Curriculum and opportunity in Scottish secondary education: a half-century of expansion and inequality
Paterson L.
2020
Curriculum Journal
4
10.1002/curj.55
Debate about the curriculum of secondary schools has centred on two competing claims. One is the aspiration to provide a broad, liberal curriculum to all students as a route into common citizenship. The other is that a curriculum of this kind, far from being potentially universal, is intrinsically merely the culture of dominant social groups, is inaccessible to people who are not members of these, and is also harmful to most students’ vocational opportunities. The analysis here considers these debates through data from a unique series of surveys of school students in Scotland, covering the whole of the second half of the twentieth century. It thus deals with a period when selection for entry to secondary school was ended for all public-sector schools, and when, following that reform, there were deliberate attempts in policy to extend a liberal curriculum to everyone. The analysis provides some vindication of the reformers’ intentions that a liberal education could be experienced by a wider range of students than in the selective system. But it also shows that inequality of access to a broad curriculum became greater than previously. © 2020 The Authors. The Curriculum Journal published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Educational Research Association
comprehensive schooling; effectively maintained inequality; liberal education; Scotland; sex; social class; vocational education
Arum R., Shavit Y., Secondary vocational education and the transition from school to work, Sociology of Education, 68, pp. 187-204, (1995); Ball S., Politics and Policy Making in Education, (1990); Barone C., A new look at schooling inequalities in Italy and their trends over time, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 27, pp. 92-109, (2009); Benavot A., The rise and decline of vocational education, Sociology of Education, 56, pp. 63-76, (1983); Boscardin C.K., Aguirre-Munoz Z., Stoker G., Kim J., Kim M., Lee J., Relationship between opportunity to learn and student performance on English and algebra assessments, Educational Assessment, 10, pp. 307-332, (2005); Boudon R., Education, opportunity and social inequality, (1974); Bourdieu P., Passeron J.-C., Reproduction in education, society and culture, (1977); Buchmann C., DiPrete T., McDaniel A., Gender inequalities in education, Annual Review of Sociology, 34, pp. 319-337, (2008); Cha Y.-K., Effect of the global system on language instruction, 1850–1986, Sociology of Education, 64, pp. 19-32, (1991); Croxford L., Equal opportunities in the secondary school curriculum in Scotland, British Educational Research Journal, 20, pp. 371-391, (1994); Croxford L., Inequalities, Everyone's future: Lessons from fifty years of Scottish comprehensive schooling, pp. 110-138, (2015); Croxford L., Iannelli C., Shapira M., Documentation of the youth cohort time-series datasets, (2007); Davies P., Telhaj S., Hutton D., Adnett N., Coe R., Socioeconomic background, gender and subject choice in secondary schooling, Educational Research, 50, pp. 235-248, (2008); de Graaf N.D., de Graaf P.M., Kraaykamp G., Parental cultural capital and educational attainment in the Netherlands: A refinement of the cultural capital perspective, Sociology of Education, 73, pp. 92-111, (2000); DiMaggio P., Cultural capital and school success: The impact of status culture participation on the grades of U.S. high school students, American Sociological Review, 47, pp. 189-201, (1982); Dumais S.A., Cultural capital, gender, and school success: the role of habitus, Sociology of Education, 75, pp. 44-68, (2002); Duta A., An B., Iannelli C., Social origins, academic strength of school curriculum and access to selective higher education institutions: Evidence from Scotland and the USA, Higher Education, 75, pp. 769-767, (2018); Favretto I., ‘Wilsonism’ reconsidered: Labour party revisionism 1952–64, Contemporary British History, 14, pp. 54-80, (2000); Gamoran A., Curriculum standardisation and equality of opportunity in Scottish secondary education, 1984–1990, Sociology of Education, 69, pp. 1-21, (1996); Gamoran A., Curriculum change as a reform strategy: Lessons from the United States and Scotland, Teachers College Record, 98, pp. 608-606, (1997); Goldthorpe J.H., Class analysis and the reorientation of class theory: The case of persisting differentials in educational attainment, British Journal of Sociology, 47, pp. 481-505, (1996); Gray J., McPherson A., Raffe D., Reconstructions of secondary education: Theory, myth and practice since the war, (1983); Hargreaves D., The challenge for the comprehensive school, (1982); Hirst P., Knowledge and the curriculum, (1975); Iannelli C., The role of the school curriculum in social mobility, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 34, pp. 907-909, (2013); Iannelli C., Duta A., Inequalities in school leavers' labour market outcomes: Do school subject choices matter?, Oxford Review of Education, 44, pp. 56-74, (2018); Ichou M., Vallet L.-A., Do all roads lead to inequality? Trends in French upper secondary school analysed with four longitudinal surveys, Oxford Review of Education, 37, pp. 167-161, (2011); Kamens D.H., Meyer J.W., Benavot A., Worldwide patterns in academic secondary education curricula, Comparative Education Review, 40, pp. 116-111, (1996); Klein M., Iannelli C., Smyth E., School subject choices and social class differences in entry to higher education: comparing Scotland and Ireland, Models of secondary education and social inequality—An international comparison, pp. 233-248, (2016); Lucas S.R., Effectively maintained inequality: education transitions, track mobility, and social background effects, American Journal of Sociology, 106, pp. 1642-1690, (2001); McPherson A., Willms J.D., Equalisation and improvement: Some effects of comprehensive reorganisation in Scotland, Sociology, 21, pp. 509-539, (1987); Neave G., The development of Scottish education, 1958–1972, Comparative Education, 12, pp. 129-144, (1976); Paterson L., Scottish education in the twentieth century, (2003); Paterson L., The modernising of the democratic intellect: the role of English in Scottish secondary education, 1900–1939, Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, 24, pp. 45-79, (2004); Paterson L., Civic values and the subject matter of educational courses, Oxford Review of Education, 35, pp. 81-98, (2009); Paterson L., The reinvention of Scottish liberal education: secondary schooling, 1900–39, Scottish Historical Review, 90, pp. 96-130, (2011); Paterson L., Social radicalism and liberal education, (2015); Paterson L., Pattie A., Deary I.J., Social class, gender and secondary education in Scotland in the 1950s, Oxford Review of Education., 37, pp. 383-401, (2011); Raffe D., School attainment and the labour market, Fourteen to eighteen, pp. 174-171, (1984); Reeves E.B., The effects of opportunity to learn, family socioeconomic status, and friends on the rural math achievement gap in high school, American Behavioral Scientist, 56, pp. 887-907, (2012); Schmidt W.H., Burroughs N.A., Zoido P., Houang R.T., The role of schooling in perpetuating educational inequality: An international perspective, Educational Researcher, 44, pp. 371-386, (2015); English in secondary schools, (1952); Tinklin T., High-attaining female school leavers, (2000); Tinklin T., Gender differences and high attainment, British Educational Research Journal, 29, pp. 307-325, (2003); Triventi M., Panichella N., Ballarino G., Barone C., Education as a positional good: Implications for socialinequalities in educational attainment in Italy, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 43, pp. 39-52, (2016); Troyna B., Vincent C., The discourses of social justice in education, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 16, pp. 149-166, (1995); van de Werfhorst H.G., A detailed examination of the role of education in intergenerational social-class mobility, Social Science Information, 41, pp. 407-438, (2002); van de Werfhorst H.G., Kraaykamp G., Four field-related educational resources and their impact on labor, consumption, and sociopolitical orientation, Sociology of Education, 74, pp. 296-317, (2001); van de Werfhorst H.G., Sullivan A., Cheung S.Y., Social class, ability and choice of subject in secondary and tertiary education in Britain, British Educational Research Journal, 29, pp. 41-62, (2003)
John Wiley and Sons Inc
Article
All Open Access; Hybrid Gold Open Access
Scopus