Education Politics in UK Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Education Politics in UK - Essay Example This is also sometimes seen as a form of social control, Education as 'handmaiden': the education system serves the industrial process and the economy by producing a trained workforce, and by providing childminding services, Social change (or 'social engineering'). The education system has been seen as a means of bringing about social change.1 Many social theorists think that for many decades education has suffered through unsuccessful traditional policies to which there always has been a need for fundamental changes in the structure and nature of educational institutions. Educational policies have been dealt with profound and often confrontational debates over the nature and purposes of education in society, particularly those between education, the economy and the nation. The changes initiated during the period altered the power relationships which had underpinned the education system since the 1944 Education Act, which itself had shaped the post-war educational world. Free elementary education was introduced in England in 1870; secondary schools were fee-paying until 1944. 80% of children left after elementary education, which after 1918 finished at 14. The 1944 Education Act introduced free secondary education. ... guments for comprehensives are they reduce the likelihood of discrimination or disadvantage on the basis of class, and that they improve the prospects of children of middling ability. The main argument against is that the selective system may be more consistent with the idea of equality of opportunity. Working class children who went to grammar schools did better than those who go now to comprehensive schools. The current political agenda in the light of educational policies and inclusion require us to analyse the facts behind educational policies highlighting Governmental efforts behind inclusion. When in 1990s Industrial mentoring movement initiated, it involved almost 17,000 pupils in hundreds of British schools to take benefit from those thousands of companies that encouraged their business people and allow them to volunteer as mentors2. From 1994 to 1998, the education was escorted by the European Youthstart Initiative who funded almost a hundred programmes of employment-related guidance, education and training for socially excluded young people in the UK, and the majority of these included mentoring. However, the political extravaganza remain a significant part of the Initiative, where the Institute of Career Guidance (ICG) co-ordinated the Mentoring Action Project (MAP), the largest such programme in Britain to that date3. The MAP remained a success which took over almost one quart er of statutory careers services in England and Wales, thereby allocating mentors to 1,700 young people4. During the same period, the Dalston Youth Project, a voluntary sector scheme working with young black offenders in London's deprived East End, became nationally lauded as an exemplar of mentoring for socially excluded youth. The National Mentoring Network (NMN) in 1994 was