The Sociology of Schools

Karen Chapman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN:
  9781138468276
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134812943
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

The sociology of education is concerned not just with the abstract theory but with the day-to-day experiences of pupils and teachers. In this up-to-date account of the main developments in the subject, Karen Chapman shows how education offers a rich and varied field for sociologists, one easily accessible for study.
She begins by setting the subject in its historical post-War context. She then goes on to outline comprehensively the subject's theoretical base and anlayses the factors that influence educational change. Specific chapters deal with the topical subjects of educational under-achievement, gender, race and the trend towards a vocational element in curriculum.

1
Post-war developments in education in Britain

Historical background to the 1944 Education Act

The 1944 Education Act is a convenient starting point for a book on the sociology of education because the educational experience of almost all of today’s school children results from provisions of that Act.

Between 1880—the start of compulsory education in Britain— and the Second World War, successive governments had increased expenditure on education; the school leaving age had risen from 10 to 14 and many schools were built, but education was not regarded as a major area for reform or government intervention. However, when Britain entered the Second World War, recruits to the armed forces had to undergo ability testing on a large scale. These tests revealed the inadequacies of Britain’s education system, and raised the question of how the country would develop economically after the War was over. The government was forced to consider the quality of the existing education system.

Until 1944, the vast majority of children attended a single school, the elementary school, until the age of fourteen. Here they received ‘elementary’ or basic instruction in literacy and numeracy, as well as practical skills considered suited to their future role as workers in industry or as domestic servants. Elementary schools were state schools, and were free. Most children who attended them received no more education after the age of fourteen. A minority of children attended private elementary schools. These, along with some children at state elementary schools, transferred at eleven to continue their education at secondary schools. The secondary schools were parallel to the elementary system and were fee-paying. These were called grammar schools. A proportion of places at grammar schools, about one third, were free to those who passed a competitive examination known as the Special Places Exam. This facility did allow some working-class children access to secondary education, but since any child could sit the examination, a large proportion of the places went to children from relatively well-off homes, middle-class children. The schooling system that existed served to divide children on social class lines.

The elementary schools had far worse resources and pupil-teacher ratios than the secondary schools. They were organized under separate, less strict regulations, and there was a wide variation in standards. A minority of schools might provide an education for their children similar to that found in present-day primary schools, encouraging creativity and individual expression. Most schools would not have been out of place in a Charles Dickens novel, with desks lined in military precision, automatic chanting of arithmetic tables, and the learning by heart of long epic poems.

At higher levels of education, opportunities for working-class youth were even more limited. It was estimated that less than 2 per cent of the population had the possibility of going to university. The 1930s was a period of cuts in public expenditure, so the expansion of education at all levels was restricted. In 1926 the Hadow Report had recommended that the school leaving age should be raised to fifteen and that secondary education should be free for all, but the cuts during the following economic depression prevented these recommendations from being implemented.

It was the experience of the Second World War which illustrated more vividly than any government report, the wastage of human resources which resulted from an inadequate education system. Army recruits were found to be extremely unhealthy and many were illiterate. Many more were found who, despite great talents, had been unable to proceed beyond elementary education because their families were in poverty. Michael Young, in his satire on education, The Rise of the Meritocracy, commented on the fact that each major reform of Britain’s education system had been preceded by wars, and wrote: ‘Every child from an elementary school who became an officer in the Hitler war was an argument for educational reform’ (Young 1961).

In 1941 the government established the Norwood Committee with the brief: ‘to consider suggested changes in the secondary school curriculum and the question of school examinations in relation thereto’. The Committee was also to consider the practical recommendations made by similar committees such as Hadow (1926) and Spens (1938).

An interest in reforming education did not just come from government ministers. During the War the Army created the Bureau for Current Affairs to provide education for the armed forces. It was very successful and demonstrated the potential for educational reform in peacetime. It also had a reputation for encouraging the spread of Socialist ideas. When the Labour Party won their large majority in the 1945 General Election, it was partly attributed to the ‘forces vote’; the Labour Party was also during this period a great advocate of educational reform— it is likely that those who had enjoyed some additional educational opportunities, the soldiers, translated that into electoral support for the party most associated with the provision of education for the working class.

The aim of the Norwood Committee was to work out a structure for education in Britain—a structure which would allow an easy procedure from elementary school to secondary school, thus ensuring maximum opportunity for all.

It is widely assumed that all the evidence presented to the Norwood Committee favoured a selective system whereby passage to secondary school was marked by the taking of an examination, the results of which were to determine the type of secondary school a child would go to. In fact a wide range of educational systems were suggested to the Committee, with many in favour of a single secondary system catering for all abilities. Such schools were known as ‘multilateral’, now called comprehensive. One such body was the National Union of Teachers, who in 1938 commented on the Spens Report: ‘the distinctions made between “academic” and “practical” subjects are largely artificial…there should be no attempt to segregate those pupils who will and those who will not, stay at school beyond the age of 16’ (from the NUT’s comments on the Spens Report, 1938, quoted in NUT 1983). The Labour Party had adopted a policy in favour of multilateral education as early as 1916. The 1945 Labour Government’s first Minister of Education, Ellen Wilkinson, was a strong supporter of the idea, but found herself presiding over the establishment of a selective system.

Despite all the arguments against selection submitted to the Norwood Committee, it was, in the end, swayed in the direction of selection to secondary schools on the basis of an academic test at the age of eleven. The educational theory which lay behind this stems from the work of Sir Cyril Burt. This was based on the belief that a child’s intelligence was inherited from its parents along with hair and eye colour. Burt —and indeed most educational psychologists of the time— insisted that it was possible to test the intelligence of a child at the age of 11 or 12 with reliability. The results of the test would determine the child’s future abilities, so it was logical to provide different types of school to cater for the different levels of ability.

The fact that much of Burt’s research has since been found to be fraudulent perhaps makes it difficult to remember that he was regarded as the authority on child intelligence. He had been employed by the London County Council, a local education authority, as the first ever child psychologist, and he was extremely influential. It was his evidence to the Norwood Committee that led them to recommend a system based on academic selection at the age of eleven.

Provisions of the 1944 Education Act

The Norwood Committee, completing its deliberations in 1943, concluded:

‘To the three types of school parity of conditions should be accorded; parity of esteem must be won by the schools themselves. Such a reorganisation offers equivalence of opportunity to all children in the sense in which it has valid meaning, namely, the opportunity to receive the education for which each pupil is best suited for such time and to such a point as is fully profitable to him.’

(quoted in NUT 1983)

In other words, the three types of school proposed in the Report were to be regarded as equal in status.

Compared with pre-War provision, the 1944 Act represented a vast improvement: free secondary education for all, the raising of the school leaving age to fifteen, and, above all, a reversal of the pre-War principle that pupils should be educated according to their social position. This principle had meant that working-class pupils received an education inferior in quantity and quality. The 1944 Act established the principle that children should be educated according to age, ability, and aptitude. In 1938 only 4 per cent of all seventeen year olds were in full-time education. It was hoped that the 1944 reforms would offer undreamed of opportunities to working-class children which would enable them to achieve a higher status. Glass, who examined the British class structure in the 1940s, remarked: ‘The 1944

Act will no doubt greatly increase the amount of social mobility in Britain’ (Glass 1954).

The 1944 Act did not lay down a specific form of school organization for local authorities to implement. A minority of authorities went straight into a comprehensive system, notably Leicestershire. By 1952 there were thirteen additional comprehensive schools elsewhere in Britain. But the majority of local authorities adopted the idea of academic selection at the age of eleven, and organized their schools into three distinct types: grammar, secondary modern, and technical. This became known as the tripartite system. A child’s results in the examination at eleven, the ‘11-plus’, determined which of the three schools he/she would attend. Those who achieved the top marks, regarded as academic, went to grammar schools; the next band, considered to possess technical ability, went to technical grammars, while the rest (who had failed the examination) went to the secondary moderns, which were nearly always new schools.

Why was this system so popular with the local authorities? One reason was the widespread belief in the effectiveness of the existing grammar schools. If they were providing a good education, why alter them? The local authorities believed that the 11-plus examination would allow more children to attend grammar schools. Another factor was the power of the grammar schools. Many of them originated, not in the twentieth century, but many centuries earlier. They were prestigious institutions in their towns and could boast of famous ‘old boys’. They possessed organizations of these former pupils dedicated to preserve the traditions of their school.

The politicians who had to implement the Act, even though by now it was a Labour Government, had been educated mainly in the independent or grammar sector, as were the Chief Education Officers who were responsible for local reorganization. What actually happened in each area depended very much on existing provisions and the personal views of the local government officers in charge. Additional grammar schools were rarely provided, and there were very few technical schools. Of those few, nearly all were for boys only.

An important factor in the shaping of education after 1945 was that the system established in most parts of Britain simply confirmed processes which were already in operation. The tripartite system was not, in fact, new. In many areas, the three types of school suggested by the Norwood Committee already existed, often at elementary level. In particular, technical, or vocational, schools existed to serve specific industries. After 1945, few new technical schools were built. They could only be found in large industrial towns. It is not widely known, but there had been attempts to provide secondary education for working-class pupils. Some elementary schools established secondary departments in the late-nineteenth century; however, these did not survive an Act of Parliament designed to tighten up control of education.

After 1945, the aim of most local authorities was to increase the number of children receiving a practical education after the age of eleven, linked to the needs of local industry and commerce. For example, in a town such as St Helens, where the main employers were in glass-making, school pupils would be directed towards that industry, boys into glass production, girls into office and canteen work. It was assumed that only a limited number of children in each area would benefit from a grammar school education, but this was never tested. No local authority made any attempt to assess potential parental demands or even to calculate the effectiveness of local educational resources. This had the effect, later confirmed in research designed to monitor the Act, that a child’s chance of obtaining a grammar school place owed as much to geographical location as to ‘ability’. In the 11-plus examination, taken in the final year of primary school, the mark needed to enter grammar school was set according to the number of grammar school places available. In effect, the 11-plus examination was to become a rationing device for scarce resources.

While reorganization of the structure was taking place, no attempt was made to examine what actually went on in schools,to look at the curriculum. Researchers into the system later commented that British schools had an inbuilt tendency to maintain social inequality (Halsey, Floud, and Martin 1956). This neglect of curriculum reform in 1944 was believed to be a major factor in perpetuating the social inequality the Act was supposed to eradicate. The same mistake was to be repeated when comprehensive reorganization took place.

Before the Second World War, children received an education according to their parents’ wealth and social class. Generations of children who displayed great abilities in elementary schools were unable to pursue an education after the age of fourteen because of the financial need to earn a living and the cost of attending grammar school. Facilities for adult education did exist but were limited. The 1944 Act was designed to change all this. Its aim was to ensure equality of opportunity to all children, regardless of social class and wealth. Equality of opportunity was supposed to lead to social equality: the possession of a good education in which there were no barriers could break down class distinctions. The working-class pupils who went to grammar schools could enter any profession, leaving their class origins behind.

These aims were worthy but unachievable. Halsey, Floud, and Martin (1956), who examined the record of the tripartite system for several years after it was established, found that the three types of school were just as class-biased as the system they replaced. There had been no significant increase in the numbers of working-class children getting to grammar school. In addition, a child’s chances of getting to grammar school were determined by geographical area. A later study by Jackson and Marsden (1962) examined the fortunes of working-class children at grammar schools. They found that these children were frequently made to feel out of place in the middle-class atmosphere of grammar schools. As a result, many left at the age of fifteen instead of staying on to take O Levels, and a large proportion found themselves in the bottom sets when subjects were organized on that basis (see also p. 27). Floud and Halsey, writing in 1958, commented that a child’s academic success

‘depends as much on the assumptions, values and aims embodied in the school organisation into which he is supposed to assimilate himself, as on those he brings with him from his home.’

(Floud and Halsey 1958)

The 1944 Act helped to establish a mechanical means by which all children would, in theory, have access to an equal education, but what happened inside the schools went unchanged.

Comprehensive education

Halsey, Floud, and Anderson summed up the effects of the 1944 Education Act: ‘Widespread social amelioration since the Second World War had not removed persistent class inequalities in the distribution of ability and attainment’ (1961). By the early 1960s the evidence of the effects of the 1944 Act forced educationalists to think again about the structure of the education system. There was a strong body of opinion in favour of comprehensive schools, where children of all abilities could be educated under one roof. It was also felt socially desirable to mix together children of diverse class backgrounds. Comprehensive schools could, it was believed, end the class bias of selection at eleven and break down class barriers between children. There were also economic factors: maintaining and equipping a single large school in a community was cheaper than keeping separate schools for the different ability groups.

One factor which influenced the way education was to develop in the 1960s was the publication of the Crowther Report in 1959. The Report highlighted the wastage of ability evidenced by the fact that only 12 per cent of pupils continued their education until the age of seventeen; early school leaving was related to social class, not academic performance. The

Report advocated remedies to encourage a far higher percentage to enter sixth forms, including the raising of the school leaving age to sixteen and curriculum changes. The Crowther Report examined the whole range of educational provision for 15–18 year olds and contributed considerable weight to the evidence for working-class underachievement.

A Labour Government was returned in the 1964 General Election, with a definite commitment to the establishment of a comprehensive system. They did not have, however, a clear idea about the nature of these schools. Some believed, like the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, that comprehensive schools should be ‘grammar schools for all’, which turned out to be a vote-catching slogan for those with children in secondary modern schools. Others had hopes that the comprehensives would offer a completely new type of education, free of the solely academic grammar school traditions, and dedicated to the establishment of a class-free society.

In 1965 the government issued a memorandum to local education authorities, Circular 10/65, requesting each to submit plans for reorganization of their schools along comprehensive lines. Without the force of law, many LEAs ignored it, or submitted plans designed to be rejected. By 1970, only 10 per cent of LEAs had submitted plans, despite a large increase in educational expenditure aimed at promoting comprehensive reorganization. But from 1970 there was a rapid acceleration in reorganization, despite the election of a Conservative Government who were opposed to Labour’s plans. When Labour returned to office in 1974, they enshrined the comprehensive principle in law, with the 1976 Education Act. This was followed by another setback when Margaret Tha...

Table of contents

• Cover page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Preface
• 1: Post-war developments in education in britain
• 2: Explanations for unequal educational performance
• 3: Gender
• 4: Education and race
• 5: The process of schooling
• References