Educational Inequalities Essay

739 Words3 Pages
“If you attend a school on a council estate, having come from a council estate, you get a council estate education” – (Hanley, 2008) The above words were written by Lynsey Hanley who attended school on a council estate in the 1970s; these words give an insight into an experience of a child from a specific background. A background, many children in England come from. To find the causes of educational inequalities, this essay will look briefly at the history of state education and key acts that helped define today’s system of education. It will then look at what educational inequalities exist, and reasons why. There are a number of issues currently affecting pupils and students in England; social class, race and gender are contributing factors in the causes of educational inequality. However, in this discussion I will focus on social class, as this often links to both race and gender. Definitions of social classes are defined in a number of ways, two of these are defined by the registrar general’s definition of social classes, and by the Marxist definition. For this particular argument, the registrar general’s definition will be looked at. Brief History of Education During the industrialisation of England, various types of schools were introduced to deal with the growing number of uneducated youth. Sunday schools taught children and adults to read the Bible and memorise its scriptures, however, writing and arithmetic were not taught as these were seen as unnecessary, even dangerous. Schools of Industry were introduced to provide poor children with training in areas where they would be able to find employment; knitting, sewing and housework for girls, and shoemaking or machine work for boys. Here, children were also taught the ‘three Rs’ – reading, writing and arithmetic. Monitorial schools were a combination of Sunday schools and schools of Industry,
Open Document