Educational Policy

EDUCATION POLICIES - A SUMMARY

The main aims, policy details and evaluations of the main waves of UK educatiojn policy - including the 1944 Butler Education Act, the introduction of Comprehensives in 1965, the 1988 Education Act which introduced marketisation, New Labour's 1997 focus on academies and the 2010 Coalition government's Free Schools. 

The 1944 Tripartite System

Main aims

• Selective education - students would recieve a different education dependent on thier ability. All students would sit a test at age 11 (the 11+) to determine thier ability and sift them into the right type of school.
• Equality of opportunity - All students in England and Wales have a chance to sit the 11+. Previous to 1944, the only pupils who could get a good, academic equation were those who could afford it. 

Details of the Act

• Students took an IQ test at 11, the result of which determined which one of the three types pf school they would attend.
• The top 20% went to grammar schools, recieved an academic education and got to sit exams.
• The bottom 80% went to secondary moderns. These provided a more basic education, and initially students didn't sit any exmas.
• There were also technical schools which provided vocational education, but these died fairly quickly.

Evaluations

• There were less class inequalities - grammar schools were mainly taken up by the middle-classes and secondary moderns by the lower classes.
• The IQ test determined pupils futures at a very young age - no room for those who developed later in life.
• Some of the secondary moderns had very low standards and labelled 80% of pupils as failures. 

1965 Comprehensives

Main aims

• Equality of opportunity - one type of school for all pupils 

Details of…