| Lesson objective | To explore marketisation forces in education. |
| Lesson outcomes | • Compare how the impact can vary from individual to individual. • Evaluate its significance • Explain what marketisation is. |
Marketisation is the act of introducing business ideas (market forces) into education.
The 1988 Education Reform Act introduced this idea to education. The aim was to drive up standards of schools through increasing choice. In order to ensure competition existed, schools needed to be run like businesses. This would ensure that for them to make a profit they needed to ensure they were good.
Working class children must be taught to think and act like the middle classes if they are to get into the best universities and top professions, (Peter Brant) a Government adviser has said.
There are issues as well, whereby Academies now exist without sponsorship and therefore have limited funds and are massively under-prepared for teaching students.
Ingram (2010) – (Marketisation).
The experiment: She wanted to explore the impact of school culture on working-class boys by investigating the experiences of boys living in the same neighbourhood attending different schools. The research used 14–16-year-old boys in two secondary (one grammar, one comprehensive) schools in the same working-class area of Belfast. It was an ethnographic approach.
Results: The grammar school was found to promote social mobility and encourage the formation of a middle-class
identity, while the comprehensive school supported aspects of working-class culture with its ‘lad friendly’ culture.
The study highlights the impact of culture on identity.
Evaluation: Willis used a small sample of 2 schools (one of each type meaning it has low generalisability. A small age range used of just 2 years. Interviews offer high validity.
Reay (2010)
Reay states that political leaders are causing a ‘poverty of aspiration’ whereby working-class students do not aspire to better themselves. She calls for greater equality between the social classes and suggests that by introducing marketisation, social inequality has widened.
queriesforstudyingsociology@gmail.com 