Education

The role and functions of education: functionalism and Marxism#

StandardAQA 7192/1 EducationDfE GCE Sociology subject content

Functionalist versus Marxist views of education

Fig. 1Functionalism sees education as integrating society and allocating roles fairly; Marxism sees the same processes as reproducing class inequality.

Functionalists ask what education does for society as a whole, and answer that it performs essential integrative and economic functions. Durkheim argued that education transmits society's shared culture and so creates social solidarity, binding individuals into a moral community, while also teaching the specialist skills a complex division of labour requires. Parsons saw the school as a bridge between the family and wider society: whereas the child is judged in the family by particularistic standards (as a unique individual) and ascribed status, the school judges by universalistic standards (the same rules for all) and achieved status, so it socialises children into the impersonal, meritocratic values of modern society. Davis and Moore added the function of role allocation - education 'sifts and sorts' individuals by ability, allocating them through examinations to the occupational positions that suit their talents.

Marxists reject this consensus picture, arguing that education serves not society as a whole but the interests of the capitalist ruling class. Althusser locates education among the ideological state apparatuses, whose task is to reproduce labour power and, crucially, to reproduce and legitimate class inequality by transmitting the ideology that the system is fair. Bowles and Gintis, in their correspondence principle, argue that the hidden curriculum of schooling - obedience to authority, acceptance of hierarchy, motivation by external reward, fragmentation of tasks - mirrors and prepares pupils for the alienated relationships of the capitalist workplace. They also attack the 'myth of meritocracy': schooling presents success and failure as the product of individual ability, disguising the way class background shapes outcomes and so persuading the working class to accept their subordinate position.

Willis's study of working-class 'lads' offers an influential neo-Marxist development that complicates the picture. Using participant observation, he found that the boys were not passively moulded by the hidden curriculum but actively formed an anti-school counter-culture, rejecting the values of the school much as their fathers rejected the values of the factory. Ironically, this very resistance guaranteed their reproduction as manual workers, since their rejection of qualifications suited them only for the unskilled labour capitalism required. Willis thus combines a Marxist emphasis on class reproduction with an interactionist attention to the pupils' own meanings and agency - a bridge between structural and action accounts.

Evaluating these perspectives means weighing consensus against conflict. Functionalism captures the integrative and skill-transmitting functions of education and the meritocratic ideal, but is criticised for assuming a value consensus that may not exist, for ignoring the evidence that achievement is powerfully shaped by class, gender and ethnicity rather than pure ability, and for an over-socialised, deterministic view of pupils. Marxism exposes how education can reproduce and legitimate inequality, but is criticised for economic determinism, for assuming a tight correspondence that ignores pupil resistance (Willis's own finding), and for underplaying the genuine benefits education brings. The strongest essays set the two directly against one another - does education integrate or reproduce? - and reach a reasoned judgement rather than describing each in turn.

Bowles and Gintis: the correspondence principle

Fig. 2Bowles and Gintis argue the hidden curriculum of school corresponds to, and prepares pupils for, the capitalist workplace.

Worked example

Model 30-mark essay plan: the role of education

Plan a 30-mark answer evaluating the functionalist view of the role of the education system.

Introduction
Define the functionalist view (education meets society's needs); signal the conflict alternative and a judgement to come. Hook to the Item's reference to functions or fairness.
Develop functionalism
Solidarity and skills (Durkheim), bridge and meritocratic socialisation (Parsons), role allocation (Davis & Moore). Show how each claims a benefit to society as a whole.
Evaluate functionalism
Assumes a consensus that may not exist; ignores class, gender and ethnicity gaps in achievement; over-socialised view of pupils; role allocation assumes a meritocracy the evidence questions.
Develop the Marxist alternative
Althusser (ISA, reproduction and legitimation), Bowles & Gintis (correspondence, myth of meritocracy), Willis (resistance still reproduces class).
Evaluate Marxism
Economic determinism; correspondence too tight (Willis's own resistance finding); underplays real benefits and pupil agency.
Judgement
Conclude that education does perform integrative and skill functions but also reproduces inequality; the meritocratic claim is the weakest part of the functionalist case, so a conflict-informed synthesis is most convincing.

Result: A top-band essay develops functionalism, dismantles the meritocracy claim with the achievement-gap evidence, sets Marxism and Willis against it, evaluates Marxism too, and judges that education both integrates and reproduces - a reasoned synthesis anchored to the Item.

Typical mistakes

Describing functionalism and Marxism in separate paragraphs without ever comparing them - juxtaposition scores AO1, not the AO3 the essay demands.
Presenting the correspondence principle as uncontested, ignoring Willis's evidence of pupil resistance to the hidden curriculum.

Active revision

Applying material from the Item and your knowledge, evaluate the functionalist view of the role of the education system. (30 marks)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for sociology (Department for Education)

The New Right, marketisation and educational policy#

StandardAQA 7192/1 EducationDfE GCE Sociology subject content

Marketisation and polarisation

Fig. 3Critics argue marketisation, via choice and league tables, lets popular schools cream-skim and entrench middle-class advantage, polarising the system.

The New Right perspective on education combines a functionalist-style belief that schooling should transmit shared values and allocate roles with a distinctive faith in markets over state provision. Chubb and Moe argue that state-run education is unresponsive and inefficient because it faces no competition, and that giving parents choice and schools autonomy - creating an education market - raises standards by forcing schools to attract 'customers'. The New Right does not want less shared culture; it wants the state to set a framework (a national curriculum, testing, published results) within which competing schools respond to parental demand. This philosophy underpinned the marketisation of English education from the 1988 Education Reform Act onwards.

Marketisation refers to the introduction of market forces into education: open enrolment, per-pupil funding that follows the choice of parents, published league tables and inspection, and a diversity of provider types. David describes the resulting system as a 'parentocracy', in which, supposedly, parental choice drives quality. Supporters argue that competition and accountability have raised standards and empowered parents. The policy has continued and deepened through successive governments - grant-maintained schools, specialist schools, city academies, and later the rapid expansion of academies and free schools that operate outside local-authority control - so the marketised model is now the dominant feature of the English system.

Critics, drawing on Marxist and interactionist ideas, argue that marketisation increases inequality behind a rhetoric of choice. Ball and Bartlett describe how popular, high-performing schools engage in 'cream-skimming' (selecting able, largely middle-class pupils) and 'silt-shifting' (off-loading less able or costly pupils), so that competition entrenches advantage. Middle-class parents, with the cultural and economic capital to decode league tables, move house into good catchment areas and work the system, exercising what Gewirtz calls their superior capacity to choose. The result, critics say, is a polarised system in which good schools get better intakes and struggling schools decline - the opposite of the equalising effect the New Right promises.

Educational policy has, however, pursued equality of opportunity as well as marketisation, and the two aims sit in tension. The tripartite system of 1944 selected pupils at eleven into grammar, technical and secondary modern schools, but was criticised for entrenching class division; comprehensivisation from the 1960s aimed to remove selection; compensatory education programmes and later interventions targeted disadvantage. Globalisation has further shaped policy, with governments framing education as central to national economic competitiveness. Evaluating policy therefore means asking, for each measure, whether it widened or narrowed the gap between social groups - the question the achievement sections address - and recognising that marketisation and equality of opportunity have often pulled in opposite directions.

Worked example

Evaluating marketisation

Assess the New Right claim that marketisation raises standards for all.

State the claim
The New Right argues competition and choice force schools to improve, raising standards and empowering parents (Chubb & Moe; parentocracy).
Credit the argument
Accountability through inspection and league tables can drive improvement, and diversity of provision offers some genuine choice.
Apply the inequality critique
But cream-skimming and silt-shifting (Ball & Bartlett) let popular schools select advantaged pupils, and middle-class parents' capital lets them work the system (Gewirtz).
Draw out the effect
The likely result is polarisation - good schools improve their intakes while struggling schools decline - widening rather than narrowing the class gap.
Judgement
Conclude that marketisation may raise average measured performance but does so unequally, so the claim that it benefits all is not supported.

Result: Marketisation can sharpen accountability but its mechanisms of choice and competition favour those with cultural and economic capital, so it tends to entrench rather than reduce class inequality - the 'standards for all' claim is only partly justified.

Typical mistakes

Listing policies chronologically without analysing their effect on the class, gender and ethnicity gaps.
Treating the New Right as identical to functionalism, missing its distinctive preference for markets over state provision.

Active revision

Applying material from the Item and your knowledge, evaluate the view that marketisation policies have improved the education system. (30 marks)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: AQA AS and A-level Sociology (7192) specification (AQA)

Social class and achievement: external factors#

StandardAQA 7192/1 EducationDfE GCE Sociology subject content

External and internal factors in achievement

Fig. 4The class gap is explained by external (home and society) and internal (school) factors - the strongest answers combine both.

One of the most consistent findings in the sociology of education is that social class is strongly associated with educational achievement: on average, the higher a child's class background, the better their measured attainment, a gradient that appears early and widens through schooling. Sociologists explain this gap through external factors - influences originating outside the school, in the home and wider society - and internal factors, examined in the next section, arising within the school itself. Keeping the two analytically separate, and then combining them, is the key to a strong class-and-achievement answer.

Material deprivation explanations locate the gap in the economic disadvantages of poorer families: inadequate housing and diet affecting health and concentration, a lack of money for books, computers, trips, private tuition and quiet study space, and the pressure on poorer students to take paid work or avoid the costs of staying in education. On this account, achievement follows the distribution of economic resources, and the remedy is redistribution and material support. The strength of the explanation is its grounding in measurable disadvantage; its limitation is that it cannot fully explain why some materially poor children succeed and some materially comfortable children fail, pointing to cultural and internal factors as well.

Cultural deprivation theory argues instead that some working-class families lack the values, attitudes and language that schooling rewards. Bernstein distinguished a restricted speech code (context-bound, particularistic) more common in working-class settings from the elaborated code (context-free, universalistic) used by schools and the middle class, giving middle-class children a built-in linguistic advantage. Others point to differences in attitudes to deferred gratification and to the value placed on education. Cultural deprivation theory is heavily criticised as blaming the victim - treating working-class culture as deficient rather than simply different - and for underplaying the material and internal-school factors that the theory conveniently ignores.

Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital reframes the whole debate and is the most powerful external explanation. He argues that the middle class possess cultural capital - the knowledge, tastes, language and confidence with 'high' culture - that schools take for granted and reward, not because it is objectively superior but because the education system is designed around it. Working-class children are not culturally deprived but culturally different, and the school's misrecognition of middle-class culture as 'ability' converts economic advantage into educational success and back again. This structural, non-deficit account connects the class gap to the wider reproduction of inequality and is often set against the deficit assumptions of cultural deprivation theory. The strongest answers weigh material, cultural-deprivation and cultural-capital explanations against one another and against the internal-school factors.

Illustrative class gap in achievement

Fig. 5Typical illustrative pattern (not official statistics): measured attainment tends to fall with class position - the gap that external and internal factors explain.

Worked example

Analysing two external factors (10-mark, Item-based)

Applying material from the Item, analyse two external factors that may explain class differences in achievement.

Select factor one from the Item
Take a hook from the Item - e.g. a reference to poverty - and develop material deprivation: poor housing, diet, lack of resources and study space depress attainment.
Develop and link
Explain the causal chain (fewer resources -> less support and worse conditions -> lower attainment) and note the limitation (some poor children still succeed).
Select factor two from the Item
Take a second hook - e.g. a reference to home language or culture - and develop cultural capital: schools reward middle-class knowledge and language (Bourdieu), disadvantaging working-class pupils.
Develop and link
Explain that this is difference, not deficit, and contrast it with the discredited cultural-deprivation view; connect to the reproduction of inequality.

Result: A full-mark 10-marker develops exactly two external factors, each explicitly hooked to the Item, each with a clear causal chain and a brief analytical link - not a list of every possible factor.

Typical mistakes

Confusing cultural deprivation (a deficit view - working-class culture is inferior) with cultural capital (a difference view - the school rewards middle-class culture).
Explaining the class gap entirely by home background and ignoring the internal-school processes of labelling and setting.

Active revision

Applying material from the Item, analyse two external factors that may explain social class differences in educational achievement. (10 marks)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for sociology (Department for Education)

Internal factors: labelling, the self-fulfilling prophecy and subcultures#

AdvancedAQA 7192/1 EducationDfE GCE Sociology subject content

Labelling to differential achievement

Fig. 6Interactionists trace how labelling, via the self-fulfilling prophecy, setting and subcultures, produces differential achievement inside the school.

Internal factors are the processes within schools that generate differential achievement, and interactionist research has shown that the school is not a neutral sorting machine but an active producer of inequality. Labelling is the starting point: teachers, like everyone, categorise, and studies find they often classify pupils against an image of the 'ideal pupil' that is unconsciously middle class in speech, appearance and behaviour. Becker's interviews with teachers found exactly this kind of typification. Once applied, a label shapes how a teacher treats a pupil - the attention, encouragement and expectations they receive - so that labelling is not merely descriptive but consequential.

The self-fulfilling prophecy is the mechanism by which labels become real. Rosenthal and Jacobson's field experiment in a Californian school suggested that when teachers were led to expect certain pupils to 'spurt', those pupils did indeed make greater progress, apparently because the teachers' altered behaviour communicated the expectation. Applied to class, the argument is that working-class pupils, more often labelled as less able, receive lower expectations, internalise them, and come to under-perform, so the label produces the reality it claimed merely to detect. This process links the interactionist analysis of education directly to the labelling theory of deviance, where the same mechanism appears.

Streaming and setting institutionalise labelling. When pupils are grouped by perceived ability, teacher expectations are built into the structure: Ball's study of banding showed how pupils in lower bands were taught differently and came to conform to their placement, while Gillborn and Youdell describe an 'educational triage' in which schools, under the pressure of league tables, concentrate resources on borderline pupils likely to affect the school's ratings, writing off those deemed hopeless cases. Setting can thus convert an initial, often class-linked, label into a fixed and widening gap in attainment - a structural amplification of the interactionist process.

Pupil subcultures are the collective response to labelling and setting. Lacey's concepts of differentiation (teachers ranking pupils) and polarisation (pupils responding by splitting into opposed groups) explain how a pro-school subculture forms among those given high status and an anti-school subculture among those denied it, who seek status instead in rejecting the school's values. Willis's 'lads', discussed earlier, are the classic example. The great strength of internal-factors research is that it reveals processes invisible to external explanations and restores the school's own responsibility for inequality; its limitation is that it can appear deterministic (do all labelled pupils accept the label? some resist) and it risks neglecting the material and cultural factors outside school. The most convincing account of the class gap integrates internal and external factors, treating home disadvantage and school processes as reinforcing one another.

Worked example

Model essay plan: internal versus external factors

Plan a 30-mark answer evaluating the view that differences in achievement between social classes are the result of factors within school.

Introduction
Frame the internal/external debate; signal that a full explanation combines both. Hook to the Item's reference to school processes or home background.
Develop internal factors
Labelling (Becker), self-fulfilling prophecy (Rosenthal & Jacobson), setting and triage (Ball, Gillborn & Youdell), subcultures (Lacey, Willis).
Evaluate internal factors
Powerful and often invisible to other views, but can be deterministic (pupils resist labels) and cannot explain the gap that is present before school.
Develop external factors
Material deprivation, cultural capital (Bourdieu); the gap appears early, suggesting home factors matter independently of school.
Show the interaction
Internal and external factors reinforce one another: home disadvantage shapes the labels pupils attract, and school processes then amplify home disadvantage.
Judgement
Conclude that neither alone suffices; the class gap is the compound product of external disadvantage amplified by internal school processes.

Result: A top-band essay develops and evaluates internal factors, sets external factors against them, and lands on an integrated judgement - the gap is produced by home and school together - rather than defending one side.

Typical mistakes

Treating the self-fulfilling prophecy as automatic and universal, ignoring evidence that some pupils reject labels.
Explaining achievement by internal factors alone and forgetting the material and cultural factors outside school - or vice versa.

Active revision

Outline and explain two internal factors that may explain differences in educational achievement between social groups. (10 marks)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: AQA AS and A-level Sociology (7192) specification (AQA)

Gender and achievement#

StandardAQA 7192/1 EducationDfE GCE Sociology subject content

Illustrative change in achievement by gender

Fig. 7Typical illustrative pattern (not official statistics): girls' measured achievement has risen to match or exceed boys' - a change requiring sociological explanation.

The pattern of gender and achievement has been transformed over the past half-century. Where girls once lagged behind, they now generally match or outperform boys across most measured stages and subjects, a reversal that has itself become a focus of study and, at times, of moral panic about 'failing boys'. Sociologists explain girls' improved performance through both external and internal factors, and it is important to treat the change as a sociological problem to be explained rather than a simple fact.

External explanations for girls' rising achievement emphasise wider social change. Sharpe's restudy of working-class girls found their priorities had shifted from marriage and family towards careers and independence, raising educational ambition. The impact of feminism, expanding opportunities in the labour market, and changes in the family (more lone-mother and dual-earner households providing role models of independent women) are all cited. These changes raised girls' motivation and self-image, altering what they expected from education. The strength of these explanations is their fit with the timing of the change; their limitation is that they operate at a general level and need internal factors to explain classroom-level differences.

Internal explanations point to changes within schooling. Equal-opportunities policies, the removal of gender bias from some assessment, coursework (which some argue suited girls' work habits, though its decline complicates this), positive role models and teacher attention have all been proposed. Some sociologists argue that the marketised school, judged by results, has a particular incentive to recruit and support girls, who are seen as more likely to achieve. As with class, the evidence suggests external and internal factors combine rather than compete.

Explaining boys' relative underachievement, and gendered subject choice, completes the picture and demands evaluation. Proposed causes of boys' underachievement include the decline of traditional manual jobs and the resulting 'crisis of masculinity' and loss of motivation, laddish anti-school subcultures that equate effort with femininity, and lower literacy. Gendered subject choice - the continuing tendency for boys and girls to cluster in different subjects - is explained by gender-role socialisation, gendered subject images and peer pressure, showing that the reversal in overall attainment has not dissolved gender differences within the curriculum. The best answers avoid the tabloid framing of a simple 'boys versus girls' contest, note that class and ethnicity cut across gender, and evaluate whether the changes reflect real equality or a shift in the form gender inequality takes.

Worked example

Evaluating the 'failing boys' explanation

Assess the view that boys underachieve because of a crisis of masculinity.

State the argument
The decline of manual work is said to have removed boys' traditional adult role, producing a crisis of masculinity, lost motivation and laddish anti-school subcultures.
Credit the argument
It fits the timing of deindustrialisation and the observed anti-school attitudes among some boys who equate effort with femininity.
Apply the class/ethnicity critique
But class and ethnicity produce larger achievement gaps than gender; 'boys' are not a uniform group, and many boys achieve highly - the framing is too crude.
Question the moral panic
The focus on failing boys may itself be a media-driven moral panic that distracts from class inequality and from persistent gendered subject choice.
Judgement
Conclude that the crisis-of-masculinity account captures part of the picture for some boys but exaggerates a uniform gender gap and neglects the larger role of class.

Result: The crisis-of-masculinity explanation has some purchase on the attitudes of particular groups of boys but overstates a uniform 'boys versus girls' gap and understates class and ethnicity - so it is a partial, class-blind account.

Typical mistakes

Accepting the moral panic about boys uncritically, ignoring that class and ethnicity produce larger gaps than gender.
Treating the gender reversal as evidence that gender inequality in education has ended, ignoring persistent gendered subject choice.

Active revision

Applying material from the Item and your knowledge, evaluate sociological explanations of gender differences in educational achievement. (30 marks)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for sociology (Department for Education)

Ethnicity and achievement#

AdvancedAQA 7192/1 EducationDfE GCE Sociology subject content

Ethnicity and achievement: external and internal factors

Fig. 8Ethnic differences in achievement arise from external and internal factors together, strongly mediated by class and gender.

Achievement also varies by ethnicity, though the pattern is complex, uneven between groups and strongly cut across by class and gender, so sweeping generalisations must be avoided. Some minority ethnic groups on average perform very well and others less well, and within every group class background makes a large difference. As with class and gender, sociologists explain ethnic differences through external factors (in the home and wider society) and internal factors (within school), and the strongest answers combine them while resisting any single, deterministic cause.

External explanations include material factors - minority ethnic groups are, on average, over-represented among lower-income households, so material deprivation contributes to the gap for some groups - and cultural factors, though these are handled with great caution. Cultural-deprivation-style arguments about family structure or attitudes to education are heavily criticised, like their class equivalents, as blaming the victim and as ignoring the diversity within groups and the racism in the wider society. Many sociologists therefore emphasise the impact of broader social racism and discrimination in housing and employment, which shape the material and social context of minority ethnic pupils, rather than treating minority cultures as deficient.

Internal explanations centre on processes within school, above all labelling and institutional racism. Studies suggest that some minority ethnic pupils are labelled negatively by teachers, subject to lower expectations, and disproportionately placed in lower sets or excluded, producing self-fulfilling prophecies analogous to those documented by class. Gillborn argues that the education system is characterised by institutional racism - routine practices, from setting to the design of assessment, that disadvantage minority ethnic pupils regardless of individual intent. The ethnocentric curriculum - a curriculum that privileges the culture, history and language of the dominant group - is a further internal factor, marginalising minority experiences and identities.

Pupil responses and identities complete the analysis. Research finds a range of responses to labelling and racism, from the formation of anti-school subcultures to strategies of accommodation and resistance; some pupils channel the experience of being labelled into determined achievement rather than rejection. Evaluating ethnicity and achievement means holding several things together: the reality of internal-school racism and labelling, the weight of external material factors and wider societal racism, the strong mediating effects of class and gender, and the danger of both cultural-deficit explanations and of ignoring pupils' own agency. A top-band answer integrates external and internal factors, insists on the intersection with class and gender, and reaches a judgement rather than settling on one cause.

Worked example

Analysing two internal factors for ethnic differences

Applying material from the Item, analyse two internal factors that may explain ethnic differences in achievement.

Select factor one from the Item
Hook to a reference to teachers or expectations and develop labelling: negative labels and lower expectations for some minority ethnic pupils produce self-fulfilling prophecies.
Develop and link
Trace the chain (label -> lower expectation -> lower set/exclusion -> under-performance) and note the mediating effect of class.
Select factor two from the Item
Hook to a reference to the curriculum or school practices and develop institutional racism / the ethnocentric curriculum (Gillborn): routine practices disadvantage minority pupils regardless of intent.
Develop and link
Explain how a curriculum centred on the dominant culture marginalises minority identities and can depress engagement and attainment.

Result: A full-mark 10-marker develops exactly two internal factors, each hooked to the Item, each with a clear causal chain, while noting the strong mediation of class and gender - not a catalogue of every factor.

Typical mistakes

Making sweeping claims about 'minority ethnic pupils' as a uniform group, ignoring huge variation between and within groups and the role of class.
Relying on cultural-deprivation explanations (family structure, attitudes) without the strong criticism they attract as victim-blaming.

Active revision

Applying material from the Item, analyse two ways in which factors within school may explain ethnic differences in achievement. (10 marks)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: AQA AS and A-level Sociology (7192) specification (AQA)

Key points

Model 30-mark essay plan: the role of education

Key points

Evaluating marketisation

Key points

Analysing two external factors (10-mark, Item-based)

Key points

Model essay plan: internal versus external factors

Key points

Evaluating the 'failing boys' explanation

Key points

Analysing two internal factors for ethnic differences

Sources

Education

Key points

Model 30-mark essay plan: the role of education

Key points

Evaluating marketisation

Key points

Analysing two external factors (10-mark, Item-based)

Key points

Model essay plan: internal versus external factors

Key points

Evaluating the 'failing boys' explanation

Key points

Analysing two internal factors for ethnic differences

Sources