Educational Policy and Inequality

Before the Industrial Revolution there were no state schools and education was only available to a rich minority. Industrialisation increased the need for an educated workforce and in 1880 the state made schooling compulsory from the ages of 5-13. However, schooling did little to change pupils' ascribed status with the middle class being taught to go into office work and the working class with the basic skills needed for routine factory work

From 1944 education began to be influenced by meritocracy. The 1944 Education Act brought in the tripartite system where children were allocatd to one of three types of secondary schools based on their ability. Grammar schools offered an academic curriculum for those who had passed the 11+ exam, mainly the middle class and Secondary modern schools offered a practical curriculum for those who had failed, mainly the working class. Instead of promoting meritocracy this reproduced class inequality by splitting the classes up and legitimised inequality through the ideology that ability is inborn

The comprehensive system was introduced in many areas from 1965 with the 11+ to be abolished along with grammar schools to be replaced by comprehensive schools which all pupils in an area would attend. However, it was left to the local authority whether to make this change so not all did

Functionalists argue that comprehensives promote social integration by bringing children of different social classes together and being more meritocratic as it gives pupils more time to show their ability. However, many argue that this wasn't the case due to streaming

Marxists instead argue that comprehensives are not meritocratic and instead reproduce class inequality from the continuation of streaming which continue to deny the working class opportunity

Marketisation has become a central theme of government education policy since the 1988 Education Reform Act introduced by the Thatcher Conservative government. Neoliberals and the New Right favour marketisation as they say it will improve standards

Policies to promote marketisation include the publication of Ofsted reports and exam league tables, specialist schools which widen parental choice, formula funding where schools receive the same amount of funding for each pupil, allowing parents to set up free schools etc. David describes marketisation as a parentocracy. However, Ball argues that parentocracy is a myth as middle class parents have the upper hand as they are able to afford to move to the catchment area of a better school for example

However, many argue that marketisation has increased inequalities. The policy of publishing each school's exam results in a league table ensures that good schools are more in demand. Bartlett notes that this encourages:

cream-skimming where good schools can be more selective and recruit high achieving, mainly middle class pupils so these pupils gain an advantage

silt-shifting where good schools can avoid taking less able pupils who are likely to get poor results and damage the league table. The opposite applies for schools with low league table positions as they can only take less able pupils so they remain unattractive to middle class parents

The funding formula means popular schools get more funding so can afford better teachers, equipment etc but by contrast unpopular schools lose income so have degrading facilities with the 2012 Public Policy Research study finding that Britain's system produces more segregation of children of different social backgrounds

Gewirtz: parental choice

By increasing parental choice, marketisation advantages middle class parents whose economic and cultural capital is better. This is whown in Gewirtz's study of 14 London secondary schools where she identifies three main types of parents:

• Privileged-skilled choosers - mainly professional middle class parents who were prosperous and well educated and possessed cultural capital. They knew how the school admissions system worked and had the economic capital by being able to pay extra travel costs so that their children could attend a better school
• Disconnected-local choosers - working class parents who found it difficult to understand the school system and were less aware of the choices. Costs restricted them by only being able to attend the most local school
• Semi-skilled choosers - mainly working class but were more ambitious for their children but they still lacked cultural capital so had to rely on other people's opinions about schools

While marketisation policies have appeared to increase inequality, the New Labout governments of 1997-2010 also introduced policies to reduce it:

• Designating some deprived areas as Education Action Zones and providing them with additional resources
• The Aim Higher programme to raise the aspirations of working class and minority students who are under-represented in university
• Education Maintenance Allowances which are payments to low income students to encourage them to stay on in education after 16
• City academies were created to give a fresh start to struggling inner city schools with mainly working class pupils

However, critics such as Benn see the New Labour policies as being the New Labour paradox as for example the EMAs were introduced to encourage poorer students to aspire to go to university but at the same time they increased tuition fees 

From 2010 all schools were encouraged to leave local authority control and become academies where the school itself was given funding directly from local authorities. By 2012 over half of all secondary schools had converted to academy status.

Although directly funded by the state, free schools are set up and run by parents, teachers, businesses etc rather than the local authority. They can be seen as improving standards by taking control away from the state. However, many free schools take fewer disadvantaged students such as in Bristol where only 6.4% of pupils at the free school were eligible for free school meals compared with 22.5% across the city as a whole

Ball argues that promoting academies and free schools has led to both increased fragmentation and centralisation:

Fragmentation - the comprehensive system is being replaced by a patchwork of diverse provision, much of it involving private providers, that leads to greater inequality in opportunities

Centralisation of control - central government alone has the power to allow or require schools to become academies so their rapid growth has greatly reduced the role of elected local authorities in education

They have also introduced free school meals for all children from reception to year 2 and the Pupil Premium which is money that schools receive for each pupil from a disadvantaged background

Privatisation involves the transfer of schools to private companies where education becomes a source for profit in what Ball calls the education services industry. These private based companies are involved in building schools, providing supply teachers etc. Large scale building projects are often public private partnerships which is very profitable and can earn companies ten times as much profit as they do on other contracts but local authorities are forced to enter into this due to lack of funding

Many private companies are foreign owned with Edexcel being owned by the US giant Pearson and the UK's four leading educational software companies are all owned by global multinationals Disney, Mattel, Hambro and Vivendi

The private sector also affects education indirectly as well through vending machines and brand loyalty through logos and sponsorships with this process being called the colaisation of schools. Schools are targeted as they are a good place of product endorsement but the benefits to pupils are very limited with Beder saying that UK families spent £110,000 in Tesco in return for a single computer for schools

Policy is increasingly focused on moving educational services into private compaines with education becoming a commodity to be brought and sold in an education market which Marxists hate

In the 19th century girls were mainly excluded from higher education and in the tripartite system girls had to achieve a higher mark than boys to pass the 11+. Since the 1970s gender inequality has been addressed with policies such as GIST to reduce subject choice differences

Assimilation policies in the 1960s focused on the need for minority pupils to be a part of British culture as a way of raising their achievement, especially by helping those for whom English was not their first language. However, critics argue many underachieving ethnic minority pupils already spoke fluent English. Multicultural education policies in the 1980s & 90s aimed to value all cultures to improve achievement but they were criticised by the New Right who said education should impose a shared national culture. Social inclusion policies became the focus in the 1990s by amending the Race Relations Act to promote equality but critics argue this did not address structural problems like poverty