Some slides...
Some notes...
Differences in achievement boys and girls...
Some slides...
Social class and educational achievement
It’s Not Socialism–It’s National Socialism
2 days ago
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Conservatives and Education
We will undertake a long-term programme to close the educational gap between the fortunate and the forgotten, with policies including:
- Building hundreds of good new schools within the state system
- Shifting the balance of power away from the government and towards parents
- Removing the obstacles which prevent new schools being established
- Encouraging smaller and more varied schools to respond to parents’ demands
In addition, we will take a number of immediate steps to improve standards in all our schools:
- Improve discipline and behaviour in schools by shifting the balance of power in the classroom back to the teacher
- Ensure more teaching by ability to stretch the strongest and nurture the weakest
- Look at reforming the testing regime in primary schools to reduce bureaucracy and focus on every pupil’s real needs
By doing all this, a Conservative Government will stop the decline in standards and create the excellent schools our children deserve.
Download (and learn some quotes from) their school policy paper...
Online Education
A battery has a lifetime which is normally distributed with a mean of 62 hours and a standard deviation of 3 hours.
What is the probability of a battery lasting less than 68 hours?
What is the probability of a battery lasting less than 68 hours?
Has education changed under Gordon Brown?
It may be hard to remember, but it is almost a year since Gordon Brown began his short honeymoon period as prime minister after replacing Tony Blair.
It was June last year when he dusted down his old school motto (I will try my utmost) and promised "a new government with new priorities".
So what difference has a year made in education? And are these "new priorities" apparent in education policy?
There has certainly been plenty of action: a 10-year Children's Plan with lots more ambitious targets for higher standards, the raising of the education leaving age, and tougher measures to deal with "failing schools".
Yet all of these policies could just as easily have come from Tony Blair's government.
Indeed, at first sight, there appears to have been a seamless continuity from Blair to Brown in education reform.
Power split
The programme of City Academies and Trust Schools rolls on. There is no dilution of testing and league tables. "Failing" schools are threatened with the big stick.
 |   There has been a shift in emphasis, but it is whispered rather than shouted  |
Yet there have been changes that would not have occurred under a Blair government. The biggest was the creation of two education departments in England, where formerly there was just one.
But was this just a re-arrangement of the furniture, or did it indicate a real shift in the education landscape?
Former education secretary Estelle Morris thinks there has been a shift. She believes there is now far less emphasis on those Blairite buzzwords: choice and diversity.
Speaking at an education conference last week, she said that while these Blairite values remain, she detected a "shift of agenda" towards a greater emphasis on wider children and family issues.
In her view, there has been a subtle move away from the emphasis on competition and contestability of services, with a new focus on tackling educational disadvantage through the "Every Child Matters" policies.
Shift of emphasis
It is certainly possible to see greater faith in targeted interventions for pupils in greatest need - the catch-up programmes in reading and maths, for example - instead of a belief in competition and parent power as the way to drive up standards.
Although closely identified with the reforms of the Blair years, Baroness Morris supports this change. But, interestingly, she argues that the Brown government "should have made more of it".
This looks like a shrewd judgement. There have indeed been some changes but the attention has remained on more long-standing policies, some of which are now feeling a bit tired.
The biggest target is the regime of national school tests in England. The recent Commons Children, Schools and Families select committee report reflected widespread opinion amongst teachers, and many parents, when it cast serious doubt on the value of so much testing.
The problems surrounding the planned new "testing when ready" approach suggest they could make the regular testing of children even more burdensome and unpopular.
Other recent developments, such as the claim by the chief inspector of schools that standards have "stalled", have exacerbated the belief that current education policies are not working.
Diplomas
Gordon Brown's difficulty is that the voters do not see him as a fresh start.
If last June had signalled a new approach to education reform, voters might have granted him more than 12 months to improve schools. As it is, they think he has had 11 years.
If, as Baroness Morris hinted, he had been more explicit about the shift in education policy, he might have been given more time. But Brown is a cautious politician, who does not favour gambles.
He shunned the chance to make a big statement on education by, for example, replacing A-levels with Diplomas.
Instead, his schools secretary has let it be known he would like Diplomas to become the qualification of choice but insists it is for the market to decide.
So again, there has been a shift in emphasis, but it is whispered rather than shouted.
Testing times
Announcing the end of A-levels would have been a big gamble. Indeed, it may not have been the right gamble. But a subtle shift in policy does not give an impression of a fresh start or new energy.
As we know, there comes a time in the political cycle when voters tire of familiar governments. They just want a change, even if they're not sure what to.
And, although Gordon Brown's political troubles started elsewhere, all areas of government policy are now in the firing line.
It feels as if the opponents of Blairite reforms have sensed a weakening of resolve. So there is now re-invigorated opposition to school tests and a renewed drive against league tables.
As Baroness Morris hinted, it is precisely because he has not made more of any shift in policy direction that Brown is taking stick for reforms brought in by his predecessor.
If there really has been a shift in the government's education agenda - away from the competition and accountability model of the Blair years - then perhaps ministers might be advised to make this more apparent.
Brown may not have long to show that he is taking education reform in a new direction. Otherwise the polling evidence suggests voters will want to give someone else a go.
Conservative Education Policy
Have a read...
Also...
Also...
What is the Tory line on schools and universities?
"Parents must be given extensive power to chose schools for their children," the shadow chancellor, Oliver Letwin, recently said. For the Conservative party, it is all about parents: the party recently pledged to introduce "Better School Passports", a voucher scheme to give parents financial control over their children's education, along with vocational technical colleges funded in a similar way. The party is committed to matching Labour's current spending plans on schools for two years, after which it wants to move toward greater private funding for education.
On universities, meanwhile, the traditional Tory line of slimming down state involvement is reversed: the party is committed to abolishing fees, which inevitably means the state being more involved.
What is the Better School passport scheme?
The Tories labelled Better School Passports as their schools "revolution" at their party conference last October. Under the scheme, parents would be given cash for their child's education as a voucher, and could decide what school to spend it on. A Conservative government would kick off the scheme with a £400m pilot in six deprived inner-city areas after the next general election. But the term "voucher" has pointedly not been used, in an attempt to avoid comparisons with the Tories' ill-fated nursery voucher scheme, which resulted in the closures of dozens of nurseries in the 1990s.
Would schools themselves change?
Yes. The Tories want to see many more groups getting involved in running schools. They want to deregulate the cap on school rolls to allow the best schools to expand (and presumably others to decline) and, according to their head of policy co-ordination, David Willets, to get more "cut-priced" privately financed schools. They want to see more competition in the private school market and more involvement from parents and local community groups in running schools - so you would get faith-based organisations running schools with their own special ethos. Like Labour, they are preaching the mantra of school choice for parents.
Anything else destined for schools?
School-parent agreements are, according to an education spokesperson, high on the Tories' agenda. These would provide a mechanism by which parents could become more involved in their children's work - in good times and bad.
Why would a Tory government drop tuition fees?
When in government, top-up fees were also on the Tories' agenda - but at the height of the backlash against the Labour government over the issues, the then Conservative shadow education secretary, Damian Green, reversed the policy. The Tories said they would drop all fees, along with plans to widen participation and extend student numbers: fewer places, but better quality, was the mantra.
Is that still their commitment?
Officially, yes. But that could change. A traditional Tory plan has been mooted which would see a Conservative government privatise universities, offer tax breaks to businesses that donate or work with universities, and create a major "endowment" funded by the sale of disused parts of the TV and radio spectrums and possibly the privatisation of Channel 4. Today a spokesperson, asked whether the abolition of fees was still the policy, said: "Yes, but watch this space."
What about vocational training?
Pupils would be divided at 13 between those receiving technical and academic education under Tory plans. The proposals would see some teenagers opting out of GCSEs, and learning instead to "wire up a studio or repair a wall". This would involve the creation of business-technical schools, which might also work on a voucher system.
A Failed Generation: Educational Inequality Under Labour
"
The underlying message is clear. You came to power on a manifesto of education, education, education. You promised to reverse years of underachievement for the country's most disadvantaged schoolchildren. So what have you actually done? Gove's answer is categoric: inequality hasn't just been maintained under Labour, it's actually increased.
A Failed Generation is not mere polemic. It's a thoroughly researched document, stuffed full of facts, figures and footnotes to highlight Labour's failure. And it makes for depressing reading: 55% of secondary schools in the most deprived parts of England do not achieve the benchmark of 30% of children getting five good GCSEs, compared with just 3% in the least deprived areas. Of the pupils who qualify for free school meals (FSMs), 47% - that's 33,909 children - did not attain any GCSE grades higher than a D in 2006-07. In the past year, the attainment gap at GCSE between the poorest and the wealthiest areas has widened by 15 percentage points, from 28% to 43%, says the report."
Read the full article - learn some statistics
Online Education increases inequality
Computers in education can deepen the divide between rich and poor, claim researchers in the United States.
The use of online technologies in schools and colleges has expanded rapidly in the past decade, but it can put children from deprived backgrounds at a greater disadvantage, report researchers from The College Board, the non-profit group that oversees national school tests.
The Virtual University and Educational Opportunity, a research paper written by Lawrence Gladieux and Watson Scott Swail, concludes that new technology can create a "digital divide" between "white and minorities, the wealthy and less advantaged".
Student Access Inequality
"Teenagers from well-off backgrounds are several times more likely to go to university than those from the most deprived areas, a report says.
The Higher Education Funding Council for England said more people went to university in 2000 than in 1994.
But the percentage of poorer students "hardly changed at all", said its chief executive, Sir Howard Newby.
Increasingly more women than men went to university, while tuition fees and student loans made no major difference."
Labour policy: Education (Evaluation)
| Under the Tories, the break up of the comprehensive system began with the creation of new kinds of schools - city technology colleges (CTCs) and grant-maintained(GM) schools - and the publication of league tables of exam results with parents allowed to express a preference for their child to leave their catchment area school for one they considered better. Grammar schools remained in some areas. GM schools received extra funding and the private sector had always had financial help. Powers were taken from Local Education Authorities (LEAs), and central control was maintained through the National Curriculum, Ofsted inspections, hit squads for failing schools (?), etc. Class sizes rose and many school buildings needed extensive repairs. Student grant levels were frozen, and so had to be supplemented by increasingly large loans. | ||
| Labour policy was: | ||
| 1 | An end to grammar schools | |
| 2 | An end to GM schools | |
| 3 | Restoration of comprehensive state education | |
| 4 | An end to the Assisted Places Scheme for private education | |
| 5 | Less league tables comparing schools more fairly by giving value-added data | |
| 6 | LEAs to be valued once more as accountable local service providers | |
| 7 | Ofsted inspections to be less confrontational and to help schools improve (?) | |
| 8 | To reduce class sizes to below 30 | |
| 9 | To have a major programme to repair school buildings | |
| 10 | A student grant system helping those most in need and widening access | |
| In fact under New Labour: | ||
| 1 | All the grammar schools remain in a system biased towards keeping them |  |
| 2 | GM schools were in effect renamed as Foundation schools, kept their extra funding for many years and often still get it in other ways | |
| 3 | Comprehensive schools are now damned as a failed "one-size-fits-all" model, there are even more separate categories of schools and they can diverge more in their curricula |  |
| 4 | The scheme was abolished |  |
| 5 | There are even more league tables and when value-added data were published in 2007 they were an addition not a replacement for raw data |  |
| 6 | LEAs have lost more powers and there will be a presumption against them running any new schools | |
| 7 | Ofsted inspections were not changed by government, so attitudes depend on who is running the system, [?] | |
| 8 | Class sizes are below 30 for 5-7 year olds, but up for older children | |
| 9 | The major repair programme was achieved | |
| 10 | Grants were first abolished then reintroduced for the poor, but variable tuition fees threaten to restrict their access to more expensive courses | |
| In addition: | ||
 | The private sector is now running "failing" state schools and whole LEAs, and will be allowed to provide more services for other schools | |
| By 2001 schools received government funding in 71 different ways, making it hard to check whether funding is fair | |
| Free nursery places and SureStart schemes give more early years support | |
Hidden Curriculum
The Hidden Curriculum
There is plenty of evidence available to show that the hidden curriculum, in some shape or form, does exist within schools. There is also a range of evidence to show that its effect can be quite marked in terms of how it affects the achievement levels of different social classes, genders and ethnic groups. However, because the concept is so general (it can be related to a huge range of different effects) we can restrict ourselves to looking at a few examples of the way the hidden curriculum can be related to differential achievement.
In this respect, concepts such as teacher labelling and stereotypes, streaming, banding and setting, and sexual / racial forms of discrimination are dealt with in more detail in the appropriate areas of the evidence section.
For the moment, therefore, we can set the scene for this evidence by looking in more general terms at the overall concept of a hidden curriculum and, in particular, we can examine some of the general principles involved in the interpretation of this concept.
To help us do this, we can look briefly at how writers such as Pat McNeill, and Phillip Jackson (to name but two - the contributions of writers such as David Hargreaves and Howard Becker are discussed in the "class discrimination" section) in have applied the concept of a hidden curriculum to a general understanding of various aspects of the schooling process.
Anomie Theory
Anomie Theory
We have already referred to this theory when we looked at gender socialisation within the family group. Specifically, we referred to it in terms of evidence for the influence of primary socialisation on subject choice and differential educational achievement. However, it is clear that, in terms of secondary socialisation, this type of theory may have some currency in terms of explaining the problems faced by women in our society / educational system. We can, therefore, examine it in a little more depth in this particular section.
As you should be aware, in the past, the sociology of education has looked at examination differences between males and females to illustrate various outcomes of the hidden curriculum. Over the past few years, however, both males and females seem to perform equally well (or equally badly) in both GCSE and A-level examinations.
This has led to the focus of sociological attention moving away from educational performance to a less apparent manifestation of the hidden curriculum, namely a gendered curriculum (in simple terms, the idea that males and females are encouraged to study different subjects). Some subjects, it is argued, are seen as male / masculine, some as female / feminine and some as gender neutral (that is, they are seen as being neither wholly masculine nor wholly feminine subjects).
Over the past 100 years, explicit curriculum differences have been progressively eliminated. As Taylor et al ("Sociology In Focus", 1996), for example, note:
"The 1902 Education Act made domestic subjects such as cookery and needlework compulsory for girls but not for boys…During the 20th century…the tradition of girls doing home economics and boys woodwork and metalwork has been largely replaced by technology for all pupils.".
One explanation for the fact that girls perform as well as boys academically but tend to avoid certain subjects) is that when girls enter education they have a problem:
a. They are taught, as part of the secondary socialisation process in schools, that they are the equal of boys and that their eventual achievement will be on merit (that is, girls are not actively discriminated against - although there is evidence of passive forms of gender discrimination).
b. Their primary socialisation has taught them that there are some areas of the social world that are not considered, in our society, to be feminine.
In this respect, the problem for women is largely one of how to resolve the tension between these two important sets of social pressure. How, in effect, to conform to the demand that their educational efforts match those of their male peers while, at the same time, retaining a sense of femininity and, by extension, avoiding deviant labels amongst their peers.
Similarly, males are also faced with the problem outlined above; they too have to attempt to resolve the contradiction inherent in the idea of "achievement through merit" while simulatenously retaining a sense of masculine identity - one that is not undermined, in terms of their peers, through the association with subject choices that are "not masculine".
This theory keys into a number of further ideas surrounding the educational system, such as the nature of intelligence debate (is it inherited / is it socially constructed?), the social creation of gendered identities and, of the course, the hidden curriuculum debate.
Key vocabulary - Education
Allocation process
Classroom interaction
Compensatory education
Comprehensivisation
Cultural capital
Cultural deprivation
Cultural reproduction
Hidden curriculum
Language codes
New vocationalism
Pupil subcultures
Secondary socialisation
Classroom interaction
Compensatory education
Comprehensivisation
Cultural capital
Cultural deprivation
Cultural reproduction
Hidden curriculum
Language codes
New vocationalism
Pupil subcultures
Secondary socialisation
Is mary the 'fall guy'?
"Researchers also identified a "fall guy" phenomenon whereby alpha pupils gain kudos by having a best friend who is more disruptive at school, while avoiding facing the discipline that is meted out to the friend.
"Some pupils are able to maintain popularity with peers in spite of their high academic achievement," said Professor Becky Francis, from Roehampton University, joint author of the paper. What appears to be a fundamental facilitator of this "balance" is their physical appearance, and for boys, their physical ability at sport. Of course, notions of 'attractiveness' are socially constructed, but it remains the case the some pupils are blessed with features that conform to such constructions and other are not.""
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
