The positions of primary and secondary schools in the English school field: a case of durable inequality

Abstract

In interviews as part of a research study of structural reform in England, some tension between primary head teachers and their secondary peers was evident. This was symptomatic of a long-standing difference in status between the two phases. At a time when relations between stakeholders in local systems are subject to change, we seek to understand anew why that might be the case and how the tension we found was evidence of a current difference of power within interactions between representatives of the phases. We analyse differences of size, resources, workforce, pedagogy and history, and how they have resulted in different, and differently valued, practices and professional identities. We explore how attributes of the two phases have been counterposed and how, in complex interaction with wider discourses of politics, gender and age, this process has invested the differences with meanings and values that tend to relegate attributes associated with primary school. By focusing on the activation of cumulative inequality in interactions, we contribute a complementary perspective to studies of perceived relative status and highlight the implications for understanding school positioning in local arenas as the role of local authorities is reduced.

Keywords:

• primary schools
• secondary schools
• relations between schools
• capital
• England

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Chris Cowan, Robin Smith and Ben Willis for comments on an earlier version of this paper.

Notes

1. We interviewed heads in three LAs, City (A), County (B) and Town (C). The kinds of discomfort reported varied and it was much more evident in City and Town than County. In City for example some tension arose because secondary heads held powerful positions on LA wide forums where a decision was made that was not perceived to be in the interests of primary schools. In Town there was, for local reasons that were not entirely clear to us, a long standing division between secondary and primary. We should emphasise that while in this paper we argue that these and other examples are symptomatic of the underlying tendencies toward subordination that we seek to demonstrate there were many examples of excellent relations between primary and secondary head teachers and their schools. We do not believe this invalidates the arguments we will put forward.

2. A new school-based approach to teacher education where a group of schools and other partners form an alliance to provide initial teacher education. For more details, see: http://www.education.gov.uk/nationalcollege/index/support-for-schools/teachingschools.htm.

3. Figures calculated from DfE statistics at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-workforce-in-england-november-2011.

4. We are of course talking here of reasonably successful primary classrooms. But as one reviewer reminded us a primary classroom is not automatically blessed by warm relationships. Equally the ‘domestic’ nature of relations between staff is not always good either and when classroom and staff relationships fail they can be very unpleasant indeed perhaps partly because they are not mitigated by the ‘room’ provided in a larger organization or the cooling off time afforded by seeing a class only once or twice a week.

5. According to a Times Educational Supplement survey published in March 2010, the average primary head was on £52,000; an average secondary head £73,000 and a secondary deputy £52,000. http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6039350.

6. See Simon (1999) on Elementary schools. Plowden also documented big differences (Plowden 1967 Para 1104, 405).

7. See Alexander (2010, Fig 3.1, 28) which shows class sizes of 26.2 pupils in primary and 20.9 in secondary in 2008.

8. What follows is very close to the notion of vocational habitus. The concept as applied to education and professional identity is developed in Braun (2012), Vincent and Braun (2010), Colley (2002, 2006), Colley et al. (2003). This work has helped conceptualise how different professional practices and identities emerge and are reproduced. Whilst recognising the value of these analyses we have not adopted the terminology here for three reasons. Firstly, we want to highlight the impact of material factors such as size on the ability to accrue certain kinds of capital. Secondly, our focus is on the valuations (including counterpositioning) of non-material factors such as the different vocational habituses and the effect these have in current interaction. Thirdly, we want to minimise the implication in the concept of habitus of non-conscious disposition and habit, and to maximise the notion of active achievement of (or struggle for) location and associated identity in a local field. Having said this it would be interesting to transpose our argument into the different key offered by the notion of vocational habitus but that would have been a different paper.

9. Actual primary practice in most English primary schools was very far from this ideal vision (Jackson 1964; HMI 1978; Galton, Simon, and Croll 1980).

10. Science is also considered a core subject but is not tested at the end of Key Stage 2.

11. Peter Wilby (Guardian 8 April 2014) reports that David Green of the right leaning think tank Civitas wants ‘all qualifications for primary school teaching to be abolished’.

12. Official figures for 2011 from the Department for Education (DfE 2012).

13. The official figures do not distinguish between Infant and Junior schools.

14. See, for example, Acker (1994, 1995, 1999), Boyle (2014), Aspinwall and Drummond (1989), Colley (2002, 2006), Griffin (1997), Hargreaves and Tucker (1991), Nias (1999), Noddings (1992), Oram (1996), Skeggs (1997), Smeyers (1999), Vogt (2002), Walby (1989), Walkerdine (1990).

15. See, Boyle (2014) for an interesting historical account of the factors contributing to the feminization of teaching in the US.

16. Hoyles’s notion of intermediacy (Hoyle 2001) is of interest in relation to this argument.

17. Cox and Boysen (1975, 1977) and Cox and Dyson (1969a, 1969b, 1970).

18. The complex result, or rather continuing dynamic of, this process is variously characterised for example as an assemblage (Deleuze and Guattari 1988), or ‘a great horizontal web of interweaving practices amid interconnected orders … coextensive with sociohistorical space-time’ (Schatzki 2002, 154–155), or the mutual constitution of contentious practice, figured worlds, intimate identities and history-in-person (Holland et al. 1998; Holland and Lave 2009), or chains of reference constituting different world versions (Goodman [1968] 1976, 1978). Where the result is a lasting relation of subordination between two categories Tilly calls it a durable inequality (Tilly 1999).

19. To be more precise, we should use the phrase ‘successfully projected’ in a nominalist reading of social ontology based on Goodman’s ([1968] 1976, 1978, 1979) and Hacking’s (1995) account of attributes and properties and the creation of kinds of people and things.

20. These were 89, a tiny minority, at the time of writing (March 2014). http://www.edexec.co.uk/news/2669/record-surge-in-the-number-of-%27all-through%27-schools/.

21. The Danish Folkeskole is a comprehensive school covering both primary and lower secondary education for children from 7 to 16/17-years-old.