Sociological perspectives on failing schools

This paper explores the genesis of the failing schools movement which developed in Britain in the 1990s. The failing schools legislation was political in origin in that it was intended to create more grant-maintained schools in Labour-controlled local education authorities. It was also the obverse of the effective schools movement which became, in the 1990s, a pervasive influence on politicians, educational policy-makers and practitioners. The paper uses the case of Hackney Downs, a school closed in December 1995 on the advice of the first Educational Association to be set up under the 1993 Education Act, to indicate the way in which complex social, political and educational issues could be reduced to the 'demonisation' of one school and its teachers. Sociological perspectives can illuminate the attempts to present a normative view of schools as 'good' or 'bad' and suggest that a coercive conflict model is more appropriate to understanding what happens to failing schools.