sociology paper 1 advanced info cards

-Teachers claim to be committed to equality but asian girls got less attention and felt their cultural traditions (e.g. the Hijab) were disapproved of. 

-Supports idea of institutional racism

-Black girls have higher positive self-esteem and aspirations but still experience discrimination, however have developed strategies to minimise the effects of it

-the national curriculum

-WISE (women in science and engineering)

-GIST (girls into science and technology)

-Schools label boys negatively as they are associated with bad behaviour which gives the schools a bad reputation. This creates a self fulfilling prophecy

-High female achievement is a resulty of quality of interaction with teachers.

-Teachers spend the most time with girls to help with work, while most of the time teachers spend with males is focused on behaviour management

-The underachievement in boys masks the problems girls still have

-High achieving asian and chinese students can get negatively labelled as 'robots' who need no help and are incapable of indepedent thought

-Black WC girls can be labelled as loud and aggressive

-the ongoing achievement of girls is therefore fragile and problematic

-The Equal Pay act (1971)

-Sex Discrimination act (1975)

^Created more equal opportunities, changed values in society and attitudes in school

-AKA the Butler Act. Introduced free schooling until 15, the tripartite system, and the 11+.

-The Tripartite system consisted of: Grammar schools for the more able kids who passed the 11+, teaching subjects appropriate for university (around 20% of pupils got in), Secondary Modern schools for children who failed the 11+, offering more basic education (75-80% pupils attended), and Technical schools for students with more aptitude for technical subjects, teaching vocational courses

- The 11+ didn't necessarily measure actual intelligence, it was culturally biased, it legitimised inequality, and was unfair on 'late bloomers'
- Very few technical schools were actually built, so the vocational part of the tripartite system was not fully effective
- Children who failed the 11+ were labelled as failures, which put them off education
- Private schools still existed, so wealthy MC families with children who failed the 11+ could just send them to a private school

-Labour gov. abolished the tripartite system and 11+, instead making all schools comprehensive to give equal opportunity

Eval:

+ ) Abolishment of 11+ prevented the 'failure' label on children
+ ) High ability students still did well, and low ability did better than with the tripartite system
- ) There was still inequality as streaming took place within most comprehensive schools
- ) There were still 'better' and 'worse' schools depending on their location. E.g. schools in primarily middle class areas got better grades than schools in primarily working class areas

-Labour Prime Minister believed schools did not teach people the skills they needed for work - so governments created policies called vocationalism to create a closer link between school and work.

-Reforms include: Youth training schemes, NVQs, and the New Deal where people on benefits had to attend courses if they didn't accept work

Limitations:

- Some sociologists argue it teaches work discipline rather than work skills
- Marxists may say vocational training is just a way of providing cheap labour and lowering unemployment stats to reduce welfare
- It is often not regarded as highly as academic qualifications
- Feminists may say vocational education forces girls into traditionally feminine jobs as as a beautician

-Conservative government introduced educational reforms based on New Right ideas.

-They widened choice within education system, introduced compulsory inspections and testing, and encouraged competition to increase marketisation. The National Curriculum was introduced, OFSTED was set up, SATs and GCSEs were compulsory, and Legue tables were formed

Criticisms:

- Sociologists (eg Whitty 1998) claim MC parents have advantage in educational market

- Frequent testing can cause high stress, possibly leading to encouragement of labelling and self fulfilling prophecies
- Ball 1995 claimed National Curriculum was 'curriculum of the dead' because it's emphasis on core subjects was outdated

-Followed third way ideas (trying to prevent educational inequality while also supporting choice and diversity).

-Specialist schools and faith schools were allowed

-Class sizes had a max of 30, emphasis was placed on numeracy and literacy 

-Push to increase amount of students attending uni.

-Introduced curriculum which focused on broadening A-Level education

-1988 national curriculum meant girls could do the same subjects as boys

-initiatives such as WISE and GIST to get girls into male dominated fields

-1999 gov. gave grants to primary schools for extra writing classes to boost boys SAT scores

-Sure start offered free childcare and early education

-EMA (education aintenance allowance) gave up to £30 per week to students in education past 16

-1998 Education Action Zones tackled area inequality

FSM (free school meals) and breakfast clubs

-The Academies programme

-A criticsm of the new labour third way politics

-She states its too contradictory as, while some policies helped to reduce educational inequality, others threated to increase it such as with the intro of tuition fees

- Increased privatisation by changing the academies programme so oftsted rated outstanding schools could become unsponsored academies and failing schools became sponsored academies, meaning more schools run by private organisations
- Introduced free schools set up by parents, teachers, or religious groups that don't have to teach the national curriculum in the hopes of providing wider choice in disadvantaged areas
- Michael Gove changed national curriculum so a-levels became linear, coursework was drastically reduced at GCSE, and more formal grammar included in primary english
- Introduction of pupil premium

Criticisms:

- Academies and free schools in disadvantaged areas attract better teachers which undermines local schools

- Difficult to track whether pupil premium is actually being spent on disadvantaged pupils or just being absorbed into school budget
- Max higher education tuition fees raised , which increased loans, so the debt could be off-putting to WC students, meaning they don't attend uni etc

- Computer based subjects added to national curriculum

- Increased immigration led to heavier focus on learning about other cultures, and specialised support for foreign speaking pupils
- Educational ideas shared between nations - e.g. sharing ideas from Finland, who's education system is ranked very highly

-The into of league tables encourages cream skimming where schools can be more selective and only recruit the high achievers, and silt sifting where they avoid the WC, lower achievers thar could damage their league table position

-Argue that the best way to tackle inequality is marketisation because it allows consumer choice.

-Found low income children consistently did 5% better in private schools than state schools, showing marketisation shrinking the inequality gap between the MC and WC

-States marketisation polices benefit the MC more.

-Studies 14 London secondary schools and found that there are 3 types of parent: the 'privileged skill choosers' who understand the marketisation system and know how to get their child into the best school, the 'disconnected local choosers' mainly WC who do not understand and lack the capital and confidence to navigate the system properly, and the 'semi-skilled choosers' still mainly WC but with high ambitions for their children so push selves to understand and navigate system