Many children are culturally and materially deprived, especially in low income areas. This means that they are lacking in important skills, attitudes and values in everyday life which are essential to high educational achievement. To help these children, compensatory education was introduced by the government so that young children can learn how to behave in society and enable them to have more resources such as books and other educational facilities.

B) Name two programmes of compensatory education.

Billions of dollars were spent to create a programme called Operation Head Start. This was a huge programme concentrating on pre-school education which began in Harlem in the 1950s and extended to low income areas across America. This programme aimed to provide a stimulating educational environment.

Another programme in Britain was Educational Priority Areas (EPAs). This was to make sure that low income areas received extra funding for better facilities and teachers. Educational Priority areas were later changed to Educational Action Zones.

C) Identify three changes in gender and achievement between 1975/76 and 1994/95 as shown in item B.

Firstly, more girls than boys are now

In the 1993 education Act, the government made further education colleges become more independent, self-governing bodies, funded by further education funding rather than LEA’s. Also when students went to university they would not receive grants but take out a low cost loan and only pay it back when they were in full time employment of a well paid job.

The government soon realised that this was unfair and introduced the 1944 Education Act to make a more equal society. The aim was to give each individual pupil the opportunity to develop their skills within a free system of state education. They realised that each child had different abilities to another child and so introduced the eleven plus test. This allowed pupils to be selected for different types of school depending on their intelligence level. The cleverer pupils would be selected for the grammar schools, technical schools for those who were best at practical work and secondary modern schools where most of the other children went. This was called the tripartite system. However, this represented a biased nature of the 11+ test because the questions on the second section of the test were not fair. The questions were aimed at upper class pupils. For example, questions about famous classical composers which was associated with the upper class. To some people this seemed like a fair system but it wasn’t because there was still independent schools where most upper class children went and also not all education authorities supported the tripartite system. Functionalists believe that independent schools gave pupils role allocation and they pick out the cleverer of the pupils and they will get the best qualifications which mean they get the best jobs. Marxists believe that it has more to do with class than intelligence. The Marxist view is more accurate because the education system was based around class and more upper class pupils obtained better qualifications because of unfair tests aimed at the upper class meant that they got the best education. The tests were also sexist because girls had to achieve a better score than boys did to get into the grammar schools. As a result of not passing, they would have to attend secondary modern schools which were seen as not very good. Although the education act seemed to be fair at the time, there were many hidden flaws of the system.

Education believes more in equality because of Labours comprehensive system. It showed that they were trying hard to eliminate social and gender barriers but failed to try further. I think EAZ’s are good because it allows low income schools to receive money to create higher standards and become more equal with other schools. However there are always aspects which can never be corrected within the education system. The working class are still at a disadvantage as they do not get the money they need to improve their standards. This also means that they do not get the support from parents that they need.

In Item A, it says Education Action Zones ‘would ensure that wastage would be eliminated and equality achieved’. By helping low income areas which have poor education, they will be brought up to

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