Sociology Essay

Examine the ways in which educational policies may reproduce and justify social class inequalities.

There   have been many educational policies that have been implemented over the years that have tried to tackle class inequalities but in fact have contributed to that like in the past with the Forster act and the butler act and its tripartite system. These all contributed to the division of class. There have been many policies such as the comprehensive system, vocational education and many more recent educational policies such as fee paying for university students and also EMA.

The comprehensive system was set up in 1965 with the aim to get rid of the tripartite system and the 11+ because of the class division. This meant that there was only one type of school and that all students went to just one type instead of three like the Butler acts. Comprehensive schools were to take all children of all levels of ability in a particular area. There was no test to get in. there were many good points to this type of education such as the working class and middle class children would attend the same school and all would take exams not just the grammar/ academic students.
However, this type of education reenforced social class inequalities as many schools actually streamed pupils by ability, with many working class children ending up in the low streams, and middle class in the high streams thus creating a 'tripartite system under one roof'. As well as this there are large differences between comprehensive schools depending on the area they are in, for example, if the school is located in a middle class area then it will have mainly middle class pupils and often better facilities than if it was located in a working class area. Also, there are many grammar and private schools that still exist, which take mainly middle class pupils which is therefore creating class inequalities.

Vocational education also was implemented in the 1970's. The government introduced various...