Education Policy in the UK

1. Schooling is usually compulsory & is controlled & largely financed by the state.
2. Professional teachers are employed to instruct children.
3. The attendance of children is normally a legal requirement.

School systems in advanced industrial societies also vary in a number of ways

1. The curriculum may be centrally determined or left to local or professional judgement.
2. Teaching methods may vary from ‘authoritarian’ to those that are ‘child centred’.
3. The authority & influence exercised by children & parents in the school may vary.

The organisation of schooling will depend in part on the relative influence of the three perspectives on social policy we have been discussing in class, this of course in turn is influence by the research carried out by sociologists from these perspectives. We will now look at three perspectives on education policy focusing on school level education whilst being aware the other levels of education are equally contested.

1. The right is more concerned with the maintenance of social order & in the effective transmission of dominant values.
2. Reformists see schooling as part of a strategy for the pursuit of the goal of equality of opportunity & economic efficiency.
3. Radicals may stress democratic control of the school & a curriculum designed to meet the needs of working-class students & the use of schooling to promote social solidarity.

The right has always been concerned that schooling should maintain social order, authority & hierarchy. Schools should transmit the knowledge & values of the dominant culture.

Conservative thought has often proposed a differentiated system of education based on class.

1. In Britain the ‘public schools’ (private, fee-paying schools) were designed to educate those destined for positions of leadership in the state & the British empire.
2. Grammar schools were to educate those destined for intermediate positions in the class structure.
3. The working class were schooled in ‘elementary’ and later ‘junior secondary’ schools to prepare them to occupy subordinate positions.

Right-wing critiques of reformist educational policies have focused on ‘progressive teaching methods’. These include group work, child centred education, lack of ‘discipline’ & what was seen as the radical political character of the progressive curriculum. The right often blame ‘falling standards’ on progressive educational methods.

A search for complete equality, combined with a vague Rousseatic belief that all men left unhampered are good, has brought the pressure for full secondary comprehensification for social ends, for non-streaming & the adoption of so-called ‘progressive’ & non academic methods of teaching or non-teaching. This egalitarian movement {has been} driven forward by adult men & women with the sad simplicity of the militant students ..(Boyson, 1970:57)

The debate over the national curriculum introduced in the late 1980s saw a challenge to the traditional approach to the teaching of British history. The left argued for more ‘history from below’ while the right wanted an approach stressing the role of monarchs & ‘great men’.

More recently, the right has attempted to restructure education according to liberal principles. The 1988 Education Act passed by the conservative government was based on the new-right idea of a provider market in which schools had to compete. In this provider market:

1. Parental choice forces each school to compete for pupils & the income of the school depends on the number of pupils.
2. Competition between schools is intended to raise ‘standards’ since good schools will get more pupils ( & more income) & expand & poor schools will contract or even close.
3. Consumers (ie parents) are given more information to allow informed choice, since school publish the results from national tests of attainment.

Local Management of Schools (LMS) has been introduced in order to encourage a more business-like approach. Schools have a ‘delegated-budget’ and are run by a Governing Body (School Board) containing elected parents representatives. This is equivalent to the Board of Directors of a private business, since it decides on staffing & can purchase such services as school meals or cleaning. Diversity is also allowed by allowing schools to opt out of LEA control & become ‘grant maintained’ receiving funds directly from the government, and by the establishment of school known as City technology Colleges(CTCs). However there is no choice for teachers or parents over what is taught, since the government now controls this through the National Curriculum Council( In England ) Teaching methods are also prescribed by the Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) also in England, which undertakes regular inspection of schools.

The new liberalism as a political theory has developed two ideas which came to occupy a central place in social democratic thought. These were the ideas of citizenship & of ‘equality of opportunity’ . One of the main theorist of the new liberalism was Hobson:

Liberalism is now formally committed to ...a new conception of the state in relation to the individual life & to private enterprise. That conception is not Socialism....though implying a considerable amount of increased public ownership & control of industry....it appears as a fuller appreciation & realisation of individual liberty contained in the provision of equal opportunities for self-development...it will justify itself by enlargements of its liberative functions seeking to realise liberty for the individual citizen as ‘equality of opportunity’ (Hobson, 1909: xx-xxii)

In Britain, one of major reforms initiated during the Second world war was the 1944 Education Act under which secondary education was provided free of charge to all children. Subsequently most local authorities in Britain required pupils in their last year an ‘11+’ examination to decide what kind of secondary education they would receive. They would be allocated to grammar or sometimes a technical or junior secondary school. In principle each of these types of schooling were meant to be equal in ‘esteem’

Many reformists believe that expenditure on education has strong links with economic growth. There was evidence that most working class children went to junior secondary schools where their educational achievements were relatively low. Many reformists saw this as a waste of talent & as economically damaging, because it restricted the pool of abilities available to employers. It was also socially divisive, since it worked against equality of opportunity. Equality of opportunity was one of the arguments used to support the idea of comprehensive (non-selective) state secondary education.. This was encouraged from the early 1960’s though the state sector of education has continued to permit the retention of selection, & grammar schools remain in some areas.

Radical critics have claimed that comprehensive schooling alone would not be able significantly to raise working-class educational standards. These are chiefly the result of the social deprivation characteristic of working-class experience rather then the inadequacy of educational provision.

Radicals have rejected the incorporation & encouragement of capitalist values in schooling. They point to a ‘hidden curriculum’ which familiarises children with a particular attitude to issues of power, hierarchy & conflict. They have criticised working-class schooling for being organised around the ‘need’ of the capitalist system for a docile & obedient manual workforce habituated to discipline & routine. In this view, education plays a major part in the ‘reproduction’ of the capitalist system. Schooling has also being described as part of the ‘ideological state apparatus’ designed to ensure ideological conformity rather than liberate the powers of the individual.

Gramsci believed that schooling provided the means of transmitting a particular consciousness necessary to maintain a particular class rule. The way this is achieved is not a straightforward indoctrination of children; it is, rather a saturation of consciousness by the meanings, values & practices which are already deeply embedded in the social structure in which we live. (Finch, 1984:159)

Radical views on education often include the following:

1. A belief in a system of public education for all.
2. Support for high minimum standards of educational achievement for all.
3. A belief that the impact of adverse social conditions on the capacity to learn needs to be overcome.
4. Increased social equality has been portrayed as vital to educational improvement.
5. Support for a pupil-centred approach to teaching.

There is also a libertarian & progressive tradition in private education. Some radicals have rejected the state system altogether & supported ‘free schools’ based on progressive principles. Schools such as Summerhill - an independent boarding school founded by A.S . Neill were organised on libertarian lines with pupils choosing what & how to study. Illich takes this argument to its limits & proposes ‘deschooling’ society.

The claim that a liberal society can be founded on the modern school is paradoxical. The safeguards of individual freedom are all cancelled in the dealings of a teacher with his pupil. When the teacher fuses in his person the functions of judge, ideologue, & doctor, the fundamental style of society is perverted by the very process which should prepare life. A teacher who combines these three powers contributes to the warping of the child....(Illich, 1973: 37-8)

1. What sociological perspectives are closest to these views of education?
2. What account if any best explains UK education, what is your experience of the education system?