CLA assignment

MODULE XX4CLA:
UNDERSTANDING
CURRICULUM, LEARNING
AND ASSESSMENT.
To what extent do current policies tackle
educationalinequalitybetween students from low-
income families and their more affluent peers?
Hayley Jones
Student ID: 4215307
Tutor: Mary Biddulph
Word Count: 6122
Abstract
This essay draws on ideas aboutequality and sociology to examine how the series of reforms
from the UK Coalition government might impacton the equality of our education system. It
begins by examiningthe context of the attainment gap between disadvantaged students and
their more affluent peers from a theoretical perspective and then critically analyses the
possibleimpactof the government’s policiesof parental choiceof school,pupil premium and
their curriculumreforms on addressingeducational inequality and narrowingtheattainment
gap.

H Jones: 4215307 XX4CLA
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Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................2
Contextualising the Achievement Gap............................................................................................ 4
Marketisation of Education and School Choice............................................................................... 7
Pupil Premium............................................................................................................................ 10
Curriculum Reforms.................................................................................................................... 14
The English Baccalaureate....................................................................................................... 16
Vocational Qualifications......................................................................................................... 17
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 19
References................................................................................................................................. 21

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Introduction
Education can provide the springboard to a better life.
(Clifton, 2013a: 101)
A good education can allow people to gain the knowledge and skills necessary to fully
participate in society. Education is linked with both mental and physical health, as well as
happiness and wellbeing. (Wigdortz, 2013). It is unfortunate, therefore, that opportunities
for a good education are not always equally accessible to all. There is a strong correlation
between socioeconomic factors and academic achievement, as demonstrated in several
studies (Sylva et al., 2012, Duncan and Murnane, 2011 and Gregg et al., 2012).
Across England, almost fifty per cent of children claiming free school meals do not achieve
a GCSE pass above a grade D (Cassen and Kingden, 2007) and on average, the reading
skills of children from disadvantaged backgrounds are two years behind those of children
from wealthier backgrounds (Jerrim, 2012). Such gaps in academic achievement lead to
wider inequalities in both the housing and labour markets, as well as in social structures
(Clifton, 2013a).
The current government outlined a series of reforms in their Schools White Paper (DfE,
2010), which they believe will create a more equal system through freedom and choice,
ensuring all children have the opportunity to achieve academically, regardless of their
background.
In this assignment I will critically analyse how the current government’s wave of reforms
have affected the educational opportunities of children from socially deprived
backgrounds, as well as how the curriculum addresses inequality in education. I will begin
by putting the attainment gap in to context, both historically and internationally. The
subsequent chapters will examine current government policies to try and establish to what
extent they are equitable, looking particularly at the marketisation of education, parental
choice of schools and the pupil premium policy. Finally, I will examine aspects of the

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curriculum, looking at how teaching and learning can help tackle educational disadvantage.
I do not intend to offer any suggestions of improvements for government policies, but I
do hope to gain an understanding of how current policies have developed, the impact of
such policies on equity in the context of curriculum and assessment and also to understand
what obstacles remain in achieving educational equity. I hope that I will also gain an
understanding of and be able to critically consider the motivation behind policies and
actions in my own school setting.
Whilst my area of research does not involve participants, it is still highly important to
consider the ethical implications of my work. In order for my work to be considered ethical,
it must be as trustworthy as possible (Trochim, 2006). It is therefore imperative that I
address my positionality, since my research can easily be impacted upon by any inherent
bias (Hulme et al, 2011). I am aware that my chosen area of focus is the result of a felt
difficulty (Dana and Yendol-Hoppey, 2009) and that this in itself means that I am more
likely to look for evidence that supports my own thoughts. Having grown up and been
educated in an area of high social deprivation, I feel very strongly about the educational
opportunities available to children from socially disadvantaged backgrounds and I must
therefore ensure I offer a balanced argument.

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Contextualising the Achievement Gap
The current government set out their plans for school improvement in The Importance of
Teaching – The Schools White Paper (2010) and since then have implemented a series of
reforms. As a country we are committed to the Convention of the Rights of the Child and
we therefore must ensure that the educational rights of all children are adhered to no
matter the background of the child (UNICEF, [no date]).
Previously, both Michael Gove (2012) and Nick Clegg (2012) have emphasised the
importance of increasing the number of pupils that are eligible for free school meals that
achieve the best GCSE results, but it is the larger scale underachievement among
disadvantaged pupils that is the bigger problem (Clifton and Cook, 2013).
The difference in achievement between rich and poor is greater in
this country than in other comparable countries.
(DfE, 2010: 18)
Whilst PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) has shown that in all
countries students from average backgrounds are outperformed by students from more
socioeconomically advantaged backgrounds (OECD, 2010), this link is much stronger in
England (Clifton and Cook, 2013). The scores of our highest attainers stand up to
international competition but our average is lowered by the performance of students from
socially disadvantaged backgrounds. Consequently, to improve our international standing,
we must improve the attainment of disadvantaged students (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2009).
Countries such as Finland and Canada have equitable educational systems and high overall
standards, showing that the two do not have to be mutually exclusive (OECD, 2010).
The government have recognised that tackling educational disadvantage is the way to
increase overall standards of education and give England an educational system that can
compete with the best educational systems around the wold and as a result, there has
been a small narrowing of the attainment gap between rich and poor over the last decade
(Clifton and Cook, 2013). Critics have argued that the improvement in the performance of

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poorer pupils is due to inflation of grades and the increased use of vocat ional equivalent
qualifications (ibid.) but Cook (2011) shows that the changes in the attainment gap can
be seen even when equivalent vocational qualifications are disregarded. He argues that
the increased use of such qualifications can only account for a small fraction of the increase
in educational equity in recent years.
It is difficult to identify the key factors that have resulted in the improved attainment of
students from disadvantaged backgrounds but certainly one factor must be the reduction
of child poverty and urban deprivation (Clifton and Cook, 2013). However, research has
shown there are also several other possible factors. Qualification reforms in the 1980s
encouraged more students to stay in education and increased motivation (Machin, 2003),
but we must also consider that more recently, results will have been effected by the
educational policies of previous governments: including the drive to improve teaching
standards; investment in schools in deprived areas; and targeted interventions in literacy
and numeracy at the primary level (Clifton and Cook, 2013). Another factor that could
explain the improvements is increased immigration and the resulting increase in the ethnic
minority population since Luthra (2010) and Kapadia (2010) both argue that the
attainment of such pupils is not as strongly affected by family background.
It is worth noting that the majority of data sources concerning educational inequity
compare the attainment of those students eligible for free school meals to those wealthier
students that are not eligible for free school meals. One problem with this is that the link
between poverty and educational attainment is not just something that occurs amongst
the poorest of students. In fact, the relationship can be shown to be a scale, with
deprivation being a factor of academic achievement wherever you are on the scale (Clifton
and Cook, 2013). Consequently, it is not possible to identify a specific level of deprivat ion
at which achievement begins to fall. Not only does this mean that when examining data
for those students eligible for free school meals we only look at a fraction of the problem,
it also means that any policies aiming to narrow the attainment gap that only target pupils
eligible for free school meals are unlikely to be sufficient, since the problem affects more

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than just these students (ibid.) It is also important to stress that just because a child is
from a deprived background, it does not necessarily follow that they cannot achieve as
highly as a child from a wealthier background, just that the general trend is for this not to
happen (ibid.).
As a secondary school teacher I am aware of how much pressure there is on teachers to
ensure that all students make sufficient levels of progress following on from their Key
Stage Two results. However, Feinstein (2003, 2004) has shown that educational
inequalities are apparent from as early as three years old and it is these gaps that widen
throughout a child’s schooling. Clifton and Cook (2012) argue that around half of the
achievement gap present at age 16 was already present by the end of a child’s primary
education. Essentially, this means that more must be done to tackle educational
disadvantage earlier in children’s lives since even if all students made expected levels of
progress by the age of 16, it would not be enough to eliminate the attainment gap.
Secondly, this also means that it is early intervention that is necessary for students who
are falling behind when they reach secondary school since Goodman et al. (2010) have
found that the attainment gap widens particularly rapidly between the ages of 7 and 14.
The government also believe that schools are not wholly responsible for the gap in
attainment, blaming “deeply embedded culture of low aspiration” within communities as
well as persistent unemployment (DfE, 2010: 4).
What seems clear from data and research is that c hanges to education policies have the
power to reduce educational inequity and therefore raise the achievement of poorer
students in England’s schools. The next chapters will examine the impact of current policies
on educational equity in England.

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Marketisation of Education and School Choice
Whilst the government acknowledges the difference in educational achievement between
students from disadvantaged areas and their more affluent peers, and takes steps to tackle
this with certain educational policies, it seems that some of the drive for educational equity
might be counteracted by an ambition for parents to have more choice about where their
children are schooled. Several studies have shown that educational policies centred on
choice and diversity often reinforce social hierarchies of class and race (Whitty et al., 1998)
and Gerwitz et al., 1995).
The rise of marketisation in education began in 1979 with Conservative governments who,
in contrast to previous Labour governments, were focussed on standards and parental
choice as opposed to equal educational opportunities for all (Ward and Eden, 2009). The
primary aim of marketisation was to enable the UK to compete in global markets, but it
also aimed to increase competition between schools. It was the 1988 Act that was used to
create conditions for a free market in education: schools would have to compete with each
other in order to be the parents’ choice of school. The idea was that, just as in other free
markets, the quality of the products, in this case educational provision, would be driven
up (Ward and Eden, 2009). Such ideas were reinforced by successive Conservative and
Labour governments with the creation of new school categories, but the concept of equality
seemed to have fallen by the wayside as the School Standards and Framework Act (DfES,
1998) gave parents the right to express a preference for schools but also allowed for many
schools to be more selective in their admissions. What has actually resulted is not a free
market but a quasi-market, since there are many factors that mean not all schools are
open to everyone that wants to go there (Ward and Eden, 2009). Consequently, opinion
is divided as to whether the policies centred on parental choice of school can be equitable.
Inarguably, the quality of schools and teachers that a child experiences through their time
in education has a huge impact on their academic success (Allen, 2013). It has been shown
by Allen and Burgess (2011) that the quality of a child’s schooling has a greater impact on
those students from deprived backgrounds than it does their more affluent peers. This is

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unfortunate as it can be argued that it is this set of students who are more likely to be
unable to access the better schools since their families are less able to engage in the choice
process.
Advocates of the school reforms believe that low-income families are better off since the
housing market no longer acts as a barrier to disadvantaged pupils attending the best
schools (Hoxby, 2003). However, Gibbons et al. (2013) have estimated that there is a
premium of around 12 per cent on house prices around schools at the top of the league
tables compared to schools at the bottom. It has also been shown that where pupils do
not attend their local school, there tends to be an increase in social segregation between
schools (Allen, 2007). Additionally, research by Burgess and Briggs (2010) has shown that
if we compare children living in the same post code, a pupil eligible for free school meals
is 2 per cent less likely to attend a high-performing school than a child who is not. From
this, it can be concluded that the choice process does not result in an equal distribution of
high-quality schooling across the social classes.
Whilst this could be attributed to the financial constraints of low-income families. It could
also be result of parents choosing not to engage with the choice process. Commonly, the
discourse of working-class parents around school choice centres on practicalities, with a
focus on the present, whereas the middle class discourse tends to be dominated by what
is ideal and advantageous for their children (Ball et al., 1995).
Bartlett (1993) makes the case that once a school is full, open enrolment is more likely to
increase the opportunity for schools to operate a more selective admissions process, where
schools ‘cream-skim’ the pupils that are easier to teach. Le Grand and Bartlett (1993)
argue that it is this ‘cream-skimming’ that is the greatest threat to equity in the quasi-
markets of education. The government believe that the pupil premium will discourage any
desires schools might have to be overly selective but it is thought that the value of this is
unlikely to “reach a rate that incentivises schools to take on poorly performing pupils given
the obvious risk to their league table position (Allen, 2013:32).

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Many proponents of parental choice reforms argue that it does not matter how these
policies alter school admissions since the marketisation of schools and the resulting
competition raises all standards (Allen, 2013). However, research shows that the
difference between good and bad schools is not as vast as expected as even in good
schools we see a disproportionate number of disadvantaged pupils underachieving (Clifton,
2013a). In fact, even if every school was rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted, the attainment
gap between poor students and their more affluent peers would only narrow by a fifth
(Clifton and Cook, 2013). Similarly, whilst Ofsted (2011) found that students on free
school meals who attend City Technology Colleges and Academies reach standards twice
as high as the national average, it has been shown more recently that sponsored
academies struggle to improve the attainment for the lowest achievers (Machin and Silva,
2013).
It seems clear that if the government truly wish to tackle educational disadvantage, it is
necessary to make changes to school admissions policies in order to create equity but
most importantly they must realise that improving school standards alone will not address
the gap in attainment between rich and poor students.

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Pupil Premium
It has already been shown in earlier chapters that the achievement gap between rich and
poor students widens very quickly between the ages of 7 and 14 and that it is therefore
necessary to ensure that interventions are targeted at those students who have fallen
behind by the time they reach secondary school. We have also seen that increasing school
standards does not do much in the way of narrowing the attainment gap.
It is for these reasons that pupil level interventions are seen as the way to close the
attainment gap since they are effective in ensuring that support is given where it is needed
most (Clifton, 2013b). England’s most successful schools use highly trained teachers for
small groups of underachieving students until they have reached satisfactory literacy and
numeracy levels (ibid.). This strategy is also central to some of the world’s leading school
systems such as Finland and Canada. Finland in particular makes good use of targeted
intervention, with almost half of all pupils receive some form of intervention during their
education. Paying careful attention to children who are said to have ‘learning needs’ is an
important policy, which leads to their high international rankings (Sahlberg, 2011).
Consequently, the government introduced the pupil policy in April 2011. The pupil
premium is funding allocated to schools to enable them to access more resources in order
to target disadvantaged pupils. The funding is given based on the number of pupils who
have been eligible for free school meals in the previous six years or who are in care, with
schools being given the freedom to spend the money as they deem appropriate (DfE,
2014a). This premium is additional to the deprivation funding schools already receive.
There is also a ‘catch-up’ premium for students in Year 7 that have not reached a national
curriculum level 4 in English and Mathematics. The aforementioned policies are designed
to provide funding for additional resources that might enable schools to tackle educational
disadvantage (Clifton, 2013b), but how effective are they? This chapter will look closely at
the impact so far of the pupil premium policy at tackling inequality in the educational
system.

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With the introduction of the pupil premium almost four years ago, it is still early to make
comprehensive assessments regarding the policy. It is perhaps the relative newness of the
policy that explains why it was difficult to find current literature, other than from the
Department for Education and Ofsted. Researchers will need time to gather data in order
to make judgements and the policy is still in its settling in period. Indeed, the differences
that are evident between the 2012 and 2014 Ofsted reports are stark. I have reservations
about using such limited literature to evidence my writing and ethically I wanted to raise
this so that my research is transparent. On the other hand, Ofsted are independent and
impartial, and the data used to inform their 2014 report is extensive. I therefore believe
that using this report, in conjunction with other literature will not affect the trustworthiness
or validity of my research.
Initial indications suggested that pupil premium was not working as effectively as hoped,
with Ofsted (2012) finding that only one in ten of 262 surveyed school leaders thought
that the funding had significantly impacted upon the support given to pupils from
disadvantaged backgrounds. Funding was mostly used to maintain or enhance existing
provision rather than put new initiatives into action. Furthermore, the impact of provision
on eligible pupils was then not being reviewed (Ofsted, 2012). One reason for schools not
using the pupil premium funding as effectively as possible is that due to cuts in schools’
main budgets, the majority of schools face a real-term cut in their funding per pupil (IFS,
2011), making it difficult for schools to maintain their current level of provision.
However, by February 2013, Ofsted had found that more schools were beginning to use
their funding well, with attainment for eligible pupils beginning to rise (Ofsted, 2013). This
could be due to Ofsted inspections placing greater emphasis on the ways in which schools
spend their pupil premium funding, with inspectors carefully examining how effective
schools have been in closing the gap (Ofsted, 2014).
Ofsted’s most recent report, The pupil premium: an update (2014) is much more positive,
stating that “the pupil premium is making a positive difference in many schools” (Ofsted,
2014: 9). It has been noted by Ofsted (2014) that schools with strong leadership, as well

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as a school-wide commitment to closing the gap seem to make especially good use of pupil
premium money since they are extremely successful at identifying their pupils’ specific
needs in such a way that low attainment is addressed at an early stage. Pupil progress is
then tracked carefully in order to make any sensible adjustments based on meticulous
evaluation (ibid.). It is in schools where this tracking is not good enough that pupil
premium is often not well used, since leaders do not make effective use of the data.
Since the importance of catch-up tuition in literacy and numeracy has been emphasised
(Clifton, 2013b), it is unsurprising then that according to the research by Ofsted, “The
most successful schools ensure that pupils catch up with the basics of literacy and
numeracy” (Ofsted, 2014: 12) and it is also reassuring to see that the most popular use
of pupil premium funding is to pay for additional qualified staff to work with small groups
of children, primarily English and Mathematics (Ofsted, 2014).
Worryingly, Ofsted also found a relationship between a school’s overall effectiveness and
its impact on the attainment of disadvantaged students through the use of pupil premium
The previous chapter explored how it is precisely this set of students that struggle to
access the schools at the top of the league tables and therefore it is concerning that it is
those schools that make the most effective use of pupil premium. This is also slightly
contrary to what has been said earlier. Previously, it has been shown that raising the
standards of schools does not necessarily close the attainment gap. However, if improving
a school’s overall effectiveness means that schools would make better use of pupil
premium as a result of superior leadership, then perhaps driving school standards up will
begin to close the attainment gap indirectly.
Schools’ accountability for student results seems to play a conflicting role in tackling the
low attainment of disadvantaged pupils. When inspecting schools, Ofsted have increased
their focus on the use of pupil premium funding and they believe this is making a difference
to how effectively the additional funding is being used (Ofsted, 2014).

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Headteachers know that their schools will not receive a positive
judgement unless they demonstrate that they are focused on
improving outcomes for pupils eligible for pupil premium.
(Ofsted, 2014: 4)
On the other hand, Burgess (2013) argues that the accountability system encourages
schools to focus their attention on pupils near certain performance thresholds at GCSE.
Paterson (2013) believes that this increases the risk of schools throwing all their resources
at exam students rather than encouraging the schools to use their funding to intervene
earlier and make long-term gains, which we know are more effective at tackling the
achievement gap.
The main failing of the pupil premium funding in its aim to address educationally
disadvantage must be that the criteria for funding is mainly centred on eligibility for free
school meals. We have seen in earlier chapters that it is not only these students that are
victims of educational inequality and therefore by only using additional funding to support
these pupils it will not be possible to address the high level of underachievement in England
(Clifton, 2013b).
Mortimore (1997) raises the ethical dilemma of offering advantageous initiatives only to
certain pupils, denying more affluent families access to support whilst also believing that
equal access to such systems can only increase the attainment gap. I wonder if by offering
such initiatives to all students who fall behind, targeting pupils based on literacy and
numeracy levels as advocated by Clifton (2013b) we can begin to construct a more
equitable educational system, much like in Finland, where attention is given to students
identified as having ‘learning needs’. Perhaps with this approach we could raise our
international standing and, most importantly, begin to subsequently close the attainment
gap.

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Curriculum Reforms
How a society selects, classifies, distributes, transmits and
evaluates the educational knowledge it considers public, reflects
both the distribution of power and the principles of social control.
(Bernstein in Pollard, 20_: 141)
All of the government policies examined so far have been centred on the challenge of
closing the attainment gap by improving the equality of access to educational resources,
but one common concern in the discourse of the underachievement of disadvantaged pupils
is “the nature of the goods to which access was being sought” (Whitty, 2001: 287). Many
argue that it is the curriculum, dominated by the middle class, which does not meet the
needs of disadvantaged pupils and has therefore resulted in social inequality in education
(Young, 1971).
Under the current coalition government, there have been a series of educational reforms
in respect to the curriculum, as well as an overhaul of assessment procedures. Analysis of
such reforms is particularly revealing of some of the distributions of power within our
society and especially of the values of the former Secretary of State for Education, Michael
Gove. The matter of the curriculum and its contents as a whole is an area deep and complex
enough for an essay in its own right, but in the context of this assignment, I wish to focus
on the effects of the coalition government’s reforms in the context of educational
disadvantage.
Before we examine the government’s reforms, it is necessary to first consider the reasons
for having a national curriculum. Kelly (2009) explains that there are four main arguments
for a common core to the curriculum, but I believe that these can be broadly categorised
as epistemological and sociological and it is difficult to discuss these independently of each
other as Kelly argues politics and education are “inextricably interwoven” (Kelly, 2009:
188). Epistemologically, the motivation for a core curriculum is based on the idea that
certain kinds of knowledge have a status and value that is superior to others and therefore

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those kinds of knowledge must be essential to any curriculum that is supposed to be fully
educational (Kelly, 2009). If this is considered true, any curriculum which does not allow a
student to gain this knowledge and understanding would mean that the student is not
receiving a full education (ibid.) Young and Muller (2010) describe the possibility of this
kind of curriculum as Future 1 and for ease of reference, I will use the same labels.
Previously, there has been efforts to make education suit the interests of children by
relating it to their experiences within their immediate environment (Kelly, 2009). However,
this concept of curriculum is deemed highly dangerous for equality in education since if we
limit students’ learning to only experiences they are familiar with then we risk trapping
students in their current cultural environment, with little opportunity for social mobility
(ibid). This type of curriculum will be referred to as Future 2. Young (2011) argues that it
is disadvantaged students that have the most to lose as a result of this experience based
curriculum and that children will not stay in school only to learn things they already know.
Within this context, it is now possible to consider the curriculum reforms from the current
government and the values behind them.
The coalition government sets out the aims of the national curriculum in its framework
document The national curriculum in England (DfE, 2014b). It states that the national
curriculum should introduce the “essential knowledge” required for students to be
“educated citizens” and that it should contain “the best that has been thought and said”
(DfE, 2014b: 5). The coalition’s approach to the curriculum is very much in fitting with the
Future 1 curriculum. It is centred on subjects and the idea that there is a core knowledge,
both academic and cultural, that all students should know. Gove’s curriculum is widely
known to be influenced by the ideas of E D Hirsch (Alexander, 2012), whose approach to
the curriculum encourages little more that memorisation of key facts and rote learning
(Young, 2011). Hirsch believes that by teaching key cultural facts can compensate for the
lack of cultural literacy for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds (Hirsch, 1988).
Alexander (2012) argues that it is also important for us to challenge the assumption that
it is for ministers to decide what knowledge is essential and should therefore be in the

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curriculum. If we let ministers decide unchallenged what students should be taught, we
are at risk of what Young (2011) describes as a curriculum of compliance, where the
curriculum can be used to control social structures and reinforce educational disadvantage.
Critics of the government’s approach to the curriculum have described the policies to be
backward looking, elitist and likely to lead to new inequalities (Morris, 2011 and White,
2011). John White (2011) insists that the proposals will lead to a middle class curriculum,
which consequently will be more advantageous to middle class students. Conversely, Gove
claims that the reforms are based on equality. Whilst his proposal of a ‘curriculum for all’
does mean that everyone who studies the national curriculum will study the same content,
It is difficult to ignore the fact that historically, this type of curriculum has been renowned
for entrenching inequalities in access and opportunities (Young, 2011). We must also
remember that in reality not all state maintained schools follow the national curriculum
since Academies and Free Schools are not required to teach it (Alexander, 2012). It is
important to consider the impacts of this upon student’s abilities to access an appropriate
curriculum. Personally, I feel that if we require a national curriculum in order for education
to be equal, then all state maintained schools should follow it.
The English Baccalaureate
The English Baccalaureate (EBacc) was outlined in the Schools White Paper (DfE, 2010)
as a new performance measure for schools. Schools are now rated on the percentage of
students that achieve a C grade pass or higher in five key subjects: English, Mathematics,
Science, a Humanity and a Language (DfE, 2014b). I believe this policy symbolises Michael
Gove’s epistemological views and cements his approach to curriculum policy in the Future
1 category. He has revealed that there are types of knowledge that he values more than
others by the subjects included in the criteria and others that he has left out, notably the
arts subjects. Whilst this policy will be well received by middle class families, whom the
policy favours, some wonder about the effects on educational inequality.
The government claim that the introduction of the English Baccalaureate was not intended
to restrict students to subjects of a more traditional nature and that the aim was to create

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opportunities but by setting the EBacc as a performance measure to which schools are
held accountable by Ofsted has ensured the uptake of more academic subjects by children
for whom they are not well suited (DfE, 2010 and DfE, 2012). The introduction of the
EBacc as a performance measure increased the uptake of humanities and languages but
it is possible that schools are encouraging students to take these subjects, even if they
are likely to fail, in an attempt to improve their EBacc ranting. What is concerning is the
implications for inequality between those student’s eligible for free school meals and those
who are not. The DfE (2012), shows that not only were less than 10 per cent of students
who were eligible for free school meals taking the necessary subjects to qualify for the
EBacc, only 50 per cent of those students passed. Three times as many students who were
not eligible for free school meals were taking qualifying subjects, with a pass rate of 71
per cent.
By moving towards a Future 1 curriculum, where certain kinds of knowledge are regarded
as superior to others, the coalition government’s actions seem to be contrary to their
promises. It can be argued that the introduction of the EBacc performance measure was
a way for the government to influence the qualifications being taken by students at the
age of 16 and consequently reduce the number of children taking qualification that have
been deemed not robust enough to have any value for higher education or employment.
Vocational Qualifications
Forms of knowledge that have hitherto been defined as inferior and
unworthy of study and investigation need to be recognised and
accredited systematically.
(Lynch and Baker, 2005:141)
As a country, we often under-value practical skills and knowledge and in comparison to
most other developed countries, our technical education is lacking (Young, 2011). There
seems to be a perceived disparity between vocational courses and academic ability, with
the prevailing opinion being that vocational courses are designed for those unable to meet

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the criteria for more academic qualifications (ibid.). The Department for Education believe
that the current vocational courses do not carry much weight when aiming to continue
on to higher education or when seeking employment (DfE, 2014b). The current views on
vocational qualifications are unfortunate as a high proportion of students from
disadvantaged backgrounds have demonstrated desires to study these courses, with
575,000 opting to take this route in 2010, up from only 15,000 in 2004 (ibid).
The government are now striving to improve the quality of vocational provision in the UK,
with a review of vocational education undertaken by Alison Wolf in 2011, resulting in an
overhaul of vocational qualifications based on Wolf’s recommendations (DfE, 2015).
Gove’s curriculum would likely include a choice of route at age 14 (Young, 2011) but we
have seen in earlier chapters that policies involving choice are complicated, and can lead
to further educational disadvantages. On the other hand, Warnock (1977) makes it clear
that an equitable curriculum should be “genuinely suitable for all, not suitable only for
the middle class or the most academic” (Warnock, 1977: 84). Consequently, I believe
there is room in the curriculum for vocational qualifications that would engage students
so long as we ensure that the courses stand up to scrutiny, preparing students for either
employment or higher education no matter what background they come from.

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Conclusion
Since coming into power in 2010, the coalition government has put into motion a series of
complex reforms. As a recently qualified secondary school teacher, I wanted to better
comprehend these policies so that I could improve my understanding of the school-level
policies and practices in my own school setting.
The government have centred their reforms on improving our international standing, and
the result is that there is a convincing arguments for tackling education inequalities within
the English educational system. The OECD (2010) states that 77 per cent of the differences
in performance between schools in the UK is a result of the differences in socioeconomic
background, and it is this that needs to change if we want our educational provision to
compete on the international level. Countries such as Finland and Canada have established
equitable practice and perform very highly in the international rankings, which
demonstrates that equitable education systems can still be high achieving.
Government policies have the power to bring about change, as we have seen over the last
decade with the closing of the attainment gap between poor students and their more
affluent peers. However, research shows that it is not national level, or even school based
reforms that will have the impact on the narrowing of the gap. Studies and a review by
Ofsted show that the best way to tackle low achievement is with the targeting of students
on an individual basis to those students who are falling behind. The earlier this can be
done the better since the gap in attainment widens quickly between the ages of 7 and 14.
To help with this, the government have introduced the pupil premium fund, which is
additional funding per student that can be spent at the schools discretion, although it is
reassuring to know that most of the funding for pupil premium is spent on catch up tuition
for pupils that have fallen behind. Although the importance of early intervention is known,
many schools still focus the majority of their attention on examination students that are
close to performance thresholds as a result of accountability and performativity and this
is something that should be addressed if we wish to close the attainment gap.

Page | 20
However, educational disadvantage is not just about closing the attainment gap, but also
about providing equal opportunities in all aspects of education. This is particularly
important when considering the curriculum. One particular way of addressing
disadvantage through curriculum reforms is through the design of the curriculum in a way
that might prevent pupil disengagement. The introduction of well-designed and respected
vocational qualifications could help with this, but introducing further choice into the
curriculum must be done carefully to avoid creating new inequalities and it is also difficult
to change society’s perceptions of these kind of qualifications.
Bernstein (in Young, 2011:276) states that “Education cannot compensate for society.”
Whilst I believe this might be true to some extent, I do think that as educators we have
the responsibility to do as much as we c an to provide equal opportunities for all our
students, to equip children with suitable knowledge and skills so that they can go out in
the world and be what they want to be and perhaps in this way we can begin to break the
cycle of low aspiration and long-term unemployment.

Page | 21
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