Meritocratic Educational Policies

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This essay will assess the extent to which educational policies have been meritocratic. Meritocracy is where a pupil’s ability, rather than their class background, income, ethnicity or gender, determines the school they go to and the grades they get. So something based more around achievement and not ascription. Before the Education Act (1994), children of different classes and backgrounds all received very different educations. The parents of children from wealthy middle class backgrounds (bourgeoisie) could afford to send their child to public and grammar schools to receive an academic education. Whereas, children of poor working class parents could only receive a very basic level of education in elementary schools. Though they did receive some education, this was not to help them climb the social ladder, but rather to teach them the basic skills required for work and to obey authority. The Education Act (1944) replaced the old class based system with the Tripartite System. The Tripartite System was put into place after the Second World War and it introduced secondary education to pupils. Although it had no effect on the public school, it aimed it eliminate class based inequalities within state education. The System provided three types of secondary school: The Grammar schools, for the higher achieving pupils, Technical schools, specialising in certain fields and Secondary Modern schools for all other pupils. The support of the System was the idea of equality of opportunity. All children would take the 11+ test, an IQ test; to determine which type of school best suited their abilities. It was accepted by the government that intelligence was innate and so could be scientifically measured. To whom ever passed the 11+ exam the Grammar schools were open to them but even though these school required a higher intelligence, each of the three schools was supposed to be
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