Introduction

Education has many institutional dimensions, and diverse social control issues can arise in a variety of settings. This chapter concentrates primarily on schooling for children in England, within what has generally been thought of as the state sector, and makes reference to disadvantaged pupils in particular. The chapter begins with a brief note on the historical development and ‘construction’ of schooling. This is followed by discussions of approaches under New Labour and the UK coalition government. The chapter then concludes with a local example from northern England, suggesting that there might be viable alternatives to ‘top-down’ discipline-orientated strategies as far as disadvantaged households and localities are concerned.

The historical context before New Labour

Concern with discipline and behaviour has been important for national schooling practices across England since the 19th century. Over a long period this has been underpinned by a ‘bedrock’ of compulsion in terms of school attendance, although with requirements on targeted age groups open to change. Individual schools’ disciplinary practices have varied over time and place, and the private sector has added to the complexities. Whatever the circumstances in a specific school, however, there have generally been some implicit contracts between parents, pupils and schools over performance, opportunities and behaviour, and usually also various formal expectations over discipline.

Historical accounts demonstrate the importance of behavioural and disciplinary codes, but it can be argued further that successive governments have used the schooling system both to legitimise differentiated educational opportunities and to aid regulation of sections of the population. In the early 19th century, Hannah More justified the establishment of Sunday Schools for children (the first substantial free schooling for the working classes) as positive in supporting reading; yet learning to write was seen as a more dangerous matter (Wrigley, 2007). The roots of today's state-funded education system can be found in the 1870s with the introduction of ‘elementary education’. This schooling primarily set out to address growing concerns about the ‘raggedy’ working class that was being drawn towards the labour markets of expanding cities (Garratt and Forrester, 2012). Observers within the British ruling class perhaps may have shared More's concerns about workers becoming too educated, but Simon (1960) suggests that the task was in essence to assert control over a growing and seemingly uncontrollable urban population.