La ciudad del siglo XV y la consecuencia del dilu

The government are determined that every child in this country should have the very best start in life. The drive for higher standards in schools has been a hallmark of the government over the last decade. Now this White Paper carries this great programme of reform further forward.

Our reforms rest on commonsense principles – more parental choice, rigorous testing and external inspection of standards in schools; transfer of responsibility to individual schools and their governors; and, above all, an insistence that every pupil everywhere has the same opportunities through a good common

grounding in key subjects. Few people would now argue with these principles. They are all helping to shape a more open, a more responsive and a more demanding system of education.

…

I am not prepared to see children in some parts of this country having to settle for a second class education. Education can make or mar each child’s prospects. Each has but one chance in life.

That is why the great themes of quality, diversity, parental choice, school autonomy and accountability run through the White Paper. They are the way to secure what I believe to be essential – to ask the best for every child: to ask the best from every child. Excellence must be the key word in all our schools; that is what our children deserve. That is what we intend to achieve.

John Major (DfE /WO, 1992, p.iii) The themes expressed by John Major in 1992 have dominated the last thirty years of education in England. Raising standards through the market principles of choice and diversity have been difficult to reconcile with the stated aim of equality of opportunity for all students.

35 More recently the issues have been restated:

Throughout history, most individuals have been the victims of forces beyond their control. Where you were born, both geographically and in class terms, was overwhelmingly likely to dictate your future. Jobs were rarely a matter of choice and normally decreed by who your father was. Opportunities for women outside the home were restricted. Wealth governed access to cultural riches. Horizons were narrow, hopes limited, happiness a matter of time and chance.

Our schools should be engines of social mobility, helping children to overcome the accidents of birth and background to achieve much more than they may ever have imagined. But, at the moment, our schools system does not close gaps, it widens them.

(DfE, 2010, p.6) These statements recognised structural differences in society and suggested that schools would play an important part in social mobility, possibly suggesting that the ideal was to progress to middle or upper class status. The idea of equality of opportunity was loosely defined but placed a responsibility both on schools and the child themselves. Michael Gove (Secretary of State for Education, 2010) went on to identify that there were large differences in children’s attainment and social skills on entry to school and that these were persistent throughout their school career, again placing responsibility on schools to correct these deficit. The contested nature of this vision of society was not expressed and there was little consideration of the ways that social structures can open up or limit possibilities for individuals (Lambert and Morgan, 2010, p.19). It appears that Basil Bernstein’s statement that ‘education cannot compensate for society’ (quoted in Pring et al, 2009, p.202) has been forgotten in recent policy with the development of post-welfare society attitudes (Jones, 2003; Tomlinson, 2005).

36 2.5.3 Classifying School Types in England

The history of secondary education in the last 100 years has seen increasing access to education and qualifications for all children. This was achieved by gradually raising the school leaving age which reached 16 in 1972 and will be raised again to 18 in 2015, by creating new types of school and introducing new qualifications. A major change occurred after 1945 when a tripartite system of education was created, based upon ability rather than social class. Grammar, technical and secondary modern schools were created that catered for different abilities and aptitudes but in effect it was a bipartite system because few technical schools were built. Within this system there were faith schools (largely Church of England and Roman Catholic) that had more control over their admissions and curriculum (Ball, 2008; Pring et al. 2009)

Dissatisfaction with the selection procedures for grammar schools and the limited places available saw the establishment of comprehensive (non-selective) schools between the 1950s and 1970s in most local authorities, although a few retained selection. Successive governments have continued to alter the system and introduce new schools or change the governance. One major change has been a shift towards more central government

control, albeit through policy rather than direct control, more powers to individual schools and a lessening of control by local authorities. Important changes introduced in the 1990s were the ability of parents to express a preference for the school that their child would attend (school choice) and the publication of information about school performance (league tables). Other recent changes have encouraged schools to specialise in certain aspects of the curriculum (Ball, 2008). This increased the diversity of schools in a locality as

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they increasingly made decisions that differentiated them from neighbouring schools. Secondary schools in the 2000s were therefore classified in a number of different ways (table 2.2).

Table 2.2: Classification categories for mainstream secondary schools Admissions policy

Comprehensive; Selective; Secondary Modern;

Governance and funding (Type of Establishment – ToE)

Community; Foundation; Voluntary Aided; Voluntary Controlled; City Technology Colleges; Academies

Religious Affiliation

Church of England; Roman Catholic; Jewish; Muslim; Other denominations; None; Gender

Mixed; Male; Female; Geographical location

Urban; Town and Fringe; Village; Hamlet and Isolated Dwellings; Age group

11-16; 11-18; 13-18; Specialisation

Arts (can be Media, Performing Arts, Visual Arts, or combination of these); Business & Enterprise; Engineering; Humanities; Languages; Mathematics & Computing; Music; Science; Sports; Technology;

Other

including Beacon; Leading Edge; Training;

The government used the Type of Establishment (ToE) classification based upon governance and funding for statistical analyses which gave seven mainstream school

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categories (Community; Foundation; Voluntary Aided; Voluntary Controlled; City Technology Colleges; Academies; Independent).

Another attempt to capture the diversity of English schools was the eight fold

classification of schools proposed by Newsam (2003) based upon performance on intake (table 2.3).

Table 2.3: A School classification based upon intake performance.

School type Description Student Intake

1 Super-selective (e.g.

Manchester Grammar) Most students from the top 10% of the top performers at 11+ 2 Grammar Most from the top 20% (sometimes as far

as 30%/40%) performers in standardised tests

3 Comprehensive ‘plus’ All abilities, but heavily skewed (by catchment area, partial selection or parental choice) to the top 50% of performance range

4 Comprehensive More or less even mix across the performance range

5 Comprehensive ‘minus’ Students of all abilities, but very few from the top 25% of the performance range 6 Secondary modern In an area served by designated grammar

schools which gets none of the top 25%, but a fair mix of the rest

7 Secondary modern

‘minus’ None of the top 25% and less – sometimes far less – than its fair share of the next 25% (because such students are in types 1-6) plus students excluded or ‘counselled out’ of types 1-6

8 Sub Secondary modern None of the top 25%, few of the next 25% and an intake heavily weighted towards the lower parts of the bottom 50%

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This classification can be interpreted from a geographer’s perspective. Location had an effect on the intake of a school because where different socio-economic groups lived influenced the student population. In cities there were few truly ‘comprehensive’ schools, with a balanced intake whereas in rural areas or small towns they were common. This was a function of distance between schools as rural comprehensives had large catchments and limited choice whereas urban schools closer together provided increased choice. The outcome was a hierarchy of urban schools largely based upon examination performance (Brighouse, 2003, p. 5).