Tag: education

Why are black students less likely to get first class degrees?

Differences in type of university, degree choice, prior attainment and institutional racism are all possible explanations.

In 2020/21 85.9% of white students were awarded a first or 2:1 degree compared to only 67.4% of black students.

This means there is an 18.5% attainment gap between black and white students at university level.

There is also a smaller attainment gap between all BAME students and white students, of 8.9%, but the most significant gap is between white and black students.

Why are black students less likely to get firsts?

Possible explanations include:

  1. They are less likely to attend Russel Group universities
  2. They are less likely to subjects with higher rates of first class degree awarded
  3. They have lower prior A-level attainment
  4. Institutional Racism.

Russel Group Universities and Ethnicity

It could be that black students are less likely to go to Russel Group universities which get better results, but this is not the case: equal numbers of black and white students attend Russel Group Universities.

Does subject choice make a difference?

There is a significant difference in class of degree awarded by subject and it might be the case that black students are less likely to study subjects which have a high rate of first class degrees awarded.

Below are the degree subjects which are most likely to be awarded a first: Almost 43% of medicine and dentistry degrees get a first compared to only 17% of law degrees, which is a huge difference (3).

If black students are more likely to do subjects like law and less likely to do subjects like medicine this could explain why they are also less likely to get first class degrees.

However, while it is true that black students are more likely to do Law than veterinary sciences, according to Universities UK (4) the differences in attainment by ethnicity within these subjects.

A level grades

It could be that black students go into university with lower A-level results which are correlated with lower level degree results.

However, black students underachieve compared to white students no matter what prior attainment they have as the chart (5) below shows.

Could it be institutional racism?

This is the explanation favoured by Universities UK (4) who use the term ‘ degree awarding gap’ rather than ‘degree attainment gap’ in their reports to reflect the fact that the gap is caused by institutional racism or inaction, rather than individual BAME students.

They conducted research in 2019, followed up in 2022 using a range of quantitative analysis and more qualitative interviews to research the experiences of BAME students.

The main piece of quantitative evidence to back up the theory that universities are institutionally racist is the underrepresentation of black staff members, with only 2.5% of university staff being black.

In a recent Guardian article (2) one graduate claims that black students are not listened to by universities, saying that she was warned that she would find it difficult if she did a PhD as a black female students because of racism, effectively being put off from pursing this career path.

More broadly the article suggests that black students do not feel at home in university and so are less likely to strive for higher level degrees.

Signposting

This material is primarily relevant to the education module within A-level sociology.

To return to the homepage – revisesociology.com

Sources

(1) UK Parliament, House of Commons Library (January 2023) Equality of Access and Outcomes in Higher Education in England

(2) The Guardian (May 2019) As a black student I know why our grades are worse.

(3) It’s Official: The Degree Subjects Most Likely to get you a First.

(4) Universities UK (2022) Closing the Gap: Three Years On.

(5) The original report (2019) from Universities UK on closing the gap.

Secondary Data on Academic Progress

What are the strengths and limitations of using secondary data to research the academic progress of students in schools?

This challenging question came up in the methods in Context section of the November 2021 AQA A-Level Sociology exam, and students found it difficult according the Examiners Report, with significant numbers focussing only on quantitative secondary data, rather than both quantitative and qualitative, and many answers making generalisation and failing to pick up on the specifics of different types of data, let alone APPLY these to the topic at hand which was student progress.

So this applied research methods topic is probably worth going over in some depth! (Remember, even though this came up relatively recently it can still come up this year, especially since the examiners know it’s a challenging topic for many students!).

The Question and Item

Applying material from Item C and your knowledge of research methods, evaluate the strengths and limitations of using secondary data to investigate the
academic progress of pupils in schools.

Notes towards an answer

The item suggest that you should focus on both quantitive and qualitative forms of secondary data.

And with methods in context questions you need to at least try and apply the strengths and limitations of the data to the actual topic in the question: academic progress!

Secondary quantitative data to research academic progress

This topic is partly dealt with in this post: Official Statistics on Education: Strengths and Limitations

Official Statistics include exam results and SATs. They have excellent representativeness and usually these are easy to compare, but with education statistics, there are several different versions to measure progress and this can get confusing, also GSCE results changed from A-C to numerical form which makes comparing more difficult over time.

However, official stats do not tell us WHY students achieve at different rates, also for Gypsy and Roma children, many don’t sit formal exams so there is missing data here.

Schools may also record their own quantitative data in the form of internal tests (not official statistics) which provide more insight than official statistics but there are access issues.

Secondary qualitative data to research academic progress

Secondary qualitative data will give you more insight into WHY students achieve at different rates, and such data includes OFSTED reports, school progress reports, the written work of students and even personal documents such as diaries.

Written work in particular can give you an insight into the quality of feedback students get and also how much effort they are making, while personal documents can tell you what is going on in students’ lives outside of education.

The main problem with both of these sources is access.

This topic is covered in depth in this post: Assessing the usefulness of secondary data for researching education. NB this post is broader than this topic, and some of the sources mentioned in it may not be useful for measuring academic progress.

Sources

The AQA’s mark scheme for the November 2021 Sociology A-level Education with Theory and Methods exam paper.

For more information on exams see my exams and essay writing page.

Teaching and learning in schools and the educational experiences of minority ethnic groups

An answer for a 10 mark ‘analyse’ question in A-level sociology (AQA)

This question cam up in the recent 2021 AQA Education and Theory and Methods Exam, as a 10 mark, with item question.

In the 10 mark education question, you get an item which directs you to two specific issues you need to analyse, and it’s good practice to give equal weighting to both issues.

NB there are no marks for evaluating in these questions, it’s all analysis (in-depth logical explanation).

It’s crucial to draw the links between the ’cause’ and the ‘effect’ explicitly!

The question

Read Item A below and answer the question that follows.

Item A
Some sociologists claim that the curriculum taught in schools today prioritises some cultures over others. Research also suggests that teacher expectations can be based on stereotypes.

Teaching and learning in schools may affect the educational experiences of minority ethnic groups

Applying material from Item A, analyse two ways in which teaching and learning in schools may affect the educational experiences of minority ethnic groups. (10 marks)

Possible Answer

The two focuses from the item are:

  • the curriculum prioritising some cultures over others.
  • teacher expectations based on stereotypes

Because this is a question on ethnic minority groups, it makes sense to discuss both of these as they relate to a range of different minority groups, and treat both focuses separately.

The curriculum prioritizing some cultures over others

The school curriculum has been criticised for being ethnocentric, which means it focuses on the experiences the main ethnic group, which in British schools means white British and White Europeans. Examples of this include the school year and holidays being based around a Christian timetable, European languages being the main ones offered, and history having a white-European focus, looking at things from the perspective of the colonising powers rather than the colonised, for exampled.

This can have negative effects on minority ethnic groups: school calendars are not necessarily in sync with Hindu or Muslim festivals for example, so students may take time off to celebrate these, and notoriously Ramadan frequently coincides with the A-level exam period, meaning fasting Muslim students may underperform because of this ‘ethnocentric timetabling’.

Many schools have a huge proportion of ‘minority’ students who speak African, Asian or Middle Eastern languages and yet there is rarely an option to study these as part of language options, these students may not see the point in studying another European language when they are already bilingual and might even feel offended that their own languages are not taught more widely to the majority white students.

The Prevent Agenda, which is part of the formal curriculum has also been criticized for being biased against Muslim students, with Muslim children feeling as if they are being singled out and being watched as potential terrorist threats more so than white children, which can be alienating.

Teacher expectations based on stereotypes

David Gilborn (1990) famously claimed that teachers expect black boys to be more aggressive and so they are more likely to punish them for being disruptive in class compared to white children doing the same. This may explain the higher expulsion rates for black boys compared to white boys. For those who aren’t expelled it might create the experience of the feeling of injustice about why they are being treated unfairly which could lead to less trust in teachers and less willingness to try hard in school.

Gilborn also found that black children are less likely to be put into the top sets by teachers because teachers expect them to be less able to cope due to their having higher poverty and lone parent rates, this means there will more able black students in lower sets getting frustrated because they are not being pushed, and blocked from sitting higher tier exams.

Wright found that teachers expect Asian girls to be passive and so didn’t include them in class room discussions as much, with can lead to them feeling excluded.

Similarly, teachers tend to assume Chinese students will always do well, something which less keen Chinese students don’t enjoy very much!

Relevant posts

There is lots of good material relevant to this question in this post: ethnicity and differential achievement: in school factors.

The above question was taken from the AQA’s November 2021 A-Level Sociology Education with Theory and Methods Paper.

Unequal parental choice

marketisation policies mean unequal parental choice as middle class parents have more cultural capital

Ball, Bowe and Gewirtz (1) examined the effects that marketisation policies which introduced competition and parental choice were having on the education system and on the opportunities for different social groups.

They found that middle class parents had more effective choice of schools because of their higher levels of cultural, social and material capital.

Researching parental choice

They studied 15 schools in neighbouring LEAs in England between 1994 and 1991 using a range of research methods including visiting the schools, attending meetings, interviewing teachers and parents and examining documents.

Central to the research study was a series of interviews with 150 parents whose children were in the final year of primary school, and so were in the process of choosing secondary schools. Some areas had mainly middle class populations, some mainly working class and some had significant ethnic minority populations, so the researchers were able to compare parental choice across these groups.

Marketisation: the effects on schools

The overall effect was a shift in the value framework of schools from comprehensive to market values.

The publication of league tables meant that schools were more keen to attract those more able students who could boost their position in the league tables. There was more of a focus on what prospective students could do for the school rather than what the school could do for the students.

Some schools had introduced setting and streaming so as to more effectively focus resources on those students who were judged likely to succeed and some schools had started to view students like commodities.

Schools were also putting more resources into marketing to promote a positive image of the school: producing glossy brochures to attract parents and staff were expected to spend more time on marketing activities, mainly opening days and evenings.

Neighbouring schools had stopped co-operating with each other and there was a new attitude of suspicion and hostility in some cases.

Schools lower down the league tables were more obsessed with trying to attract pupils, while the more successful schools were able to be more complacent and selective with the students they chose.

Budgetary concerns such as cutting costs were becoming more important than educational and social issues.

Marketisation and unequal parental choice

Gewirtz et al argued that not all parents had equal choice of schools. The amount of choice was limited by the availability of schools in the local area and the capacity of parents to make informed choices.

They identified three types of parents based on their ability to choose:

  • Privileged or skilled choosers
  • Semi-skilled choosers
  • Disconnected choosers

Skilled choosers

Skilled choosers were strongly motivated to put energy into choosing the ‘right’ school for their child and had the ability to make an informed choice.

Skilled choosers are mainly middle class and some had inside knowledge of the school system, such as those who were teachers themselves and tended to choose the most successful schools for their children.

They had both the knowledge to evaluate schools and the money to be able to move to into the catchment area of a particular school they wanted their child to go to.

Semi-skilled choosers

Semi-skilled choosers have a strong motivation to choose by limited capacity to engage with the market. They are less likely to be middle class than skilled-choosers.

They have just a strong a desire to get their children into the best schools but lack the cultural skills and social contacts to be able to make their choices stick.

For example semi-skilled choosers feel less at home at parents evening, less comfortable asking difficult questions and and are less likely to appeal if they don’t get their first choice of school.

As a result this group are more likely to settle for their child just going to a local school rather than a better school that they originally wanted.

Disconnected choosers

Disconnected choosers are just as concerned with their children’s education and welfare but don’t get involved with the school-choice market because they don’t believe it will benefit their children as they think there is little difference between schools.

They tend to consider a smaller number of school options, typically only the two nearest schools to where they live, and their child typically ends up going to one of these local schools which is unlikely to be the best academically.

Disconnected choosers are more concerned with their child’s happiness than them going to a school with a good academic record, and so sending them to a local school where their friends are also going makes sense.

Disconnected choosers are typically working class and the most likely group to send their children to undersubscribed, underperforming schools.

definitions of skilled, semi-skilled and disconnected choosers

Cultural and material capital and differential choice

Marketisation policies have made education less equal. Middle class parents are in a better position than working class parents to send their children to a school of their choice.

Because middle class parents have more cultural and social capital they are more able to play the system effectively:

  • they can make a better impression with the head teacher at open day.
  • they are more likely to make private appointments to discuss school choice.
  • they are more likely to appeal if they are not successful in their application.
  • In some cases they are more likely to actually know staff at the school.
  • They have more time and money to research and visit schools.

They also have more money which can help with:

  • moving into the catchment areas of the best schools.
  • Extra tuition to get their children into grammar schools.
  • Paying for transport or driving their children to schools which may be several miles away.

In contrast working class parents were more likely to want their children to go to local schools because then they didn’t have to make long and dangerous journeys (which maybe expensive) and they had access to their local community which was a support network.

In Bourdieu’s terms both middle class and working class parents made school choices based on their habitus, or their different lived experiences. And this meant the middle classes having free choice over a wide area, and the working classes simply choosing to stay local, which effectively meant no real choice at all!

Signposting

This material is relevant to the sociology of education topic, it is especially relevant to demonstrating how social and cultural capital give the middle classes an advantage in education.

Sources

(1) Ball, Bowe and Gewirtz (1994) Parents, privilege and the education market‐place

Part of this post was adapted from Haralambos and Holborn (2013) Sociology Themes and Perspectives 8th Edition.

Speech patterns and educational achievement

restricted and elaborated speech codes explain social class differences in achievement.

Speech and language are important aspects of communication and a child’s ability to learn is related to their ability to communicate effectively with adults and other children.

A child with more developed speech and language skills can learn faster than those with less developed skills, and thus will have better educational achievement.

Moreover a child’s ability at language (in English Language key stage tests, for example) is in fact a measure of their level of educational achievement, so in one respect, a child’s ability to communicate (at least in formal tests) is the same as their level of educational attainment!

This post summarises and evaluates Basil Bernstein’s work on speech patterns.

Speech patterns

Basil Bernstein (1) developed the theory that there are two different types of speech patterns, or speech codes: the restricted code and the elaborated code, the later having a wider vocabulary and more complex grammatical structures than the former.

He theorised that the working classes were largely limited to speaking in the restricted code, while the middle classes used both the elaborate and restricted codes, and that the limited use of the restricted code by working class children explained their relative underachievement in education compared to middle class children.

A comparison of the restricted and elaborated speech code

The restricted speech code

Bernstein stated that restricted speech codes are characterised by ‘short, grammatically simple, often unfinished sentences’.

This code has limited use of adjectives or adverbs and meanings are often conveyed by gesture and voice intonation.

The restricted code tends to operate in terms of particularistic meanings – it is usually linked to a specific context and utterances only make sense to people in that immediate context.

It is a sort of short hand between close friends or partners that have a shared understanding of a social situation such that there is no need to spell out meanings in any great detail.

The elaborated speech code

Elaborated speech code has a wider vocabulary and uses more complex grammatical structures than the restricted code.

It provides more in-depth explanations of meanings than the restricted speech code does and thus operates in terms of universalistic meanings: listeners do not need to be embedded in a specific context to fully understand what is being communicated.

To illustrate the difference between the two speech codes consider a cartoon strip of four pictures:

  1. Some boys playing football
  2. The ball breaking a window
  3. A woman looking out of the window and a man shaking his fist
  4. The boys running away.

A middle class child speaking the elaborated code would be able to describe the pictures in such a way that you wouldn’t need the pictures to fully understand the story, everything would be explained in detail. The explanation here would be free of the context, universal!

A working class child speaking the restricted code would refer to the pictures so that you would need to see the pictures to understand the story. The explanation here would remain dependent on the context.

Speech patterns and educational attainment

Formal education is conducted in the elaborated speech code, so working class kids are automatically at a disadvantage compared to middle class kids.

The elaborated code is necessary to make generalizations and to be able to understand higher order concepts.

Bernstein found that middle class children were much more able to classify things such as food into higher order categories such as vegetables, or meats, for example. Working class kids were more likely to classify them according to personal experiences such as ‘things mum cooks for me’.

Evaluations of Bernstein

His concept of social class is too vague. Sometimes he refers to the working class, others he talks about the lower working class. He also puts all non-manual workers into ‘middle class’ thus ignoring variation between the middle classes.

Bernstein also provides only limited examples of the two types of speech code. He does not make a convincing case that either of them actually exist in reality!

Labov (1973) criticized Bernstein for alluding to the elaborated code being superior, whereas in reality working class and middle class speech are just different, it is only the cultural dominance of the elaborated code in education that makes it seem superior.

Ebonics

The language of African Americans and White Americans can be very different, but it is historically Anglo-American English which is taught as standard English in schools.

Thus African American pupils in the USA have had a particularly negative experience of language in school, often experiencing school as a linguistically and culturally alienating environment.

Rather than their children feeling alienated, some activists adopted ‘Ebonics’ (the language of African Americans) as a medium of instruction, celebrating their linguistic heritage and pointing out differences with the ‘standard’ Anglo-American English.

Ebonics has highlighted the following:

  • it has indicated the extent to which language plays a role in educational success or failure.
  • It raised questions about the appropriateness of standard English in assessments.
  • It highlighted cultural tensions between several minority pupils in schools and the school curriculum.
Signposting

This topic is relevant to the sociology of education, especially the issue of social class differences in educational achievement.

Sources


(1) Bernstein (1971) Class, Codes and Control, Volume 1.

Barlett and Burton (2021): Introduction to Education Studies, fifth edition

Part of this post was adapted from Haralambos and Holborn (2013) Sociology Themes and Perspectives 8th Edition.

Why do Males and Females Choose Different Subjects?

parental and teacher stereotypes combine to reinforce gendered subject images!

Despite gender becoming more fluid in recent decades, students continue to choose subjects aligned to stereotypical, traditional male and female gender identities.

While it is true that subject choice is becoming gradually less gendered, gender stereotypical subject choices are still apparent when we look at the statistics in the 2020s.

For example, 95% of candidates studying Health and Social Care BTEC are female while Computer Science and Engineering are dominated by males.

For a more in-depth dive into gendered subject choices at different levels of education in 2022 please see my post on gender and subject choice.

Explaining gendered differences in subject choice

There are three broad explanations for why boys and girls continue to choose gender stereotypical subjects:

  • factors external to the school such as socialisation in the family home and peer group pressure.
  • In school factors such as the gender of the teachers teaching certain subjects and gender stereotypes held by teachers.
  • Ingrained gendered subject images which is a result of home and school factors.

Socialisation and gendered subject choice

Some research suggests that the gender stereotypes of parents still influence what toys boys and girls and play with, with some parents believing that certain types of toys are only really suitable for boys and girls.

Girls being steered into playing with dolls from an early age may influence their choice to study health and social care later on as teenagers, with its focus on child care.

Similarly, boys being steered towards toy tools and trucks may result in a higher proportion of them choosing to study engineering at university.

More generally, socialisation differences may result in different levels of self-confidence for boys and girls.

The results of laboratory experiments also suggest that men are more likely to enter competitive arenas than women because of higher levels of confidence (Gneezy et al., 2003; Niederle and Vesterlund, 2007).

Colley (1998) found that peer groups often subscribe to gender stereotypes and may encourage girls to choose more traditionally feminine subjects at GCSE and vice-versa for boys.

Teacher Labelling and gendered subject choice

Traditional beliefs about masculinity and femininity may still be held by teachers, lecturers and careers advisors, especially in mixed schools.

Some contemporary sociological research suggests that teachers’ gender stereotypes result in girls being less likely to choose STEM-related choices within high school and beyond ((Lavy and Sand, 2018; Lavy and Meglokonomou, 2019; Terrier, 2020).

There is a gender divide based on the subjects taught by men. Male teachers are more likely to specialise in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and PE, whereas women are more likely to teach humanities and languages. A lack of educational role models in STEM and PE can put some girls off taking these subjects. The effect is particularly visible among teenage girls who feel that male PE teachers cannot understand their needs properly (Gender Trust).

The fact that subjects in secondary schools such as English are more likely to be taught by women, and girls may feel more drawn to such subjects because they prefer the discursive style of female teachers. Similarly, subjects which boys are more likely to choose at GCSE and A-level, such as computing and physics, are more likely to be taught my males lower down in secondary schools, and boys might be more drawn to these subjects because of the more matter of fact way they are taught by male teachers.

Colley (1998) notes that girls in single-sex schools are twice as likely to study maths at university. This could be because the cultural pressures to not study maths are less likely to exist in single sex schools

Gendered Subject Images

The combination of external and internal factors above results in subjects becoming gendered: they develop an identity as essentially male or female.

This makes it harder for boys to choose ‘female’ subjects and girls to choose ‘male’ subjects.

Colley believes that the gender-identity of subjects may well shift with curriculum changes. For example the introduction of more technology into music is correlated with more boys choosing to study it.

Conclusions: Why do gendered differences in subject choice persist…?

Boys are more likely to choose traditionally male subjects and vice versa for girls as a combination of home and school factors such as gender stereotyping held by parents and teachers, which affects boys and girls self-concepts which are in turn reinforced by peers.

In a review of the literature Skelton et al (2007) noted that ‘gender stereotyping’ and ‘differential constructions of gender among pupils and teachers’ are probably the most significant factors in explaining gendered differences in subject choice.

It is very difficult to pinpoint one main causal variable for gendered differences in subject choice, the reasons are due to a multitude of factors.

Signposting

This material has been written primarily for students studying the education option as part of their A-level in sociology.

Free School Meals for All London Pupils

All primary pupils in London schools are going to get Free School Meals from September 2023 according to an announcement from the Mayor of London on Monday.

This new policy will cost £130 million, save the average family £440 a year and benefit around 270 000 children.

In an interview on Radio 4’s Today programme (20/02/2023) Henry Dimbleby, former head of the government’s national food strategy, explained the benefits of universal free school meals and the ideological barriers which have prevented this policy being enacted at a national level.

Trials had been done under the Labour government way back in 2013 in some local authorities including Newham, Durham and Islington which revealed that providing universal free school meals to all pupils significantly improved the academic performance of children who had previously been on free school meals, but the the performance of ALL children improved.

Those who had previously been on free school meals saw the most academic improvement, one theory for this change being that when ALL pupils can access free school meals it changes the culture of the school, removing the stigma of poverty at mealtimes and thus makes poorer students feel more included.

What about the rich kids who don’t need free school meals?

All children already benefit from free education which includes access a whole range of other material resources such as text books, so adding on free school meals isn’t that big a deal!

There is also evidence that all children benefit from this policy and it closes the inequality gap: A more recent study from Sweden showed that the introduction of universal free school meals improved the lifetime income of poorer students by 6% and the richest people’s only rose by 2%

The biggest drag on our economy is long term sickness, and the biggest cause of this is poor diet.

Why don’t we have free school meals in England?

According to Henry Dimbleby the current Tory government are ideologically opposed to universal benefits and this is the main reason we do not have free school meals for every child in England and Wales.

Both Nick Clegg and Michael Gove were in favour of universal free school meals when we had a coalition government, but since then neoliberal ideology means the government isn’t prepared to find the money to care for the poorest children in society.

Signposting

This material is relevant to the compulsory education aspect of the AQA’s first year of A-level sociology.

It is especially relevant to the topic of social class differences and education, as universal free school meals seem to be one of the most effective policies which can reducing the effects of material deprivation on educational achievement.

It is also a reminder of the continued harms of neoliberal education policy.

Sources/ Find out More

The Guardian (20/02/2023) London to offer free school meals to all primary pupils for a year.

Gender and Subject Choice

The most female dominated subjects are performing arts, health and social care and sociology, the most male dominated subjects are computer science and I.T., construction and engineering.

Subject choice in post-16 education remains heavily influenced by gender in 2022.

If we look at the total numbers of students taking A-level and BTEC subjects we find that girls and young women are still more likely to choose subjects which conform to the norms and roles associated with females, such as performing arts and health and social care.Boys and young men on the other hand are more likely to choose subjects which align with traditionally male gender norms and roles such as physics and computing.

However these trends are just generalisations and there are of course exceptions, and the ‘traditional gender-divide’ in subject choice has been reducing over time.

This post explores some of the differences in subject choice by gender in 2021-2022, focusing on A-levels, BTECs, higher education and apprenticeships. (I don’t look at GCSE level or below because students do not have freedom of subject choice until they pass their GCSEs and pursue post-16 education.

  1. Computer Science: 80% of pupils are male
  2. Physics: 75% male
  3. Further Mathematics: 65% male
  4. Design and Technology: 64% male
  5. Economics: 63% male.

The most female dominated subjects at A-level are:

  1. Performing arts: 90% of students are female
  2. English Literature: 78% female
  3. Sociology: 77% female
  4. Art and Design subjections: 75% female
  5. Psychology: 74% female
  6. Spanish and French: 74% female.

Most other subjects have a much more equal gender balance, so are best characterised as gender neutral.

Gender and Subject Choice at BTEC

Subject choices at BTEC also remain heavily gendered in some subjects. For example:

    • 90% of students choosing health and social care are female.
    • 85% of students choosing Information Technology are male.
    • 75% of students choosing Sport BTEC are male.

Business BTEC is more gender neutral with nearer a 60-40 split in favour of males and Applied Science is the most gender neutral subject with almost equal numbers of male and female students in 2022.

The gender divide continues into Higher Education, once again with subjects broadly divided along stereotypical gender lines:

The top five degree subjects for females are:

  • Subjects allied to medicine
  • Social Sciences and psychology
  • Veterinary sciences
  • Education and Teaching
  • Design and Creative and Performing Arts.

    Five subjects where there are more males studying them than females are:

  • Engineering and Technology
  • Computing
  • Architecture
  • Physical Sciences
  • Mathematical Sciences.

Gender and Apprenticeships

The traditional gender divide is somewhat apparent when it comes to the types of apprenticeship men and women choose, but it less dramatic than with subject choices at A-Level, BTEC and University.

    Females dominate in health and social care and education apprenticeships. Males dominate in construction, manufacturing and transportation. But many apprenticeships are gender neutral such as retail and public administration.

Signposting

This material is relevant to the gender and subject choice topic within the Education topic of A-level Sociology

You might also like to read this post on why males and females choose different subjects in education.

Sources

Name Gender, Achievement and Subject Choice in English EducationHESA Student Enrolments by Gender Gov.uk Apprenticeship Data by enterprise and learner characteristics

PREVENT: Discriminating Against Muslims?

PREVENT discriminates against Muslims

PREVENT requires schools to monitor pupils for their potential to become radicalised into extremist views and become terrorist.

While PREVENT doesn’t specify that schools should focus mainly on preventing Muslims from becoming extremist, an increasing body of research suggests this is what happens and as a result PREVENT as a policy is discriminatory.

What is Prevent?

PREVENT was introduced in 2015 and today forms part of the United Kingdom’s counter-terrorism strategy. Schools are among those institutions which are required to prevent young people from being drawn into terrorism.

The government notes that terrorism is often driven by extremist beliefs and for the sake of prevent defines extremism as:

“vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs.” (1)

PREVENT requires Local Education Authorities to use terrorist risk profiles to assess the risk of certain students being drawn into terrorism, and where necessary take appropriate action, which might mean sharing information with other agencies such as the police themselves.

However for the most part PREVENT requires that schools teach British Values and the importance of community cohesion.

Problems with PREVENT

In 2015 the Muslim Council of Great Britain raised a number of concerns (2) that the way PREVENT was being deployed in schools was both discriminatory against Muslims and having a harmful effect on mainly Muslim children.

They noted that 60% of referrals under PREVENT had been against Muslim children, even though they only made up 5% of the population, while only 10% of referrals were for white extremists, despite the growth in far right views in Britain.

They cite a number of case studies such as:

  • A two year old with learning difficulties being referred to social services after singing an Islamic song and then saying “Allahu Akbar” spontaneously afterwards.
  • Two students were referred to Senior Leadership Team at one school for making way for a female student and lowering their gaze as she went past.
  • In one school a physics teacher referred a Muslim student to the PREVENT team because he asked how to make a bomb, he hadn’t made a similar referral for a white student who had asked the same previously.

Human Rights Watch (3) argues that the implementation of PREVENT has violated students’ right to education and freedom of expression, making many Muslim students feel as if they cannot freely discuss religious and political issues for fear of being referred to the police.

The report cites the case of one eight year old who was subjected to an interrogation by authorities because a teacher mis-identified a name in Arabic on his T-shirt.

The main problem has been relying on teachers who are not well trained enough to identify the signs of radicalisation in children. Because of lack of training and mis-interpretation, some teachers end up alienating mainly Muslim students.

PREVENT and Islamophobia

Even though the 2021 update of PREVENT guidance doesn’t specify that school policy should be specifically focused on preventing Islamic extremism (NB the 2015 original version of PREVENT did), in practice PREVENT is usually interpreted through an Islamophobic lens.

In other words, schools mainly target Muslim students with PREVENT policies.

Jerome et al (4) cite survey research which found that over half of Black and Ethnic Minority students feel stigmatised by the PREVENT policy and feel as if the policy has made the creation of an ethnically inclusive school environment more difficult.

Signposting and Related Posts

This material is mainly relevant to the education topic within the sociology of education.

Sources

(1) Gov.UK (2021) Revised Prevent Duty Guidance for England and Wales.

(2) Muslim Council of Great Britain (2015) Concerns on Prevent.

(3) Human Rights Watch (2016) Preventing Education.

(4) Jerome et Al (2019) The Impact of the Prevent Duty on Schools: A Review of the Evidence.

Education Policy and Gender

How have education policies addressed gender differences in society and school?

If we take a longer term historical perspective, education policies have tended to reflect the dominant gender norms within society, and for the most part have served to disadvantage girls in relation to boys.

It wasn’t until Feminism and the 1975 sex discrimination act that research and policy started to address what was then the underachievement of girls.

And since the 1988 Education and the National Curriculum there has been more concern with boys underachievement than girls.

Historical education policies are also very traditional in terms how they deal with gender: they focus exclusively on differences between males and females. There is a serious lack of research on the experiences of LGBTQ pupils in schools and no explicit policy initiatives to improve the experience of LGBTQ pupils.

This post focuses on the history of education policies designed to address gender differences in education from the early 19th century to the 1988 Education Act.

Education and Gender in the 19th and early 20th Centuries

In the 19th Century there was a distinct division between male and female gender roles in society, with men working and women being consigned largely to domestic roles. Women also had no political power as they were not allowed to vote.

In the middle classes women were encouraged to marry at which point they effectively became their husband’s rather than their father’s property, and women were not allowed to divorce.

Education policies for the middle classes reflected these gender power differences. Public and grammar schools were for boys only where boys learned the skills required for politics and/ or work.

Middle class girls were educated at home by governesses, and their education largely consisted of learning the skills to be a lady within society.

The Education Act 1870 made state education free to all pupils irrespective of gender, but the experience of education was gendered, different for males and females, for many years to come.

Even women getting the right to vote in 1918 didn’t do much to change the heavily gendered experience of education

The Tripartite System and Comprehensives

The 1944 Education Act introduced single sex grammar schools, and this introduced a gender divide which benefitted boys because there were more boys grammar schools. Boys thus needed lower 11 plus scores than girls to get into a grammar school.

Some secondary moderns were single sex, but not all, these were more likely to mixed.

The 1965 education act saw the abolition of single sex grammar and secondary modern schools and all pupils were educated in mixed sex comprehensive schools.

However the experience of education still remained very gendered – with girls and boys having different experiences – subjects were often determined by gender stereotypes with girls being pushed into needlework and boys into metalwork, for example!

Education policies designed to address differences in achievement by gender

1970s -80s Feminist inspired research into gender inequalities in schools

From the mid 1970s Feminists started to take an interest in the differential experiences of girls and boys in education, why girls were so much less likely to do hard science subjects and maths, and the underachievement of girls.

Whyte (1975) looked at gender stereotypes in the primary curriculum, finding that the representation of men and women tended to reinforce traditional gender roles.

Sharpe (1976) looked at gender sterotypes in secondary schools and how they encouraged girls to act in feminine ways and develop lower career aspirations.

Spender (1982) researched the marginal position of girls in classrooms, suggesting this reflected their marginal roles in society.

Curriculum Changes in the 1980s

The 1980s saw a few policy initiatives to improve girls underachievement and their low numbers in science subjects.

Girls Into Science (GIST) ran from 1979 to 1983 which investigated the reasons why so few girls were going into science and technology subjects and encouraged teachers to develop strategies to get more girls doing these subjects.

Genderwatch was an initiative which encouraged teachers to monitor gender differences in schools and develop anti discriminatory practices.

The problem with these policies were that while they may have worked for some middle class girls, they were very individualistic, offered very little in the way of real guidance and also provoked a male backlash.

The backlash was partly due to the myth of girls underachievement – despite their low take up of science and maths girls did better in English and Modern Languages at O-level and got better overall O-level Grades at A-C.

Gender and the 1988 Education Act

The 1988 Education Act was not concerned with any kind of equality of educational opportunity, just pure competition.

The publication of GCSE results showed gender differences in achievement more clearly than ever, and from the late 1980s it was clear that girls were outperforming boys in most subjects.

Since the late 1980s both boys and girls have improved in education, with girls generally improving faster than boys, hence the gender policy focus in the 1990s switched to helping boys improve.

Signposting

This material is mainly relevant to the sociology of education topic.

Sources/ Find out More

This is a great historical post on boys, girls and science subjects in the 1970s and 1980s.