(Townsend, 1993) Defines poverty as being unable to partake in society because of a lack of resources available to you. Meaning participation or consumption are dependent on financial resources and affordability of them. However, it is still possible to be in poverty with financial support.
A lack of participation in decision making or a violation of human dignity are just examples of non-material aspects of poverty of which make you powerless. (UKCAP, 1997) argues that choices available to you and opportunities defines poverty more than your income. Because you can have large amounts of income, but a denial of rights and equality can differentiate you between poverty and non-poverty.
This essay will discuss how policy makers addressed poverty issues within the education system during the 1870 Fosters education act, The 1867 2nd Reform act and the 1902 Balfour education act.
It will use theories from Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim and Pierre Bourdieu to look at these policies from various angles. And compare these policies to today’s contemporary ideas of which are currently being implemented into the education system to address or further widen the gap between poverty and the different classes.
The 1870 education act was a policy implemented by the government to assure all children received at least five years of compulsory education. The reason for doing this was due to industrial development such as factories needing workers who had adequate literacy and mathematical skills and an increase in the urban population in Britain (Bartlett and Burton, 2016).
However, the working class opposed to the government’s policy on compulsory education. If their children had to attend school then the parents could no longer benefit from their child’s services in the home and their contributions to the family budget, such as house or farm work consequently reducing their income (Hurt, 1979). This then ultimately widened the gap further by ‘making the poor poorer’.
It was not just the working class who had discrepancies with this policy. The concerns amid the middle and upper classes where that an educated working class will no longer obey their superiors and be unsatisfied with their menial jobs (Bartlett and Burton, 2016) causing a scare amongst the upper classes of a loss of dominance over the working class and a fear of them becoming equals.
Marx argued that by the government taking over the education board to fund free compulsory education, the upper class would inevitably be reproducing their own structural inequalities, such as the poverty gap, plutocracy and totalitarian. He believed that state run schools would be used as superstructures to oppress the working class by only teaching them menial skills and attributes such as labouring and working ‘for’ the dominant class (Bailey, 2010). While the upper classes would be taught how to manage and run the businesses.
Nevertheless, policy makers continue to broaden the social class divide and increase poverty in education. (Grammatical error; Schools, 2016) reports that the modern-day government are supporting new grammar schools to be built within Britain.
This pushes out a meritocratic apparition of social mobility. (Gorard & Nadia Siddiqui, 2018) cite that by clustering the advantages of the upper class into grammar schools has a probable dangerous effect on society, such as affecting children’s social skills, attitudes and developing a lack of democracy in generations to come. As well as the problems discussed in Marx’s theory.
(Tawney, 1931) argues that the social class issue can be found throughout the education system, yet it is denied and not ever conversed. Pupils achieve better grades in grammar schools than in comprehensive schools, and students who do not attend grammar school achieve worse than they would if grammar schools did not exist (Orford, 2018). Reasons being, that these schools attract the more qualified and experienced teachers and educators, fixing failure into the working class by putting them into devalued educational spaces away from the upper class, to allow them to monopolise mobility (Raey, 2006) and leave the working class behind.
Reintroducing selection into education would do little to improve the diversity of the future. However, although both policies argue to be meritocratic in some form or another, it is evident that Marx’s view of social reproduction and control of the means of production by the elite does not efficiently address the impact of poverty on education.
Significant political changes had happened in Britain during 1867 and the working-class men were now given the right to vote (Bartlett and Burton, 2016) so it was imperative to ensure that they were educated enough to understand what they were voting for.
However, this policy was a way of reproducing inequality. (Hurt, 1979) cites that what seemed to be a democratic nature by the school boards, the genesis aroused to find that this was a way of influencing the working-class vote, by educating them only on how to vote for the conservatives and educating them only what they wanted them to understand and vote for (Bartlett and Burton, 2016). Therefore, grooming them for their own gains and using a policy of democratic falsehood to disguise it.
Both Durkheim and Weber’s theories are similar to liberal principles and the apprehension and belief in individuals actively participating in social life. They both believe that democracy is the best way to promote individual freedom (Prager, 1981).
(Giddens, 1972) refers to Durkheim’s views that society can only survive if there is homogeneity between everyone. Education plays a key role in enforcing this by fixing it into a child’s mind from the early life. Such as, influencing them on who they should vote for.
It does this by implementing essential similarities from social life demands into school life. For example, teaching specific skills like rule following, self-control and boundaries. (Durkheim, 2012) believed that by being in a school environment, children will learn more widespread knowledge than they would in a family environment.
Meaning that by putting the working class into compulsory education from an early age, they would have more power over them and be able to guide and influence them to some degree. And Weber’s theories had more of a concern over formal structures of rule and power which resembled this democratic uncertainty (Thomas, 1984).
In 2011 a policy was put into place by the local authority called ‘pupil premium’ This was a modern-day attempt at abolishing this power and gaining more equality within the education system by giving the ‘poorer’ pupils funding so that they gain an equal schooling experience to the middle and upper-class pupils.
The money is to be spent by the school to improve the attainment of the eligible child (Tickle, 2016) and close the gap made by poverty.
Yet, pupils eligible for pupil premium are not on the lowest household income in the schools and are not the most educationally disadvantaged. There are lots of children living on the poverty line who are not eligible for pupil premium because they do not qualify for free school meals. Because, it is attached to benefits and does not consider income (Allen, 2018), whereas if a family is ‘working poor’ they are not eligible for either the free school meals nor the pupil premium. So, the ‘poorest’ pupils still suffer the most.
The 1902 education act established secondary and grammar schools. It also developed a system for free places and funded scholarships for a select few ‘poor’ children to attend grammar school (Simon, 1965).
This new policy abolished the school boards and brought in ‘local education authorities’ (LEA’s) which gave the government complete authority over education through local councils and created a unified national system of education. Prior to this, school boards where elected democratically by local people.
Although the working class now had access to secondary schools and funded scholarships at grammar schools, this did not mean that they would always ‘fit in’ and be accepted equally by the dominant class. A majority of the time they would feel, as (Reay, Crozier and Clayton, 2009) cites “like a fish out of water” within the upper-class institutions.
This argument is similar to Bourdieu’s ‘Habitus’ theory that the way that we perceive the social world of which we are in are shared by people with the same background. For example, we are fixed on how to act according to our world around us, but if we are not from that background on the social structure. The way to act, speak and dress for instance, is not already set on our minds and we must then change to fit in.
(Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977) suggested that education reproduces society by passing on cultural values, Bourdieu’s economic capital meant that the working-class pupils need the material goods such as uniforms, internet access and technology that the dominant classes acquire, in order to compete for their educational success.
Without these necessities’ pupils can struggle to achieve. In contemporary Britain, a majority of student’s homework requires internet access whether it be to research or to use the school’s website and apps to complete it online (Branam, 2017). This is otherwise known as ‘the digital divide’.
Another example of ‘the digital divide’ is Schools using text messages as a means of contacting and informing parents, this is on the assumption that all parents have a mobile phone. And if this is the case, then that child can be left out of learning activities and educational events because the parent was un aware from not being able to receive the text message.
(Bourdieu, 1990) sees meritocracy as an allegory and pupils are directed to trust that failure and success is based on quality and excellence, nevertheless, it appears to be our class background which governs what we achieve and how well we do in education. Meaning that our motivation, intelligence and ideas have less of an effect on our grades and life success than our class background does.
Successive governments and educationalists through history have attempted to put policies into place to address the impacts of poverty and provide an equal education for all, but as we can see, with the middle and upper classes still at an advantage despite various attempts through history and the present day, it seems incomprehensible to close the gap on such a deep routed issue.
References
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Bailey, R. (2010). The Philosophy of education. London: Continuum, p.111.
Bartlett, S. and Burton, D. (2016). Introduction to Education Studies. 4th ed. SAGE, p.76.
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Bartlett, S. and Burton, D. (2016). Introduction to Education Studies. 4th ed. SAGE, p.78.
Bartlett, S. and Burton, D. (2016). Introduction to Education Studies. 4th ed. SAGE, p. 162
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Tickle, L. (2016). How should schools spend pupil premium funding?. The Guardian. [online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2016/oct/18/how-should-schools-spend-pupil-premium-funding [Accessed 17 Mar. 2019].
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