British Education: Equitable Or not for Everyone

All over the world, every kind of people requires to be educated whatever it is obligatory or not. During the education, students have learned a lot of things not only the traditional subjects but also the practical skill for work. Particularly, in this following essay on an equitable of the education, what are some factors influenced on adjusting schools and the real education system of the UK will be explained.

First of all, when it comes to education, there two theories are often come up. One is the Functionalism, which has a positive aspect of education. It insists that “education is pretty similar to the liver in our body” which means education play a particular function for our society. Emile Durkheim, who is a sociologist in 1858 argue that when students are educated in a school, the social solidarity is required. In other words, social unity. And each child should get essential similarities for instance in the Republic of Korea, primary school students swear an oath to their flag during morning assembly every first on Monday. But joining together with similarities could not be said that it is valid today. Especially in England, there is a multicultural school and society as well. It seems quite difficult to have social solidarity for children as they have dissimilar backgrounds and history and so on.

Education helps children in many ways. One example is the main function of a school is role allocation emphasised by Talcott Parsons who was a sociologist. Role allocation means young students can be helped to select their job or workplace from school by assessing with exams. By testing their ability, it can inspire pupils to get their passion for study. Not only the role allocation but the school also can become a bridge which could give an experience of virtual society before young children go into real life. Taking consider of the functionalism, however, they tend to ignore the critical point of view of education.

By comparison, Marxists have a pessimistic view of the education system. One of the reasons is that many of the school in the UK let pupils make brainwashed like that in their future they cannot aware of the exploited condition. Apart from exploitation condition, political education, teachers have indoctrinated students to have a bias opinion of the political issue. At a Kent school, there was an opinion poll about “Politburo at the height of the Soviet Empire” for students. They answered ‘Left-wing’ meant the ‘NHS- National Health Service’ and the theory maintain ‘everyone should be equal’. While ‘Right-wing’ is defined ‘Hitler’, ‘fewer help people’ and a support of inequality. The reason for making these answering is that teachers have taught students by indoctrinating with prejudiced thinking. In addition, schools provide hard-working disciplined for capitalism of societies. Besides all of the capitalist worlds including England, students are encouraged to accept this kind of education system without any question. It called ideological state apparatus (ISA) conducted the study by Louis Althusser.

There is a correspondence between social relationships in classrooms and those in working place. For example, in school, those who are obedient students are likely to become submissive workers while a pupil who is not interested in the study but in qualification tends to be a worker who puts the salary (money) the most important rather than products researched by Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis in 1976. If we believe Marxism’s theory, it would say it is definitely unjust for working-class students to have an education in Britain.

Interestingly functionalists claim that society and education are connected with meritocracy. Meritocracy is in which people could get success and power depends on their talents, abilities and hard-working by giving equal and fair opportunities, not on their position and class. Therefore, the school supports pupils to get an equal chance to succeed and get a good qualification. They have no doubt that working-class students are possible to reach a high position regardless of their background if they try to study hard.

On the other hand, people who are on the side of Marxism strongly against the meritocracy. They believe that “Meritocracy is a myth” because of the Marxism correspondence. In reality, meritocracy cannot be adopted in the education system. If the first generation is the rich and has sufficient material and cultural factors, which could support their child, then the second generation has a high possibility to be rich as the same as their parents. However, low-class children have an extreme tendency to grow into working-class children. Most argue that only the education system is responsible for this phenomenon. Definity not, teachers too have responsibility for it. The research by the University of Birmingham, the number of students 14,000 containing six nations and England queried about the fairness of teachers’ favouritism. Over a half per cent of those disagreed that tutors treated them absolutely fairly. Moderators who work in the Department for education figured out that two-thirds teachers said: “personal feelings about particular pupils influenced their assessments” whenever they grade the essays.

There is another supportive study of Marxism, the research of Paul Willis called “Learning to Labour” showed that students those who reject the education system by messing and making laugh the class atmosphere, do not attempt to concentrate the study. These guys are called by lads. Lads do not fully accept ideology and they refuse the “brainwashed” into an obedience person both in school and work. These situations make the counter-school culture. Involving the counter-school culture children might have not interesting about their future jobs. And it would lead the definition of British education is unfair.

An aspect that could core role in the education system is supported resources such as cultural capital. Middle-class parents are usually paying a lot of attention to what children have to do by associating with the school’s headteacher or tutors. Some of these parents meet together so as to get some resources and information about education. Douglas investigated parents who are in a different class. The result was that the more concentration for children’s study they get, the higher league table such as GCSE and A-level their child could get. The parent’s education can affect children’s verbal ability and language is one of the cultural capitals. There are two different language types, the restricted code and the elaborated code. The restricted code is whenever children talk with family or peers, they are not using grammatic and logical sentences as well as technical terms. Contrary to it, the elaborated code is often spoken by middle-class students with full sentences and high-quality vocabularies. In school peers who use the elaborated code are good at understanding the lessons and communicating with their teachers. They could easily achieve good outcome compared to who speak with restricted code. Every child has the diverse background including speak pattern, but the school actually do not consider about it, only they focus on teaching and helping pupils to get high grades on exams. So that is why those who have upper-class parents are in a favourable education position.

The most significant whether the education is just or not is the material deprivation. Material deprivation can be money and property. According to the graph of the “Children and material deprivation”. More than 530,000 (29%) children in London have challenging with material resources. And the sections of ‘Eat fresh fruit and vegetable everyday’ and ‘Having a warm winter coat’ have 8 per cent and 4 per cent each. The result is serious when it comes to studying in school because lacking health and diet condition contributes to disturb their school performance and to go work for earning money.

Lastly, the British education has 11 plus exam based on Intelligence Quotient. Depending on the grade students can choose a school on the tripartite system, which are a Grammar school, Technical school and Secondary modern school. Grammar schools focus on academic education, the technical one pursues learning the skill for work and the secondary modern school is simpler education system. Categorising children due to the IQ test is not practical and fair. Because if a student fails the exam, they cannot go to grammar school and labelled with ‘failed student’. This kind of pupils might be suffered from it mentally and physically as well.

In conclusion, many sociologists have been researching numerously whether British education is impartial or not for all students. Functionalists constantly argue that education is vital for not only students but in society because it is clear that it will help children with meritocracy and role allocation. Whereas during the school life, there are needed the good background and materials which can aid your student performance. Even though the UK education looks fair, considered of reality, there are many barriers to make equal the education. Defining the fairness of the education is challenging for us but we have to put the equality emphasise on as much as possible because as we seek it we could pull considerable benefits.

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