1st Edition

Education Policy and Social Reproduction Class Inscription & Symbolic Control

By John Fitz, Brian Davies, John Evans Copyright 2006
    168 Pages
    by Routledge

    168 Pages
    by Routledge

    This book takes a theoretically informed look at British education policy over the last sixty years when secondary schooling for all children became an established fact for the first time. Comprehensive schools largely replaced a system based on academic selection. Now, under choice and competition policies, all schools are subject to the rigours of local education markets. What impact did each of these successive policy frameworks have on structures of opportunities for families and their children? How and to what extent was the experience of secondary school students shaped and what influenced the qualifications they obtained and their life chances after schooling?

    The authors locate their work within two broad strands in the sociology of education. Basil Bernstein’s work on the realisation of power and control in and through pedagogic discourse and social reproduction provides a theoretical framework for exploring the character of and continuities and change in education and training policies.

    The book is an important contribution to debates about the extent to which education is a force for change in class divided societies. The authors also set out to re-establish social class at the centre of educational analysis at a time when emphasis has been on identity and identity formation, arguing for their interdependence. This book will be an important resource for students, policy analysts and policymakers wishing to think through and understand the longer term impact of programmes that have shaped secondary schooling in Britain and elsewhere.

    1. Understanding policy, understanding pedagogic discourse  Introduction  Bernstein’s sociology, a language for policy  On our omissions  2. Framing Equality? The Education Act 1944  Introduction  Policy frameworks  The 1944 legislation  A governing partnership?  Tripartism: a very British settlement?  Conclusions  3. Selection, class and opportunity  Introduction  Selection and social class  Selection and social class and school composition  Greater equality of opportunity?  Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads?  Conclusions  4. Comprehensive schooling: Challenging inequality ?  Introduction  Going comprehensive from the ground up  What was driving the change?  10/65 and after: Comprehensive Schooling and its challenges  Neighbourhoods and differentiation between schools  Conclusions  5. Educational Systems and Social Mobility  Social mobility and education  Social mobility, selection and comprehensivisation  Social Mobility, Meritocracy and Education  Conclusion  6. Bernstein, social reproduction and intergenerational transmission  Introduction  Pedagogic discourse; family, school and work  Pedagogic discourse, policy and reproduction  Pedagogic discourse: its key features  Sifting and Sorting  Privileging practices  Resources  Conclusions  7.  Something happened: the policy framework post 1988  Introduction  Centralisation: reasserting central authority, putting on the pressure  Choice and diversity: power to parents?  Conclusion  8. Diversity: selection and stratification?  Introduction  From diversity to plurality  ‘New’ Labour and school diversity  The Early Years  Specialist Schools  Academies  Beacon Schools and Leading Edge Partnerships  Federations and Diversity Pathfinders  Faith-based schools  The modernisation of comprehensive schools  School diversity and social equity  Conclusions 9.  Further reading  Bibliography

    Biography

    John Fitz, Brian Davies, John Evans