1988 Education Reform

According to Bynner and Joshi (1999) class differences have persisted since the late 1950’s. It can be seen that all studies carried out by various theorist came to the same conclusion that middle class pupils tend to do a lot better than working class in terms of educational achievement. Pupils from middle class backgrounds tend to pass more exams, stay on at school for longer and are five times more likely to go to university. This gap in achievement widens with age as right from nursery school to university, processes like labelling or the self fulfilling prophecy take

In this article the author explains how the schools are based on a class system and higher-class areas have better recourses and more classes offered. Higher-class societies have better equipment, new technology, modern facilities, better books, and better teachers. Not only are the school’s educational facilities better the extracurricular activities are also better. For example sports facilities, training facilities, band, art, all because these lower class schools cant afford what these lower class schools can. Students in lower end districts are actually ending up worse off then the higher end students. Meaning attrition rate, drop out rate, sat scores and much more.

Bowles and Gintis argue that education is the reason that this does not happen, as it legitimising class inequality by producing ideologies that justify why this inequality is fair and inevitable. Bowles and Gintis describe education ‘as a giant myth-making machine’ like the myth of meritocracy, which means that it is untrue that everyone has an equal opportunity to achieve, that rewards are based on effort and so on. A reason for achieving high income is argued to be determined more from your family and class background rather than ability or educational achievement. This serves the higher classes as it makes it appear that they gained their roles in the workforce by an equal opportunity but in reality, that is not the case, they use this to trick working class pupils to accept inequality. This means that the education system exists not only to allocate and train young people for their future work roles but also to accept the roles they are given and for the bourgeoisie to keep their power.

The 20th century saw more changes to education than the thousand years preceding it. This was largely in response to a recently industrialised country; with newly acquired voting rights, it became apparent that education should not be only for elites. Education is a crucial element of social mobility and it is important we fully understand both the positive and negative aspects of previous legislation to help us plan for the future. The were two major 20th century pieces of legislation: 1944 Education Act and 1988 Education Reform Act. Both brought with them changes that are still being felt today. This essay will cover those Acts in detail, along with other sizable changes such as comprehensivisation, marketization and how other external

There are huge class differences within the tripartite system. This consists of grammar schools for academically able pupils, technical schools, and secondary modern schools. Two- thirds of grammar school places are taken by middle-class pupils, and working-class pupils mainly attend secondary moderns. This suggests that being in a higher class gives the pupils more opportunities being at a grammar school, and suggests that they have higher academic abilities. Grammar schools have more facilities and will offer far more opportunities for the pupils, and as the pupils are from a higher class they will be able to afford any extra curricular activities or trips. Secondary moderns may not offer these things or may not have the same facilities so there is a big inequality. This is where material deprivation comes into place and families in the working class will suffer. If families are unable to afford uniforms, trips, transport to and from school, classroom materials and textbooks, it can lead children to be isolated and bullied, meaning their school work suffers. Marketization of schools means that there will be better resourced, oversubscribed schools in more affluent areas, while socially disadvantaged children are concentrated in a limited number of

The Education Reform Act of 1988 welcomed the marketization of education. This helped to improve class equality as the standards of education were raised by introducing competition between schools. Therefore if a school was failing, they would bring in head teachers from the business world in order to manage the finances of the school and help invest money into resources. This would give the working class

Income inequality plays a major role in the education disparity present in communities such as West Chelsea. The economic hardship several families experience affects the way a child grows up and the certain education they receive. As seen in Class Divide, more privileged children can attend schools such as The Avenues where they are given opportunities to grow and learn, while less privileged students are

A good education is vital in succeeding within many industries in the UK, from Business to Medicine, Politics to Art. It unfortunately does not come as a surprise that only 58.6% of students attained 5 or more GCSE’s at grades A* to C (Department for Education 2012). In comparison, albeit falling this year on previous years, 94.4% of students in private schools attained the same results (The Independent 2012a). Following the recent recession, Social mobility has begun to decline and is lower today than it was thirty years ago. It is now less likely that a child of parents in a low-income bracket will rise to the top-income bracket than it was in

The Education system of England and Wales underwent a number of important changes since 1944. This essay seeks to concentrate on these major changes describing the rationale and impact they had on the British education system.

Brown (1997) argues that middle class families impose values onto their children regarding education from a young age; they place high importance on educational qualifications as they are aware that the job market is becoming increasingly competitive (cited Ball and Vincent, 2001). This suggests that middle-class pupils value school and try to get as much as they can out of it, thus have higher levels of attainment than working-class pupils.

As mentioned earlier there are stereotypes that come with socioeconomic status, including that children from low socioeconomic status families tend to not perform as well in school as children from higher socioeconomic status families. This is not because the children from low socioeconomic status have a deficiency that causes them to underperform, but rather it is because there is an expectation that the children will not do as well and so the children walk into the classroom facing a losing battle (Schmitt-Wilson, 2013, p 228). The education that a child receives in the earliest years of their life sets up a framework for the education through the rest of their lifetime (Stull, 2013, p 54). That being said, if a child does not receive the best education in the earliest years of their schooling, it is not surprising when they do not do as well in school and do not seek higher education after high school. Another common stereotype is that children from low socioeconomic status will not go on to get high paying jobs, but even if this is true it is not

Bourdieu further argues that middle class children tend to achieve better qualifications and better quality jobs than working class children of equal measured intelligence and also come to school better equipped to succeed. In Zimbabwe a child from the working class goes to an overcrowded school where the student is forced to do “hot sitting” because the school infrastructure cannot accommodate them all at once in the morning. The small child gets to school tired and cannot even concentrate in class because of fatigue. Another challenge is also student teacher ratio where the teacher’s attention is focused more on the brighter students than on slow learners. On the other hand because their parents mix with colleagues of equal status like garden boys and factory workers, it also follows that they can also link up jobs for their children with people of equal status. This becomes a limiting factor for working class children’s chances in life. Mostly they are forced to take up menial jobs and less paying jobs despite good academic qualifications. For example in Zimbabwe if kids from poor backgrounds want to do courses like chartered accountancy, they are required to go through formal university education first and of course be extremely

Efforts to reach this are the provision of schools, with entry on a meritocratic basis. Following the 1944 Education Act in Britain, the removal of fees from secondary schools and the provision of student grants, certain financial barriers to educational attainment were minimised. Whether we measure equality of access fairly is a debateable topic, however there is overwhelming evidence which confirms that social class origins are strongly and clearly implicated in educational success or failure. Halsey, Heath and Ridge (1981), in a study of 8529 males educated in England and Wales, found that a boy who was considered middle class, compared to a boy in working class had fourth more times of attending a public school, eighteen times more chance of attending a minor independent school and twelve times more chance of attending a direct grant school and three times more chance of attending a grammar school (Journal of Social Policy, 1981). So this study heavily implies that the pattern of unequal access to the more prestigious secondary schools remained, despite the post war education reforms ‘the probability of a working-class boy receiving a fair education in the mid-fifties and sixties were very little different from that of his parents’ generation thirty years earlier’ (Halsey,

This distribution of the working class into lower prestige jobs can be accounted for by a number of factors that shall be discussed later. The inequality that exists here regarding school leavers is one that results in an economic inefficiency since the talent of many working-class pupils could have been transferred into higher skilled jobs yet due to certain other factors the talent in a crude sense is ‘wasted’. Why this is the case could be attributed to the fact that a large number of families may rely on their children to bring in a second or third income. With the deterioration of the nuclear family in society there is an increasing trend towards single parenthood and this may result in children having to leave school to get a job and support the family. Furthermore parental influence plays a large role in shaping their children’s attitudes to school. For example Furlong 1987 argues that parents from working class backgrounds who left school at an early age may not press upon their children from their early days in their school life and before five years old the importance of a good education but rather the importance of work and making money. So the culture passed onto children from their parents will have a serious effect on their educational achievement and if this is borne in at an early stage in the life cycle especially pre five, it will be

America is often enamored of itself as the champion of equality in every aspect of its society; however, this is often not the case. This is true in every aspect of life, but is very evident specifically in the American education system. Although America claims to give an equal education to all, regardless of any external factors, economic class often plays a role in what type and how good of an education a student may receive. Since education is the basis for future success, this inequity resulting from socioeconomic status implies that this is where inequality in everyday life starts, and that the system generates this inequality. If this is true, then one might ask, what then is the purpose of education? If economic class predetermines