ABSTRACT
To say that successive governments in the United Kingdom (UK) have placed academic achievement at the heart of educational policy is almost stating the obvious. Ensuring that all children develop the knowledge and skills necessary for them to fit into and enhance the economy, society and culture of the world they live in is what state education has set out to do from its inception (see the Forster Act 1870). However, what those necessary educational knowledge and skills are has varied across time and in relation to perceptions of the ‘ideal adult’. For example, if we look back to the end of the Victorian period in Britain we can see that the requisite knowledge and skills were determined by gender and social class. In the first place, state education was aimed specifically at the working-class as middle-and upper-class boys were educated in the public schools or at home by tutors or governesses. Middle-class girls were only expected to undertake a rudimentary education in terms of curriculum subjects but were educated in the ‘arts’ of painting, playing musical instruments and kinaesthetics. For working-class boys and girls state education provided a basis in literacy and numeracy but there was an emphasis on girls learning domestic subjects to fit them for their futures as mothers and domestic servants. During these early years of the state system in the UK what was taught was influenced by the Education Department – domestic economy was made a compulsory subject for girls in 1878 followed by grants provided for cookery in 1882 and laundry work in 1890 (Purvis, 1991). The point here is that by scrutinising educational policy it is possible to identify what skills are deemed important and for whom at any one point and that these are embedded within specific notions of gender, social class and, more recently, ethnicity and sexuality.
