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The Functionalist Perspective on Education

Functionalists focus on the positive functions of education – creating social solidarity, teaching core values and work skills and role allocation/ meritocracy

Functionalists focus on the positive functions performed by the education system. There are four positive functions that education performs:

1. Creating social solidarity
2. Teaching skills necessary for work
3. Teaching us core values
4. Role Allocation and meritocracy

Education Creates Social Solidarity

We have social solidarity when we feel as if we are part of something bigger. Emile Durkheim argued that school makes us feel like we are part of something bigger. This is done through the learning of subjects such as history and English which give us a shared sense of identity. Also in American schools, children pledge allegiance to the flag.

Durkheim argued that ‘school is a society in miniature.’ preparing us for life in wider society. For example, both in school and at work we have to cooperate with people who are neither friends or family – which gets us ready for dealing with people at work in later life.

Learning specialist skills for work

Durkheim noted that an advanced industrial economy required a massive and complex Division of Labour. At school, individuals learn the diverse skills necessary for this to take place. For example, we may all start off learning the same subjects, but later on we specialise when we do GCSEs.

The most obvious examples of this function of education are in the compulsory sector, especially with vocational education where students learn the specific skills required for particular professions – everything from engineering and construction to media and IT technicians and beauty therapy.

Durkheim believed that one of the most impressive things about modern education systems was that they simultaneously taught us core values and a sense of belonging to the whole (See below) while at the same time they teach us the DIFFERENT and DIVERSE skills that a modern economic system requires to function.

Education teaches pupils core values

Talcott Parsons argued that education acts as the ‘focal socializing agency’ in modern society. School plays the central role in the process of secondary socialisation, taking over from primary socialisation. He argued this was necessary because the family and the wider society work in different principles and children need to adapt if they re to cope In the wider world.

In the family, children are judged according to what he calls particularistic standards by their parents – that is they are judged by rules that only apply to that particular child. Individual children are given tasks based on their different abilities and judged according to their unique characteristics. Parents often adapt rules to suit the unique abilities of the child.

In contrast in school and in wider society, children and adults are judged according to the same universalistic standards (i.e they are judged by the same exams and the same laws). These rules and laws are applied equally to all people irrespective of the unique character of the individual. School gets us ready for this.

The above ties in quite nicely with the modernisation theory view of development – achieved status is seen as a superior system to the ascribed status found in traditional societies.

Role Allocation and meritocracy

Education allocates people to the most appropriate job for their talents using examinations and qualifications. This ensures that the most talented are allocated to the occupations that are most important for society. This is seen to be fair because there is equality of opportunity – everyone has a chance of success and it is the most able who succeed through their own efforts – this is known as meritocracy.

Functionalists believe that meritocracy is extremely important for peace in society because people will only accept status and wage differences if those in lower status jobs believe they themselves had (or have) a fair chance to climb the ladder and get a higher status and better paid job themselves.

Positive evaluations of the Functionalist view on education

School performs positive functions for most pupils most of the time – even though students might not want to go to school sometimes and not necessarily enjoy school some of the time, the majority come out after 13 years of formal schooling as reasonable human beings.

There does seem to be a link between education and economic growth, suggesting a good education system benefits the wider society and economy. All countries in Western Europe have very good education systems while many poorer countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have many more problems with their education systems, such as low attendance rates.

Exclusion and truancy rates are relatively low, suggesting there is very little active resistance to schooling.

Schools do at least try to foster ‘solidarity’ – through PSHE lessons and teaching British Values for example.

Education is more ‘work focused’ today – increasing amounts of vocational courses. If you look at post-16 education especially there is a lot of diverse courses offered and it it is difficult to see how technologically advanced post-industrial economies could function without a thriving post-16 and university sectors.

Schooling is more meritocratic than in the 19th century (fairer)

Criticisms of the Functionalist View of Education

It is usual in A-level sociology to criticise one perspective using other perspectives, but in the case of Functionalism there are many more stand alone criticisms that we can make!

Marxists argue the education system is not meritocratic – wealthier students from higher socio-economic backgrounds still, in 2022, get better results than poorer students from lower socio-economic backgrounds, this is true within the state school system , but the largest difference in achievement is between the 7% of very wealthy students who attend fee paying independent schools and the 93% who attend state schools.

HOWEVER, there is evidence that a disadvantage gap opened up during school lockdowns in 2020 and 2021, with poorer students falling further behind than richer students, this actually suggests that when schools are open as usual, they at least narrow that achievement gap to an extent!

Marxists would also argue that the Functionalist view of education is ideological – the fact that it focuses on the postive functions of education means it reflects the views of the powerful – the education system tends to work for them and they suggests there is nothing to criticise.

The Functionalist perspective on education was developed in the late 19th century (Durkheim) and the 1950s (Parsons) – during modernity, but with the shift to postmodernity society has changed and the British school system seems to have adapted with it.

For example, schools today focus more on developing the individual rather than teaching duties and responsibilities that individuals should adopt towards society – it’s more about the individual and less about solidarity (following the shift from modern to postmodern society)

Functionalism ignores the negative sides of school – e.g. bullying and there are a minority for who it doesn’t work, such as those permanently excluded. If we were to do the kind of in-depth research Interactionists prefer we might find that a significant minority of children are harmed during school in more subtle ways.

It is difficult to argue that schools performed any of the above four functions during the disruption caused by the government’s response to the pandemic, especially not being judged by universalistic standards (no standardized exams) or meritocracy (because private school teachers inflated their students’ grades more than state school teachers).

Video summary of the Functionalist Theory of Education

Contemporary Evidence to Evaluate Functionalism (2022 update)

Students need to be able to evaluate sociological perspectives using contemporary evidence and a lot has happened in the last few years, most of the evidence suggesting that the Functionalist view of education is extremely limited in helping us to understand the role of education in society.

Below I consider five pieces of contemporary evidence mainly from 2020-2022 and what they suggest about some of the key ideas of Functionalism as applied to education.

The shift to the Ebacc

The government plans to make 90% of pupils sit GCSEs from with the Ebacc suite of subjects by 2025. This will result in a more similar experience of education for 14-16 year olds studying towards GCSEs and the Ebacc as the Ebacc consists of a relatively narrow range of subjects: English, maths, the sciences, history or geography and a language.

On the surface this move away from allowing students to have more choice in what they study could lead to more of a shared collective conscience and thus solidarity and value consensus as students are taught a higher proportion of rational (e.g. a lot more science) and critical subjects – so more students might finish their GCSEs thinking more similarly.

The ArtsProfessional blog points out that this will result in more students from more deprived backgrounds studying subjects NOT on the approved Ebacc list because such students are more likely to do seven rather than nine GCSEs – and they have to do seven from the list above as part of the Ebacc. This means we could have poorer students being excluded from creative subjects and P.E. because these aren’t on the list, while richer and more able students do the seven Ebacc subjects plus two or three other GCSEs of their choice.

It’s also likely that more able and affluent students will get better results in their Ebacc and have a more rounded subject base because of their additional subjects, while less able and poorer students end up with only Ebacc GCSEs and weaker results.

So the net effect of making students sit a narrower range of subjects is an increase in the inequality of outcomes along class lines, which goes against the idea of meritocracy as it reproduces class inequality.

The Problem with PREVENT and British Values

The requirement to teach British Values in schools started in 2015 and emerged out of the PREVENT agenda, which required schools to intervene when they suspected (mainly Muslim) children were being radicalised and drawn into terrorism.

The government defines British values as democracy, respect for the rule of law, individual liberty and tolerance and respect for those with different faiths – and the theory behind getting students to think about what ‘being British’ means is that it might to create a new tolerant and respectful national identity based on these values and help prevent radicalisation and terrorism.

OFSTED’s vision is that British Values are embedded into the curriculum and taught through several critical thinking subjects such as history and english – through which students learn about the historical struggles for democracy and the emergence of civil society. Ideally, students would also be taught to think about whether these values are universal beyond Britain.

However, according to a 2018 article in the Conversation it is highly unlikely that the requirement on schools to teach British Values is going to promote Value Consensus in any meaningful way.

Some schools, for example, confuse British Values with British stereotypes and get students to do projects such as doing collages of what Britishness in involving pictures of the Queen (or now King) and fish and chips, which hardly promote critical thinking.

A second problem is that these values are so general that each of them can be interpreted in many different ways, and they are also full of contradictions.

For example, there are different forms of democracy, other than our first past the post system, and ‘individual liberty’ is context dependent and clearly has its limits, but where? And as to the rule of law: Boris Johnson didn’t even respect that during lockdown so that is laughable. Hence any discussions around what the specifics of these values should mean could potentially reveal or even open up divisions between pupils.

There is also a problem that the whole PREVENT and British Values agenda emerged as a response to Islamic fundamentalism – it could potentially lead to further marginalisation of Muslim children in schools as the implicit message is that it’s mainly targeted at making Muslim children conform to this new Britishness (whatever that is!)

BREXIT

The EU Referendum in 2015 firmly split the UK population down the middle, with approximately half the population voting to stay in the EU and half voting to leave.

This is the only time that the UK Population has been offered the chance to vote directly on a specific social policy and the fact that it divided the nation in half suggests that there is no meaningful value consensus around the idea of how Britain should relate to the wider world.

And clearly if there is no value consensus in adult society, schools have roundly failed to foster any sense of value consensus on this issue during the last five decades!

Graduate Labour Market Statistics

The 2021 Graduate Labour Market statistics suggest some broad support for education performing the role allocation function, where a tiered education system sifts and sorts people into higher and higher skilled roles.

86.7% of graduates were employed in 2021 compared to 67.2% of non-graduates:

And graduates were three times as likely to be in ‘highly skilled’ jobs compared to non-graduates, suggesting that going to university successfully sifts most graduates into higher skilled jobs.

bar chart comparing employment rates for graduates and non graduates

HOWEVER there are still around 25% of graduates who end up in lower skilled jobs so clearly the system isn’t that effective, and it’s also clear that going to university is NOT the only way to secure a higher-skilled job.

Apprenticeships

According to the 2021-22 apprenticeship data The total number of people doing apprenticeships in 2021-2022 was approximately 750 000, with the main sectors being health and social care and business administration.

The majority of people doing apprenticeships are under 25 and this suggests that apprenticeships are working alongside more traditional further and higher education institutions (colleges and universities) to further perform the function of role allocation.

The numbers of people doing apprenticeships certainly aren’t sufficient to suggest that apprenticeship, work based learning is undermining the role allocation function being performed my colleges and universities.

Test Yourself

Sociology of Education Revision Bundle

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

34 pages of revision notes

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

Signposting/ Related Posts

This post has been written primarily for students studying the education topic, as part of the AQA’s A-Level Sociology course.

The Functionalist perspective on education is usually the first discrete topic taught within the sociology of education module.

After reading this post you might like to read this Evaluations of Functionalism post which discusses the strengths and limitations of this perspective in more depth

After Functionalism students usually study The Marxist Perspective on Education which criticises much of what Functionalists say about the topic.

A related perspective is The New Right View of Education which is usually taught as an updated and modified version of Functionalism, more relevant to society today.

You might also like this summary of perspectives on education grid, although you might need to squint to see it (update pending!)

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

The effect of cultural deprivation on education

cultural deprivation refers to the inferior values of the working class, including immediate gratification and fatalism.

Cultural Deprivation theory holds that some groups, such as the lower social classes, have inferior norms, values, skills and knowledge which prevent them from achieving in education. Inferior language skills, and the fact that working class parents do not value education are largely to blame for working class underachievement, rather than material deprivation.

You might also hear ‘cultural deprivation’ theory referred to as ‘working class subculture theory‘ reflecting the fact that this theory has its origins in the 1960s, details of which I cover below.

Cultural deprivation and education

Five ways in which cultural deprivation can disadvantage children in education include:

Working class parents may show a lack of interest in their children’s education
Lower class parents are less able to help their children with homework
Lower class children are more likely to speak in a restricted speech code. Rather than the elaborated speech code- Basil Bernstein argued this.

Working class children are more concerned with Immediate Gratification rather than deferred gratification – Barry Sugarman argued this.
The underclass has a higher than average percentage of single parent families. Melanie Philips argued this.

Class subcultures and education

Cultural deprivation theory has its origins in the 1960s when sociologists thought there was a clear class divide between the working and middle classes.

All of the studies below suggest that working class cultures are deficient and that working class children are deprived as a result. These explanations thus put the blame for working class underachievement on the working class families themselves. In these explanations, working class parents basically teach their children norms and values that do not equip them for education in later life.

The value system of different classes

In 1967 Herbert H Hyman authored an article (1) titled ‘The value system of different classes’ arguing that the value system of the lower classes created a self-imposed barrier to them improving themselves.

Compared to the middle classes, the working classes:

placed a lower value on education
placed a lower value on achieving high occupational status
Believed there was less opportunity for social advancement.

Hyman thus concluded that the working classes were less motivated to achieve in school than the middle classes.

Immediate and Deferred Gratification

Barry Sugarman argued that there were two distinct working and middle class subcultures which had different value systems. He argued there were four main differences, but the one he is best know for is the distinction between immediate and deferred gratification.

Values of the working class subculture

Compared to the middle classes, the working classes are more likely to have….

Immediate gratification: a focus on seeking pleasure in the moment, rather than delaying pleasure for future reward. This encouraged working class children to leave school early to earn money immediately rather than staying on when they were 16-19 to gain higher level qualifications which would get them a higher paying job a few years later.
Fatalism: an acceptance of one’s situation and a belief that one’s lot in life could not be changed. This meant working class children didn’t believe education could help them in life, they just accepted they would go into working class jobs which required no qualifications.
Present-time orientation: a focus on the present and lack of desire to plan for the future.

Collectivism: loyalty to the group, rather than the individual aspiration which the education system demands. A good example of collectivism could be in the lads which Paul Willis studied in Learning to Labour.

These combined values meant that working class children were disadvantaged compared to middle class children as the middle classes benefited from deferred gratification, motivation to improve, future-time orientation and individualism, which fitted with the values of the education system.

cartoon explaining the difference between immediate and deferred gratification

Recent evidence for cultural deprivation theory

Connor et al (2001) conducted focus group interviews with 230 students from 4 different FE colleges from a range of class backgrounds, some of whom had chosen to go to university and some who had not chosen to go to University. The main findings were that working class pupils are discouraged from going to university for three main reasons:

Firstly, such candidates want ‘immediate gratification’. They want to earn money and be independent at an earlier age. This is because they are aware of their parents having struggled for money and wish to avoid debt themselves
Secondly, they realise that their parents cannot afford to support them during Higher Education and did not like the possibility of them getting into debt
Thirdly, they have less confidence in their ability to succeed in HE.

Research by Leon Fenstein (2003) found that low income was related to the restricted speech code. His research revealed that children of working-class parents tend to be more passive; less engaged in the world around them and have a more limited vocabulary. Children from middle-class households had a wider vocabulary, better understanding of how to talk to other people and were more skilled at manipulating objects.

These studies actually show that cultural and material deprivation are related

Evaluations of cultural deprivation theory

If we look at ethnicity and gender differences in achievement – to triangulate, it does seem that cultural factors play a role!

It seems that it isn’t just cultural deprivation but also material deprivation that explains underachievement
Marxists would argue that cultural deprivation theorists blame the working class parents for the underachievement of their children whereas these parents are really the victims of an unequal society in which schools are run by the middle classes for the middle classes.
Both Hyman and Sugarman may have exaggerated the differences between working class and middle class culture, and especially today the class structure is much more complex.

Signposting

This material is mainly relevant to the sociology of education, especially the topic of social class differences in educational achievement (home based factors).

Related Posts include:

The effects of material deprivation on education

The effects of cultural capital on educational achievement

Related External Posts – Useful

Earlham’s Pages – do their usual ‘overwhelming for anyone but an A* students whose interested in Sociology approach’ (personally I like it though, then again I’m several levels above both of those criteria) – lots of contemporary links at the top (no summaries) and then a useful overview of ‘class subcultures’ below.

Factors influencing class based differences in educational achievement – probably written by a student but it’s quite a useful summary!

Sources

(1) Barry Sugarman (1970) Social Class, Values and Behaviour in Schools.

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

The Effects of Material Deprivation on Education

material deprivation means poor kids are more likely go hungry and get sick from living in cold houses which harms their education.

Material deprivation can be defined as the inability to afford basic resources and services such as sufficient food and heating. Material deprivation generally has a negative effect on educational achievement.

Material deprivation is very strongly correlated with low income and poverty. The lower the wealth and income of a household the more likely that household is to suffer from material deprivation.

Material Deprivation and Education

Gibson and Asthana (1999) pointed out that there is a correlation between low household income and poor educational performance. There are a number of ways in which poverty can negatively affect the educational performance of children. For example –

Children in poor homes are more likely to live in cold and even damp conditions which results in higher levels which in turn will mean more absence from school and falling behind with lessons. This is especially the case since the cost of living crisis and soaring energy bills.
Worse diets. They are more likely to skip meals, for example, which means they will be unable to concentrate in school.
Less able to afford ‘hidden costs’ of free state education: books and toys are not bought, and computers are not available in the home.

Children from poorer backgrounds are more likely to be living in smaller homes and having to share a bedroom with a brother or sister. This means they will lack a private study space and not to be able to homework free from distractions.
Tuition fees and loans would be a greater source of anxiety to those from poorer backgrounds.
Poorer parents are less likely to have access to pre-school or nursery facilities.

Young people from poorer families are more likely to have part-time jobs, such as paper rounds, baby sitting or shop work, creating a conflict between the competing demands of study and paid work.
Poorer parents will only be able to afford houses in poorer areas which tend to have higher rates of crime and other social problems. Schools in those areas will have to devote more of their resources to tackling these social problems rather than teaching children, so results will suffer.

Analysis

Those households suffering from material deprivation in the United Kingdom today are likely to be in relative poverty rather than absolute poverty, but nonetheless some of the above factors can work together and combine to make the experience poverty worse.

For example low income can lead to debt which leads to lower income because of the interest payment on those debts.

Low income can lead to poor diet, which can lead to illness, which means time off work, which means lower income.

The flow chart below shows how multiple factors related to poverty can lead to reduced educational opportunities for children:

Material deprivation is not the only form of deprivation. In A-level sociology the term material deprivation refers to tangible, material things which can usually be bought with money, and is usually contrasted to cultural deprivation which refers to lack of appropriate norms and values. The two often work together.

Evidence for material deprivation

There are three classic pieces of sociological research which explored this issue:

Stephen Ball (2005) points out how the introduction of marketisation means that those who have more money have a greater choice of state schools because of selection by mortgage

Conner et al (2001) and Forsyth and Furlong (2003) both found that the introduction of tuition fees in HE puts working class children off going to university because of fear of debt
Leon Fenstein (2003) found that low income is related to low cognitive reasoning skills amongst children as young as two years old

There is also a lot of contemporary evidence from organizations such as the Sutton Trust which documents the continued impact of material deprivation on education….

Poor kids going hungry…

In 2019 the National Education Union conducted a survey of 8000 teachers and school leaders focusing on how poverty was affecting their children’s learning and achievement.

Among the findings were:

Over 75% reported their students had experienced hunger of fatigue and difficulty to concentrate on schoolwork due to poverty

Over 50% reported students had been ill and missed schoolwork due to poverty.
Over 30% reported their students had been bullied because of poverty.
Nearly all schools reported that the Pandemic harmed poor students more and that poor parents and parents relied on schools for support more during that time.

In general poverty has a negative affect on the mental health, well being and educational achievement of poor pupils.

There were 1.9 million pupils eligible for Free School Meals in 2022, but the Child Poverty Action Group estimates that there are an additional 800 000 pupils from working poor households who are going hungry but do not qualify for Free School Meals because their parents fall just above the threshold line and so do not qualify for them (1) . This situation has been accelerated with the Cost of Living Crisis.

Poor kids in cold houses

The Institute of Health Inequalities (3) estimated in 2022 that one in five households with children under five are in fuel poverty (see * below for a note on the definition), but projected that the numbers could easily treble into the winter of 2023.

Whatever way you look at it, there are increasing numbers of children living in households which are struggling to pay their gas and electric bills and thus struggling to keep their housing warm, which means more children living in cold and possibly damp houses.

The institute notes that 1.7 Million school days are lost in the EU due to illnesses related to damp and mold, and the UK has the highest rate of all member states, with a rate 80% above the average.

Living in a fuel poverty household can also mean it is more difficult for children to do homework as everyone is more likely to cram into one or two heated rooms (the ‘heat one room’ strategy).

Poverty and university students

The impacts of material deprivation are also felt by university students. According to a survey of 1000 students in January 2023 conducted by the Sutton Trust 33% of students from working class backgrounds reported skipping meals compared to only 24% of students from middle class backgrounds, and 10% (working class) compared to 4% (middle class) of students reported having moved back home with their parents to save money (5)

The Cost of Living Crisis

The recent rise in gas and electricity prices mean that many more households have been pushed into relative poverty in 2022 and 2023.

As a result hundreds of thousands, if not millions more children are experiencing some form of material deprivation, as families choose between heating or eating.

Evaluations of the role of material deprivation

To say that poverty causes poor educational performance is too deterministic as some students from poor backgrounds do well. Because of this, one must be cautious and rather than say there is a causal relationship between these two variables as the question suggests, it would be more accurate to say that poverty disadvantages working class students and makes it more difficult for them to succeed.
There are other differences between classes that may lead to working class underachievement. For example, those from working class backgrounds are not just materially deprived, they are also culturally deprived.

The Cultural Capital of the middle classes also advantages them in education.
In practise it is difficult to separate out material deprivation from these other factors.

Possible policy solutions

There are plenty of things governments can do to help those in poverty at the school level.

Most schools provide text books and basic education resources for free to students, and all schools have access to computers and schools staying open for longer in the evenings and homework clubs can help combat lack of computers at home and cold houses.

One thing being trialed in London now is Universal Free School Meals – the idea behind making them universal is that this removes the stigma behind claiming them.

Schools have also increasingly taken it upon themselves to combat child poverty through setting up foodbanks and breakfast clubs, for example, recognizing that hungry children don’t learn effectively.

The problem with all of the above is that these initiatives require money from central government, and funding has been cut in real terms by 14% since 2010 under the neoliberal Tories.

It is also unlikely that policies at the school level can do anything to combat the wider structural inequalities that ultimately result in poor kids doing worse than rich kids in state education. The government is not going to legislate to prevent ‘selection by mortgage’ for example, which gives a huge advantage to rich kids.

Signposting

This is relevant to the sociology of education module.

The Extent of Material Deprivation in the UK

Evaluating the extent of material deprivation in the UK

Sources

(1) The Guardian (September 2022) Hungry Children Miss Out on Free School Meals

(3) The Institute of Health Equity (2022) Fuel Poverty, Cold Homes and Health Inequalities in the UK.

(4) National Education Union (2021) Child Poverty the Facts

(5) The Sutton Trust (2023) A QUARTER OF STUDENTS AT RISK OF DROPPING OUT OF UNIVERSITY DUE TO COST OF LIVING CRISIS

Channel Four News Report (September 2022) Children coming to school hungry

Tag: education