This page is aimed at those of you who are covering education for AS-Level Sociology with AQA, however, it will also be useful for anybody covering Education as part of the Power & Control unit for A2-Level on the OCR syllabus.

Education is a fascinating topic – it is something you should all know a little bit about as you have all been educated in one way or another. However there are lots of things about education that you probably haven’t thought about and there are some interesting theories about the ways in which education interacts with other parts of society.

You will need to look at the following:

• The structure of education in the UK
• The history of education in the UK
• Educational policies
• Sociological viewpoints on education
• Functionalist
• Marxist
• Feminist
• Interactionist
• Differences in educational achievement
• Social class
• Ethnicity
• Gender

What is Education?

Something which is worth thinking about is the question of what education is.  All too often we assume that “education” and “school” are the same thing.  In fact education is much more wide ranging than just what happens inside schools, colleges and universities - education can be either formal or informal and can take place in all sorts of places - the home, schools, outside, at family gatherings.  Education is also not something that is confined to people under the age of 21 at school or university - we are constantly learning and being educated and there has been some recognition of this in the term “life-long learning” and also in the growing encouragement for people to undertake work-related training throughout their careers.

It is worth knowing that while education is compulsory for all children in the UK, school attendance is not - the law states that all children between the ages of 5 and 16 must be educated full-time “by attendance at school or otherwise” - my research is looking at one form of ‘education otherwise’ - home-based education where parents choose to educate their children at home.

Unfortunately the education modules in both the OCR and AQA A-level specifications focusses almost solely on school-based education for under-16s, with relatively little focus on informal education of any kind or on further or higher education.  However, if you are going to go further with the Sociology of Education it is important to hold in mind that there are different conceptions and manifestations of education beyond school.

The Structure of Education

The structure of the British education system is complex – there are many different types of school and a number of different means of funding schools and students.

Test yourself on the different types of school in the UK.

The History of Education

There have been schools in Britain for hundreds of years, however, it is only over the past 130 years that education has become a possibility for all children. For the last 500 years or more there have been public schools, these were originally set up as charities to provide education for the poor, however, over the years they have become schools for the upper classes with expensive school fees and elite social status.

• Before 1870 there were therefore very few schools for working class or lower middle class children, there were some church and charitable schools but very few children had the opportunity to gain an education.
• 1870 – “Forster’s” Education Act
• the government began to provide elementary education for children
• 1880 education became compulsory for all children up to the age of 10
• 1918 the school-leaving age was raised to 14
• Some children did go on to receive secondary education, but they had to win scholarships to fee-paying grammar schools, and often families could not afford the costs of uniform and transport.
• 1944 Education Act
• 1950s-1970s – Comprehensivisation
• 1970s – present – vocational education schemes
• 1988 Education Reform Act
• 1997-2006 New Labour government bringing many educational policies and changes

As you can see there have been many changes in education in the last few year and more changes are happening all the time, keep an eye on the news (BBC Education News is good) to keep up to date with new educational policies and proposals.

Sociological viewpoints on education

There are many different viewpoints on the role of education in society, whether it is beneficial, what education is for and how it interacts with the rest of society. The key viewpoints we’ll examine here are functionalist and Marxist; feminist and interactionist perspectives are covered elsewhere in this section.

Unsurprisingly, Functionalists view education as an important institution in society, they see it as performing several functions which help to socialise children and prepare them for life in wider society.

Marxists, as usual, disagree with the functionalist view – they believe that education is a tool of the bourgeoisie, preparing the next generation of workers to submit to capitalist authority.

However, there are similarities between the two viewpoints, in that both agree that the purpose of education is to prepare students to be good workers.

Differences in educational achievement

It is indisputable that some social groups in society do better in education than other groups. What is debated is why this is the case. Differences can be identified between social classes, ethnic groups and along gender lines. The reasons put forward for this are varied – some focus on structural factors and blame differences in achievement on the structure of society and the wider social background of a child; others focus on the interactions that occur within the school and the ways in which the systems of the school and the actions of teachers and other pupils can affect a child’s achievement.

Connolly (2006) found that social class and ethnicity both have a greater effect on educational achievement than gender and that the three factors act independently of each other (i.e. the difference in achievement between boys and girls remains roughly the same, no matter which ethnic group or social class you look at).

For more detail on differences in educational achievement, please look at the relevant sub-pages.