety…

Various solutions are offered

  • More resources for mental health services
  • Cognitive behavioural therapy is mentioned as a good way of dealing with more serious anxiety.
  • Forest Schools and meditation lessons in schools are day to day things we could be doing socially
  • Giving young people more of a sense of agency
  • Being prepared to listen to children and talking about anxiety.

We also need to remember that ‘normal’ levels of anxiety are helpful – without it, we probably wouldn’t care about how we perform in society, it’s a natural part of going through changes, and the best things in life don’t tend to happen in comfort zones!

Relevance to A-level Sociology 

This is of relevance to the sociology of childhood, especially toxic childhood, and also research methods: we need to question whether these anxiety stats are valid or whether they’re socially constructed. The growth of anxiety might just be because there are more experts more willing to diagnose anxiety.

 

The UK – a world leader in renewable energy generation…

The UK is generating more energy from zero carbon sources than from fossil fuels for the first time since the industrial revolution, the National Grid announced recently.

Gas and coal generated 46.7% of Britain’s power in the year to the end of May, while zero carbon sources generated 47.9%. The rest came from biomass.

A decade ago coal plants generated almost a third of the UK’s electricity. Now there are only 7 left, two of which are going to close in the near future.

Energy from renewables has risen from 2% in 2009 to almost 25% with most coming from wind (18.8%).

renewable energy.png

What’s the relevance of this to A-level sociology?

For anyone studying the module in Global Development, this is a great counter trend to the doom and gloom of the ‘environmental decline’ we see in so many parts of the world.

It might also be a sign of a new value consensus emerging about the ‘right way’ to generate energy? At least at the level of the UK.

However, I guess we shouldn’t overstate the importance of this, the UK is only home to >1% of the global population after all!

Sources

The Week, 6th July 2019

 

The University of Cambridge appoints first female black head of a college

Jesus College Cambridge recently appointed the first ever black female as its head. This is the first time in British history that either a female or a black person has been the Master of an Oxbridge College.

Sonita Alleyne is 51 years old studied Philosophy at Cambridge 30 years ago and went on to establish a successful career in journalism and has been awarded and OBE. She is a real champion for diversity and inclusion.

black woman cambridge.png

At first sight this seems like a very progressive move to promote equality and diversity, especially when Oxbridge universities have been under so much criticism recently over their disproportionately low numbers of black students and staff.

However, critics might suggest this is an ‘easy trophy appointment’ – what do Heads of Colleges do after all? They’re basically figure heads who liaise with other educational establishments, businesses and the wider communities.

Surely addressing the lack of black female staff (and especially professors) would have more of an impact in promoting equality and diversity?  I mean these are the people who students interact with on a day to day basis, so surely appointments to these positions would have more of a role-model effect, and surely make a difference to the lives of more people (i.e. the people appointed and the students they might inspire.

This appointment is progress, yes, but maybe not the most effective way of promoting equality and diversity

Relevance to A-level sociology 

This is most obviously relevant to the sociology of education. You can use this as contemporary evidence against the view that elite universities are institutionally racist.

Sources/ find out more:

Guardian Article (2018) – Oxbridge faces criticisms over lack of black students.

Article (2017) – List of black female professors in the UK (54 at time of writing, 6 of them in Sociology!)

Vogue Article – we urgently need more black female professors in UK universities (it’s not just Oxford and Cambridge!)

Picture source – BBC – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-48413098

Sociology twitter feed following the Paper 1 A-level exam….

I did a quick Twitter search for ‘sociology’ after the recent A-level sociology exam to get the sentiment, seems positive enough….

Mostly Happy Tweets…

First of the block is maybe a little rude, but none the less conveys a very positive exam experience…

AQA can literally shag me that sociology paper was stunning 😍

— luce (@lucdurbs) May 22, 2019

And lots of happy gifs…

Sociology students around the country after that exam #aqasociology #AQAaredonnies pic.twitter.com/iF3wWhXxeZ

— Louis Chapman (@lchappers_80) May 22, 2019/

SKFUGSGH SOCIOLOGY ILYYYYYY THANK YOU AQA BABE

— daisyy | (@daisofrvd) May 22, 2019

Walking out of the sociology exam like… #aqasociology pic.twitter.com/vba1xfvLmh

— Ammarah (@Ammara996) May 22, 2019

Love this one especially…

me coming out the sociology exam #alevelsociology pic.twitter.com/2C5503Nm0X

— ً (@kimseuIs) May 22, 2019

A few unhappy tweets

When everyone comes out the Sociology exam saying the paper was easy #Sociology #AQA #Sociologyaqa #alevelsociology pic.twitter.com/fOxuK5M75M

— KM🖤 (@kerrygeexx) May 22, 2019

Who the f**k cares about pupil identities?? That sociology exam was a joke.

— Kee🇰🇳 (@kieriapowell) May 22, 2019

Am I the only one who didn’t like that sociology AQA exam or ?! 😬 #aqasociology #sociology pic.twitter.com/0YVRcTAXQg

— Lucy-Mae (@LucyAdlington4) May 22, 2019

And some complaints about some naughty guy apparently making predictions on Twitter recently.

Only a fool would make predictions, but it takes a bigger fool to listen to them!

Spent all my time revising sociology and globalisation for it not to come up, never going on twitter again to see predictions on papers😩 #sociologyaqa #sociologyguy

— sydd (@syedaaa_) May 22, 2019

Whoever said the sociology 30 marker was going to be on globalisation, I hate you for causing so much unnecessary stress

— Jade (@jadefinchh) May 22, 2019

And within 30 mins, a link to a student room thread to the 6 questions:

Outline 2 – selecting pupils (4)

Outline 3 – reasons why school is similar to the workplace (6)

Applying material from Item A, analyse two – implications of these things on pupil’s identity (10)

Applying material from Item B and your knowledge, evaluate – educational achievement and ethnic identity (30)

Applying material from Item C and your knowledge of research methods, evaluate the strengths and limitations of – written questionnaires and parent’s impact on child’s education (20)

Outline and explain two – disadvantages of using personal documents (10)

(source – https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=5961476)

Final thoughts…

OK – so Twitter’s not representative – and of course you’re more likely to tweet if you’ve got something positive to say, AND twitter does tend to attract the more intelligent, so two reasons why ‘exam went well posts’ are going to feature more.

So this post is just a bit of fun, I’ve always liked Twitter, and I do find the post exam Gifs MOST entertaining!

Congratulations if you think you did well, and if you think you did not so well, there’s two papers left to make up for it, and even if you fail, it could be the best thing that ever happened to you, it just might take you a few years to realise it!

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

Exam advice from the AQA’s Examiner Reports from 2018

The AQA produces an examiner report after every exam, and it’s very good advice to look at these reports to see common mistakes students made last year, so you can avoid making the same mistakes this year!

AQA sociology examiner report 2018.png

Below I’ve selected FIVE choice pieces of advice based on the two most common errors from the 2018 Education with Theory and Methods paper.

  1. For the short answer questions, make sure you get your ID and Development the right way round – for example, last year’s 4 mark question was on ‘two reasons why marketisation policies may create social class differences in educational achievement’ – many students started with a policy rather than a reason, they should have started with a reason and then illustrated with a policy.
  2. The six marker was ‘outline three reasons for gender differences in educational achievement – the report says that many students did not get a second mark because they failed to be specific enough in their application to gender or educational achievement, so be specific!
  3. For question 5 – the methods in context question – the best answers used the hooks in the item, so use the item!
  4. At the other end of the paper – the final 10 mark theory and methods and question, a lot of students seemed to run out time to answer this, so make sure you get your timing right. Remember that it’s almost certainly going to be easier to get 4/10 for a 10 mark question than to go from 12/20 to 16/20 on a methods in context question – the bar’s lower after all!
  5. Focussing on the final 10 marker – if you get another ‘criticise a theory’ type question’ then the best answers simply used other perspectives to develop their criticisms.

It seems that the 10 marker with item and 30 mark essay question were OK!

Sources 

All information taken from the AQA’s 7192/1 examiner report.

You can read the full report here.

You can view the 2018 paper here.

Outline three ways in which pupil identities may come into conflict within school

A possible 6 mark question in the sociology of education exam. Unlike many 6 markers, this one lends itself to research studies!

Paul Willis: Learning to Labour – found that the traditional working class male identity came into direct conflict with the norms of the school – for the ‘lads’ he studied being male for them meant being cool, and not caring about school work. For them ‘real boys didn’t try hard at school’ and they were more interested in dossing around.

Louise Archer –found that girls that didn’t conform to traditional gender identities (passive and submissive) came into conflict with the school. For most of the girls, constructing and performing a heterosexual, sexy feminine image was the most important thing to them. Each of the girls spent considerable money and time on their appearance, trying to look sexy and feminine which gave the girls a sense of power and status. The peer group policed this.

Mac an Ghail argued that the African Caribbean community experienced the world in very different ways to white people – namely because of institutional racism in the college and he argued that any anti-school attitudes were reactions against this racism. He mainly blamed the school rather than the students

Why do some children get excluded from school?

In this post I’m going to reviewing a range quantitative and qualitative evidence (from official statistics to case study evidence) on permanent exclusions, consider the strengths and limitations of this evidence and think about what different data sources tell us about why some pupils get excluded from school.

While exclusions aren’t explicitly on the A-level sociology spec, this topic is obviously relevant to the sociology of education, as well as the sociology of crime and deviance.

Starting Definitions

  • A permanent exclusion refers to a pupil who is excluded and who will not come back to that school.
  • A fixed period exclusion refers to a pupil who is excluded from a school for a set period of time. A pupil may receive more than one fixed period exclusion, so the fixed period exclusion rate isn’t actually measuring the number of pupils excluded!
  • Off-rolling – where a school and parent agree to withdraw the child from a school and the parent agrees to enrol them another, typically specialist institutions such as a Pupil Referral Unit. Although around 1/3rd of off-rolled students just disappear from formal records.

A. Official statistics on exclusions

The Department for Education publishes an annual report on exclusions, the latest edition published in August 2018 being ‘Permanent and fixed-period exclusions in England: 2016 to 2017.

2018 data on exclusions

  • The overall rate of permanent exclusions was 0.08 per cent of pupil enrolments in 2016/17. The number of exclusions was 7,720
  • The vast majority of exclusions were from secondary schools >85% of exclusions.
  • The three main reasons for permanent exclusions were
    • Persistent disruptive behaviour
    • Physical assault against a pupil
    • Physical assault against an adult.

Certain groups of students are far more likely to be permanently excluded:

  • Free School Meals (FSM) pupils had a permanent exclusion rate four times higher than non-FSM pupils
  • FSM pupils accounted for 40.0% of all permanent exclusions
  • The permanent exclusion rate for boys was over three times higher than that for girls
  • Over half of all permanent exclusions occur in national curriculum year 9 or above. A quarter of all permanent exclusions were for pupils aged 14
  • Black Caribbean pupils had a permanent exclusion rate nearly three times higher than the school population as a whole.
  • Pupils with identified special educational needs (SEN) accounted for around half of all permanent exclusions

What do these official stats suggest about why certain students get excluded?

There are some very stark trends which stand out from these stats – in terms of reasons for permanent exclusions it’s clear that students typically have to do something very serious to get excluded, such as assault.

These stats also suggest that getting exclusion rates are strongly correlated with certain types of student – older teenagers, poor, black Caribbean and male students and those with SEN are much more likely to be excluded, so perhaps we should be looking at what it is about these types of students that makes them engage in the type of behaviours that get them excluded? Laddishness, for example may have something to do with it? 

B: Longitudinal statistical research on permanent exclusions and ‘off-rolling’

According to this Guardian article, permanent exclusion figures do not take into account ‘informal exclusions’ or ‘off-rolling’ – where schools convince parents to withdraw their children without making a formal exclusion order – technically it’s then down to the parents to enrol their child at another institution or home-educate them, but in many cases this doesn’t happen.

According to longitudinal research conducted by FFT Education Datalab up to 7, 700 students go missing from the school role between year 7 and year 11 when they are  supposed to sit their GCSEs…. Equivalent to a 1.4% drop out rate across from first enrolment at secondary school to GCSEs.

Datalabs took their figures from the annual school census and the DfE’s national pupil database. The cohort’s numbers were traced from year seven, the first year of secondary school, up until taking their GCSEs in 2017.

The entire cohort enrolled in year 7 in state schools in England in 2013 was 550,000 children

By time of sitting GCSEs:

  • 8,700 pupils were in alternative provision or pupil referral units,
  • nearly 2,500 had moved to special schools
  • 22,000 had left the state sector (an increase from 20,000 in 2014) Of the 22,000,
    • 3,000 had moved to mainstream private schools
    • Just under 4,000 were enrolled or sat their GCSEs at a variety of other education institutions.
    • 60% of the remaining 15,000 children were likely to have moved away from England, in some case to other parts of the UK such as Wales (used emigration data by age and internal migration data to estimate that around)
    • Leaves between 6,000 to 7,700 former pupils unaccounted for, who appear not to have sat any GCSE or equivalent qualifications or been counted in school data.

Working out the percentages this means that…..

  • 4%, or 22K left the mainstream state sector altogether (presumably due to exclusion or ‘coerced withdrawal’ (i.e. off rolling), of which
  • 4%, or 7, 700 cannot be found in any educational records!

What does this data add to our understanding of why pupils get excluded?

This data suggests that the number of pupils actually excluded from school during the life of a cohort is much greater than the annual 1% suggested in the official statistics… it’s now 4%, which is much more significant.

This study thus suggests that the official exclusion stats are the tip of the iceberg and that schools make underhand efforts to get rid of disruptive students, just without formally recording them as excluded!

C: Statistical Analysis of Exclusion Data by The Guardian (LINK), 2018

Education Guardian looked at England’s 50 largest academy trusts and 50 largest local education authorities and compared the number of pupils in year 11 in 2017-18 – the students counted when GCSE results are published – to the number in year 10, a year earlier.

Nationally, there has been a huge rise in recent years in the number of young people leaving their school in the run-up to GCSEs. The average year 10/11 shrinkage rate in England was 2% in 2018 seven years ago the rate was less than 0.1%.

The trend of disappearing pupils appears to be happening at a higher rate in the academies sector.

The Harris Federation is one of Britain’s largest academy chains. In one of their schools, The Harris Girls’ Academy Bromley, lost 11% of its pupils (14 girls) between January 2016 of their year 10 and their GCSE year in 2017, a situation repeated with its 2018 GCSE year group.

Many of these teenagers will go to pupil referral units or will be educated at home. This means their grades will not be counted in their school’s exam results.

Anne Longfield, children’s commissioner for England, says: “Some schools are gaming the system by off-rolling some of the most vulnerable children, including some with special education needs and disabilities, in an attempt to improve the school’s exam results.

D: Case study: Outwood Academy (Link)

Outwood Academy in Middlesbrough has the highest rate of fixed-term exclusions of any school in the UK. According to this 2018 Guardian article it excluded 41% of its pupils in 2016-17.

Outwood school is part of the Outwood Grange Academies Trust, and nine other schools within the trust are in the top 50 schools in England and Wales for suspensions.

This could well be due to the Trust’s strict behaviour policy which states that pupils can be suspended for failing to respond appropriately to “a reasonable request from a senior member of staff”, which includes failing to wear the correct uniform and wearing makeup.

According to the above article some of the reasons why pupils have been suspended from the trust’s schools include:

  • Forgetting pens and year planners
  • Wearing the wrong kind of buckle on shoes
  • Refusing to take off a cancer research badge.
  • Taking a toilet break deemed to be too long.

The Trust says they are simply trying to instil a culture of aspiration by enforcing high standards of conduct, but parents are not happy, and have formed a Facebook group called ‘Outwood Academy – Unhappy Parents of Pupils.’

What do items C and D suggest about why pupils are excluded?

Taken together items C and D (like item A) put more of the blame for off-rolling and exclusions on the schools – they use such practices to get rid of kids who are going to harm their results statistics. Academies seem to do this more than LEA schools.

These pieces of research suggests it’s less about the kids, and more about the schools, and also more to do with government policy putting pressure on schools to look good in league tables!

E: Case studies of Pupil Referral Units

In 2015-16 the BBC conducted a three-part documentary series over the course of an academic year in The Bridge AP Academy, a Pupil Referral Unit in West London where most of the kids have ended up because of being excluded for behavioural issues from mainstream schools.

This is a Link to the programme website, a link to the Open University site which discusses the documentary, and a link to the documentary on YouTube. In case the above disappear, this Independent Article covers similar ground.

Although technically now a ‘secondary’ source, when conducted this documentary consisted of at least two main qualitative methods: non-participant observation of the children’s behaviour (after they had been excluded) and unstructured interviews with a number of the children about their life-experiences, most of which touch on the reasons for their exclusion from school.

What do case-studies suggest about why pupils are excluded?

These give us a completely different, more interpretivist feel for exclusions… even just one hour long documentary, or one 1500 word article touches on several individual students’ back stories – many kids that get excluded come from broken families, abusive backgrounds, and have chaotic lives – many of them have to deal with more emotional turmoil as children than most of will have to deal with in our whole lives.

Such sources make you feel much sympathetic with the kids, unlike the official stats at the beginning of this post!

Concluding Thoughts:

I wrote this post to try and illustrate the importance of taking a mixed methods approach to develop a deeper understanding of just one issue within education. Hopefully it’s done that!