Social Democratic Views of Education: An Outline and Explanation

The social democratic view of education is the belief that the state should provide good, free education for everyone, because schooling can reduce inequality and widen opportunity within a market economy. It follows from the wider approach in social democracy, which accepts capitalism but wants it regulated and softened by public services.

Social democrats regard education as a public good and a route to greater equality of opportunity. They argue that where a child is born should not determine the schooling they receive, so the state should fund schools, remove fees and ensure that places are open to all. This was part of the post-war settlement that also created the welfare state, following the thinking in the Beveridge Report. The theorists associated with the tradition are discussed in social democratic theorists.

Three policies stand out. The first is universal state provision, including free schooling and, later, expanded access to higher education. The second is comprehensive schooling. R.H. Tawney argued in the 1920s for secondary education for all, and Anthony Crosland, Labour’s Education Secretary, issued Circular 10/65 in 1965, asking local authorities to reorganise secondary schools on comprehensive lines in place of the tripartite system of grammar and secondary modern schools. The third is extra help for disadvantaged children, such as compensatory education, and in Britain Sure Start and the Education Maintenance Allowance, both introduced under New Labour.

The 1944 Education Act, passed by a wartime coalition and not by a purely social democratic government, made secondary education free and universal, though it established a selective system with grammar and secondary modern schools. Social democrats saw selection at eleven as unfair, because the results of the exam were closely tied to social class, and pressed for comprehensive schools instead. The Labour governments of 1997 to 2010 renewed the emphasis, with Tony Blair promising “education, education, education” as his priorities, but they also introduced tuition fees in 1998 and raised them in 2004, which shows a tension between the commitment to equal access and the cost of expanding higher education. Social democracy in practice has often combined egalitarian aims with pragmatic compromise.

Comprehensive reform in Britain from the 1960s and the expansion of universities in the 1960s and again after 1997 are the main British examples. The Nordic countries are often cited abroad, especially Finland, which has a largely comprehensive, publicly funded system with little private schooling. In each case the aim is to make schools mix children from different backgrounds and to fund them according to need.

The strongest empirical criticism is that expanding education did not equalise outcomes. A.H. Halsey, Anthony Heath and John Ridge’s Origins and Destinations in 1980 found that although access widened, middle-class children kept their relative advantage. Marxists such as Bowles and Gintis argue in Schooling in Capitalist America that schools reproduce the class structure and prepare workers for capitalism, so reform cannot make education a leveller. Pierre Bourdieu’s work on education makes a similar point from a cultural angle. Michael Young’s satire The Rise of the Meritocracy warned that a society which sorts people by merit may justify new inequalities, a theme in the post on meritocracy. From the right, neoliberals argue that choice and competition between schools would raise standards better than state planning, as in marketisation policies.

Understanding it helps students see that arguments about schools are arguments about the kind of society people want. The social democratic position assumes that inequality is a problem the state can reduce, and that education is one of the most effective means of doing so. Its limits, shown by the research of Halsey and others, force the central question of whether education can change society or only reflects it. A good answer in an examination sets the social democratic view against the evidence on class and achievement and against the Marxist and neoliberal alternatives. The family and religion versions of the same perspective can be found in the posts on family and religion.