This idea of equality was questionable. Few technical schools were built or established which effectively resulted in a bipartite system developing. It also became clear that grammar schools were attracting mainly upper and middle class pupils who were more likely to stay in school to take exams and these pupils were held in higher regard by universities, employers and the general public. The competition for these limited places was intense. The secondary moderns were predominantly working class pupils who studied towards a non-examined School Leaving Certificate at age 15 and went on to manual work. Yates and Pidgeon (1957) argued that approximately 70,000 children each year were wrongly allocated because of administrative errors in the examination and disproportionately penalised working class children.
The Early Leaving Report in 1954 showed that over half of working class children who did manage to get into grammar school dropped out or failed to get 3 GCE O level passes. Social inequality was not only embedded in the system, it was made to seem normal, inevitable and justified on the basis of objective testing.
Grammar schools were seen as superior, secondary modern pupils faced stereotyping of failing the 11+ and the idea that they had lower natural levels of intelligence. Pressure for change was building up, particularly amongst middle class parents whose children failed the 11+.
Comprehensive schools were thought to be the answer. The principle was that all children from an area would go to the same secondary school regardless of background or ability. This was a lengthy process started in the 1950s, encouraged by Wilson’s Labour government in the 1960s and finally completed in the 1976 Education Act which instructed all councils to ‘prepare plans for Comprehensive schooling’ in their area.
With the introduction of comprehensive schooling, the selection process by IQ testing was abolished as educationally and socially divisive. Mixed ability teaching was seen as the way forward. One of the principles was to remove the socially divisive tripartite system and education was used to promote social mixing. Current economic changes were also a driving force. The decline in the manufacturing industry meant fewer manual or vocational jobs, and technological changes produced an increasing demand for a better educated workforce. The role of comprehensive education was to respond to the changing economic needs of the country by producing a highly educated, skilled workforce.
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Comprehensive schools represented the idea that social class divisions could be abolished, through social class mixing, equal opportunities and achievement through talent and hard work, advocating ideas of meritocracy and egalitarianism. Differentiation between exam systems was replaced with a single exam with differentiation within it, the GCE O levels. However, the continued existence of grammar school created problems in that those with means could continue to buy a different and higher level of education which perpetuated the class divisions that comprehensive schools were designed to remove.
In some ways comprehensives were positive for class distinctions, the size of the school was generally larger with a more mixed social class and children were no longer labelled as passing or failing the 11+. But divisions from the tripartite system merely transferred to comprehensives under a different guise, through streaming, banding and setting. Developed to differentiate between pupils within the school, inevitably the outcome was middle class children in the higher streams and working class children in the lower streams. This effectively created yet another system of positive and negative labelling, but this time within the school.
Although initially each school was supposed to have a mix of social classes, in practice the formation of ‘catchment areas’ meant that working class children tended to go to their nearest school in the ‘working class area’, usually inner cities, and middle class children went to the ‘middle class school’ in their area, in the suburbs. Social class was still a major determinant of educational achievement. (Croxford 2000, p. 146)
In 1976 the Prime Minister James Callaghan gave a speech about education, paving the way for major reforms under Tory government elected in 1979. The Thatcher-Major governments passed a series of laws that changed education in England and Wales dramatically with the education system becoming closely aligned with the needs of industry, with the development of vocational elements and the range of subjects taught.
High levels of youth unemployment in the 1980s placed emphasis on training as opposed to education. A range of New Vocational schemes were introduced-Youth Training Schemes; the Technical and Vocational Initiative was introduced in 1987; NVQs introduced the idea of every workplace job having identifiable and measurable skills, and modern apprenticeships came into play in 1995.
The Education Acts of 1988 and 1993 gave schools the right to opt out of the control of their local authority and be directly funded by government, requiring local authorities to pass on at least 85% of funding to schools, giving control over staffing, budget allocation, and many other aspects of school management to school governing bodies (the majority of members were parents and community representatives rather than educators). Under the banner of ‘choice and diversity’, Thatcher’s Tory government aimed to undermine comprehensive education with the growth of separate categories of schools such as grant-maintained schools and City Technology Colleges. The introduction of LMS, ‘Local Management of Schools’, where schools had to manage their own budgets with funding dependent on the number of pupils on roll, forced school governors to take on the burden of managing the cuts in public spending inflicted by the Tories.
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The reforms required schools and local authorities to publish information about school programs and student achievement and created a national curriculum and a testing program with publication of school results of tests to help parents choose schools.
Although the reforms supposedly gave parents choice as to what school their child would attend, the LMS encouraged schools to carry out both overt and covert selection of pupils to make themselves more attractive to local parents and to maintain their position in the new school league tables of exam results. Many church schools, for example, have abused their right to hold interviews – supposedly to clarify ‘religious conviction’ – to select their intake.
The result was a further polarisation between schools at the top and bottom of the league tables, largely at the expense of working-class children. The ‘new vocationalism’ resulted in most middle class pupils still following the academic education route to higher pay and status employment whereas working class pupils were encouraged to take vocational routes to lower paid and lower status work.
Post 1997 New Labour has essentially maintained the thrust of the Tory education policy. LMS and underfunding have continued. In 1998 and 1999 spending on education fell to just 4.5% of gross domestic product (GDP) – the lowest proportion for 40 years. (Guardian, 4 September, 2001).
They have embraced the national curriculum, insisting schools meet tough targets for SATs, GCSEs, numeracy and literacy scores. Within the comprehensive system school diversity developed, with Specialist schools n a particular area, such as science, being allowed to select up to 10% of their intake; beacon schools (lower performing schools) were given increased funding to improve teaching practice. Foundation schools were allowed to set their own curriculum and the policy was to close ‘failing schools’ and replace them with city academies, established in partnership with private sponsors, located in disadvantaged areas and encourage to specialise in certain curriculum areas.
The continued publication of school ‘league tables’ has been criticised for their bias in favour of schools with selective intake and against schools with high levels of special educational needs and the ‘free school meals’ children, usually in working class areas. To counteract this, the government now publishes league tables measuring progress rather than actual level of achievement. The high ranking schools still attract more middle class pupils who historically achieve most educationally.
One of New Labour’s major concerns has been with social exclusion and their education policy has focused on measures to combat truancy, involving all sections of the community in education and the development of the different types of schools to raise achievement amongst the worst academically performing sections of society. The vocational education was developed to raise achievement through social inclusion. Measures such as uniforms, codes of conduct and home-school agreements were designed to promote social solidarity.
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With these measures in place why then is it still the case that working class children have lower educational achievements than middle class children? Many theories have been put forward by sociologists and educationalists. Material deprivation, that working class children lack money, which is in turn needed to buy books, go on trips, have a computer, a room of their own in which to study or indeed have a private tutor or attend private schools. Cultural deprivation, a simple lack of the ‘right attitude’ to do well, a belief stemming from primary socialisation with parents who don’t think it’s important to do well at school. When in the school’ ‘teacher labelling’ of working class children as unintelligent can take place. Schools involve values derived from middle class experiences and the concerns and norms that reflect these values. Hand in hand with this goes the self-fulfilling prophecy. When labelled by a teacher the child may accept this and start to believe it. Working class children are also more likely to join in with anti-school subcultures, groups of pupils who believe education is a waste of time. Truanting, not doing homework and being disruptive in class are all things that can cause working class children to fail at school.
Moving on from inequalities in class and educational achievement, gender inequalities are another social division in education. Historically girls were excluded and sidelined but in recent years they have overtaken boys in educational achievement.
In the nineteenth century girls were seen as destined for housework and child-rearing and as such with little need for formal education beyond the elementary. In 1880 elementary education was compulsory for all children up to the age of 10 but the limited skills taught gender-orientated, with girls being taught domestic skills and only the boys learning craft skills and elementary maths. Education was considered less necessary to girls and their truancy tolerated, staying at home with their mothers and learning domestic skills considered to be acceptable.
Secondary schools for upper and middle class girls were gradually established during the late 19th century and early part of the 20th century but were far less numerous than those for boys. Women were excluded from universities, with Oxford and Cambridge being very loath to open the doors to women, until 1920 and 1948 respectively.
The 1944 education act made free secondary education available to all but girls did not follow the same curriculum as boys. It was still believed girls should be prepared for domestic roles, and even with the advent of comprehensive education girls were steered into different subjects, the so-called hidden curriculum, the idea that males and females are encouraged to study different subjects, some seen as male, some as female and others as gender neutral. The girls’ subjects tended to be the domestic ones with the boys encouraged towards technical and science subjects. This was not just the schools, society in general involved different gender expectations. The tripartite system alone propagated gender inequalities. There were more grammar school places for boys than girls, which meant girls with higher IQs were denied places in favour of boys with lower IQs. Girls’ social and economic positions meant that working class girls were generally expected to work until they were married and then replace work with full-time domestic responsibilities. As late as 1963, when 30% of married women were in paid employment, the Newsom Report (1963) still characterised marriage as girls' 'most important vocational concern'. Shaw (1977, cited in Acker, S(1981)p. 107-118) suggests that for girls, the prospect of marriage 'discourages long-term planning', and that this can account for the way that, in the past, the performance of girls lagged behind that of boys after the age of 16. The suggestion is that the prospect of marriage interferes with educational commitment.
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Sharpe (1976) suggests that by the time a girl sees a career advisor their conception of a 'suitable' career - women's employment - is already firmly established. The restricted lifestyles of mothers, sisters and friends depresses their own ambitions, and directs them towards marriage and motherhood.
Comprehensive schooling requiring girls and boys to follow the same curriculum did not remove gender issues from the curriculum. Girls were still expected to take subjects such as Home Economics for example. Boys were expected to perform better in examinations, got more attention and interest than girls and tended to receive higher marks for comparable work. This was not just down to the teachers but also the educational and societal expectations of the children and gender defined behaviours. The organisation and teaching within schools has tended to sustain gender inequalities; dress codes for boys and girls encouraging sex-typing, texts containing traditional gender images. Vocational education and training tended to reinforce gender inequalities by emphasising particular kinds of masculine or feminine pursuits, despite a commitment to equal opportunities.
Male domination of education has persisted in higher education institutes with decision making authorities tending to be male dominated.
Gender still dominates subject choices. Pre-16 gender differences in subject choices have been reduced by the national curriculum, but during A level and higher education, traditional gender choices once again emerge, for example, Health and Social Care was 93% female in 2001, with 73% of Computer Science being male. (Independent, 16 September 2001).
In spite of these disadvantages girls have recently consistently performed better than boys in some examinations. The debate about gender in schools has undergone a dramatic reversal. Underachieving boys are the subject of many concerned educators and policy-makers. In higher education girls now considerably outnumber boys. How is this explained?
Generally there has been a greater awareness of and sensitivity to gender issues in schools with initiatives such as Girls into Science and Technology (GIST). Single sex classes have been claimed to be successful in raising the achievements of girls. The introduction of coursework is the consistent and conscientious work characteristic of females.
Influence of feminism and the women’s movement on girls’ self-esteem and expectations challenges traditional stereotypes of women. The growing employment of women has changed girls’ expectations and confidence and the decline of traditional male jobs has led to dissatisfaction of many boys who no longer bother to achieve in education. For many girls though, this does not mean more girls moving into professional jobs. In a link with class, many are moving into low paid jobs which are combined with their traditional domestic roles.
There has been concern about the need for boys to catch up, with worries about their educational performance combining with concerns about their much higher rate of behavioural problems at school, in recent years four times as many boys as girls have been excluded for misbehaviour. ‘Failing boys’ have also been linked to larger social issues such as crime, unemployment, drugs and absent fathers.
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These factors have combined to describe what is called the ‘crisis in masculinity’. Boys who leave school early or with no educational results are less likely to find good jobs and create stable families and in economic terms, as fewer unskilled manual jobs are available, this is disastrous. Critics contend however that concentrating on failing boys is misleading as underachievement of working class boys may have less to do with their gender and more to do with their social class.
Expectations of parents, children and teachers are still shaped by stereotypes of class and gender, sometimes expressed openly but often hidden in organisational structures or the hidden curriculum.
In all the reforms in education since 1944 there still has not been a redistribution of social opportunity. Class differences in educational achievement have remained largely the same, the changes in the organisation of education only appearing to have had a marginal effect.
In contrast girls and women have made major educational gains in recent years and now are achieving higher attainments than boys at every level of education although gender differences remain in the achievement in certain subjects.
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