Equality in Education - Book Report/Review Example

Lupton also qualifies it with the fact that the findings on the educational quality in such schools do not take account of the fact that processes, not end performance can be a criterion, that some aspects of education like student welfare actually rate better in such areas; and finally, that both generic and particular government policies addressing the issues in these schools are not sufficient to alleviate the problems. These policies in fact do not recognise the excessive demands put on the staff, and still believe that specialised training and closer monitoring of the staff will provide an answer to the perceived educational quality problems.

Lupton has done a study of four schools in disadvantaged neighbourhoods in order to establish their context: conducted interviews with the staff and other relevant agencies, and gathered socioeconomic data and related documentation from school records. This is in an effort to establish the context of these schools and the impact of this context on their educational quality levels, in order to draw policy conclusions. . This makes for an emotionally volatile environment including a few highly disturbed students, and a combination of all the above features demands a lot of extra effort from the teaching staff and the management beyond the scheduled teaching activities: they need to step in for extensive mentoring and disciplinarian activities.

Time is thus spent away from core teaching activities.According to the author's interviews, the staff is also under tremendous emotional pressure because disturbed students may erupt or set a bad example at any point of time whatsoever, and this unpredictability affects their performance. Interactions between staff frequently gets reduced to stress releasing conversation about trying students, and it is only after comparative examination of their standards with other schools that there is a realisation of falling educational standards, because teachers are too busy keeping the disturbed students in their charge occupied to worry about setting up high performance expectations.

Lupton also notes that the management often needs to get involved in the nitty-gritties of student discipline or raising funds and is consequently distracted from crucial strategy planning activities. Staff turnover is high, because of job-related stress, poor reputation of the school in the professional scenario and bad press in the local media, and this further leads to an unstable and insecure environment making the implementation of improvement strategies that much more difficult.Lupton next examines the impact on certain school processes at the cost of other processes and activities.

Lack of parental support with