Education

What Education covers

Education is examined in Component 1, Understanding Social Processes. It covers theories of the role of education, Processes inside schools, patterns of educational achievement, class, ethnicity and achievement and gender and achievement.

The 5 subtopics

Each one has its own page.

• Theories of the role of educationConsensus and conflict views, Durkheim's society in miniature, Parsons on universalistic standards and meritocracy, Bowles and Gintis's correspondence principle, and Becky Francis's feminist study.Open →
• Processes inside schoolsLabelling and Hargreaves's typing, Fuller's resistant pupils, the hidden curriculum, streaming, setting and banding, Ball's Beachside, the self-fulfilling prophecy, and Willis's lads.Open →
• Patterns of educational achievementGender, class and ethnic patterns in GCSE results and university entry, free school meals as a measure, exclusions, and worked comparisons of attainment gaps.Open →
• Class, ethnicity and achievementMaterial deprivation, Halsey, cultural deprivation, cultural capital, Bernstein's language codes, Keddie, catchment areas and school choice, the ethnocentric curriculum, Wright and Gillborn.Open →
• Gender and achievementChanging employment and Sharpe's study of girls, equal opportunities laws, the feminisation of schools, coursework, the crisis of masculinity, Mac an Ghaill, Jackson's ladettes and subject choice.Open →

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Take Education further

The same content, four other ways.

Commonly confused

Pairs that lose marks when they are blurred together.

• Streaming vs Setting

  Streaming: placing pupils in one ability group that they keep for every subject. Setting: grouping pupils by ability separately within each individual subject.

• Hidden curriculum vs Formal curriculum

  Hidden curriculum: the values and attitudes pupils pick up from school routines rather than lessons. Formal curriculum: the subjects and knowledge that schools openly and officially teach.

• Cultural deprivation vs Cultural capital

  Cultural deprivation: a supposed lack of the norms, values and language skills needed to succeed at school. Cultural capital: middle-class knowledge, tastes and attitudes that give an advantage in education.

Questions from this topic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   How do consensus and conflict theories disagree about the role of education?

   Model answer

   Consensus theorists, such as functionalists, see education as benefiting everyone by building shared values and selecting by talent. Conflict theorists, such as Marxists and feminists, see education as reproducing class or gender inequality.

2. 2

   Who was Durkheim, and what did he see as the main function of education?

   Model answer

   Émile Durkheim was a French functionalist writing in the early 1900s. Durkheim argued schools pass on society's shared norms and values, creating the social solidarity that holds society together.

3. 3

   Why did Durkheim describe the school as a ‘society in miniature’?

   Model answer

   Durkheim saw school as a small-scale society where children learn impersonal rules and cooperate with people outside their family. Teaching a nation's history can give pupils a shared heritage and a commitment to society.

4. 4

   How does education serve the needs of the economy, according to functionalists?

   Model answer

   Functionalists argue schools teach the specialist knowledge and skills that a complex division of labour needs. Vocational courses and apprenticeships prepare young people for particular jobs.

5. 5

   Give two criticisms of Durkheim's view of education.

   Model answer

   Marxists argue the values schools pass on belong to the ruling class, not to society as a whole. Durkheim assumes a shared value consensus, which is hard to find in a diverse modern Britain.

6. 6

   What did Parsons mean by describing school as a bridge between the family and wider society?

   Model answer

   Parsons said the family judges a child by particularistic standards, as a unique individual. School judges everyone by the same universalistic standards, the kind of rules adult society uses.

What is inside Levo

Six ways to work the same material.

Education revision questions

What does Education cover in Eduqas GCSE Sociology?

5 subtopics: theories of the role of education, processes inside schools, patterns of educational achievement, class, ethnicity and achievement and gender and achievement. Each one has its own page with questions and model answers.

How is Education organised?

By the Eduqas C200QS specification, subtopic by subtopic, so it matches the order you are taught it in.