Public versus Private School Debate.

Essay by danix2uniA, August 2003

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The notion of equality within the institutes of education suggests that all participants have equal rights and opportunities to excel, succeed and gain social mobility through a system that at surface level is seen to provide all its users with opportunity for equitable outcomes. A deeper investigation suggests otherwise, as we only need to look at the ever widening gap between the private and public sectors to understand that the social field of education has its way of reproducing social class and inequalities. At its very heart, its participants are being governed by conservative practices within a system that continues to label, pigeonhole and mould students into categories that are socially stratifying and oppressive to the already disadvantaged .The main focus of this paper is to establish that dominant hegemonic curriculum exists in our present education system, which leads to lower socioeconomic groups being disadvantaged. It will outline the main theoretical arguments and give a short historical perspective to establish the links between educations system of the past and current systems.

This paper will look at the factors concerning the underlying restrictions that these students face when striving for academic success and discuss the initiatives used to address the issues through pedagogical reform and government funded initiatives. The limitations of this research paper will only focus on students identified as being from low socio economic backgrounds.

The association between families' socio-economic status (SES) and the academic performance of students is well established in the field of sociological research. The distribution of social justice within schooling remains a contentious issue for educators and rightly so if they are taking the brunt for governments inadequacies, especially those who are advocating on behalf of the disadvantaged. For educators to understand the underpinnings of social injustices, it's important to recognise the relationships within groups...