Education Policy: New Labour 1997 (AQA GCSE Sociology)

Raising standards, reducing inequality and promoting diversity and choice

• The Labour government run by Tony Blair from 1997-2007 viewed education as a key area of policy

Raising standards

• One of the main objectives of New Labour’s education policy was to raise standards in order to create a skilled labour force to compete in the global knowledge economy

• This involved introducing policies such as:

  • offering nursery places to all children aged 3-4

  • reducing class sizes in primary schools

  • emphasising the teaching of essential skills such as literacy, numeracy and IT

  • specialist schools were developed where 10% of their students showing an aptitude in the school’s specialist subjects were selected (such as sports, technology or languages)

  • changing league tables so that schools had to publish data on 'value-added' as a measure of how well a child progressed through school

  • increasing the number of targets schools had to reach

  • placing failing schools in 'special measures'

Reducing inequality

• Another objective was to achieve greater equality of opportunity by making education more inclusive and improving the experience of education for all, particularly disadvantaged groups in society

• This involved introducing policies such as:

  • the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA), which was paid to students from lower-income families and designed to encourage them to stay in post-16 education

  • the Aim Higher programme, which is designed to raise the aspirations of students from disadvantaged backgrounds and to encourage them to go on to higher education

  • the Sure Start programme which supports families with preschool children by providing affordable early years education and childcare and raising parenting aspirations

Evaluation

• Even though these policies were intended to support students from disadvantaged backgrounds, critics contend that they benefited the middle classes

• The introduction of tuition fees for university education has deterred students from disadvantaged backgrounds from entering higher education

• This could explain why a high attainment gap between the working and middle classes continued under New Labour

Promoting diversity and choice

• An additional objective of New Labour's education policy was to meet the diverse needs of individual students

• These policies, however, came under fire for carrying on the marketisation of education that the Conservative government started in 1988

• This has led to:

  • the promotion of specialist schools, although successful in raising standards, it is argued that they selected a disproportionate amount of middle-class pupils

  • the introduction of academies where failing comprehensive schools were taken out of local authority control and funded directly by the government and sponsors

    • These schools, known as city academies, could select part of their intake