Higher standards,better schools for all – a critique: can market forces close the social and achievement gap?®

Abstract

The government's White Paper published earlier this year has clear aims for improving schools, in particular: to address the attainment gap between the high and low achieving schools; and to address the fact that a child's educational achievements are still too strongly linked to their parents’ social and economic background – a key barrier to social mobility. This article sets out to dispute that the government will improve schools, or address the attainment gap between high and low achieving schools or improve social mobility through the policies they propose to implement – in particular, transporting low SES students to higher SES schools, expanding higher SES schools and closing urban ‘failing’ schools. The article uses recent school improvement research from a number of sources to emphasize the impact of social background on school improvement. It sets out, with reference to a number of researchers, the enduring nature of social values on educational achievements and the way in which market forces have actually widened the gap between high and low achieving schools with little impact on overall student achievement.