Critical Review for a Major Newspaper Article‘Pray for better schools’ by Nick Cohen
...ade a great impact on determining where the middle class and upper class children would attend because parents with academically intelligent children would search for the schools with the best results. With the schools spending millions of pounds on brochures, newspapers and other kinds of advertisement every year, education definitely became part of the growing market economy. Thought there was an abolition of the tripartite system, there was still and there still is greater advantage for the upper class. Parents from the upper classes are more interested in the progress of their child than for example the working class. Like the article says, ‘in order to send your child to fine schools nowadays, especially those with high demands you have to consider moving in its catchment area. That means that certain schools will only enlist if you live in a certain radius around the school. So what we now have is wealthy parents coming to buy houses near the school, so their child is accepted, and like the article puts forward, ‘if parents moved in, the cost of housing would rise, driving young working-class out of the catchment area.’ It was not a matter of a child’s ability because for all they knew, their child could be stupid. This all boils down to British politics, the ignorance of the government and the bogus political agenda of Tony Blair promising to concentrate on ‘education, education, education’ ‘Structured inequality is also reflected in education English fee-paying schools such as Eton are a clear bastion of privilege, as is Oxbridge. In a less extreme form the education system generally reflects similar patterns of privilege. Working-class children are less likely to stay on at school or attend university (Marsh in Marsh and Stoker, 2002: p.168) The question that then appears is why the working class is less likely to attend university. One concept to answer that question would be material deprivation and then to a small extent, lack of parental interest. There are still some children who go home to a computer-less household, a household with no appreciation for literature and even more a home with parents who work long hours and are unable to help with homework on a regular basis. Though this may be the case some working class children have high educational standards but because of the catchment area crisis they are unable to attend particular schools. That, I believe is a form of British politics hypocrisy. They ...