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Students will look at different approaches to viewing society, from the ideas of Karl Marx to Feminists. It will analyse the impact that class, gender, culture, ethnicity, and other factors, such as the media, have on individuals and society.
Crime and Deviance: Delve into the causes of criminal behaviours. This topic will consider the explanations for criminal acts and analyse topical issues such as how criminals should be punished, institutional racism and how the media portrays different types of crimes, such as crimes committed by the working class and middle class.
Education: This topic explores differing views on the role of education, from feminist views, which suggest education reinforces gender inequalities, to Functionalist views, which see education as a key agent of socialisation. This topic will enable students to debate questions such as, “Why are girls outperforming boys at GCSE?”, “Can money buy a better education?” and “Why do people fail or succeed in education?”.
Social Stratification: This topic will look at how class, ethnicity, age, and gender affect people’s life chances. This topic will examine questions such as “What is poverty?”, “Does social class still matter?”, “Why is there a gender pay gap?”, “Why are people in the UK using foodbanks?” and “Is there an underclass who causes their inequality?”. These will be examined by looking at official statistics and explanations such as Feminism, New Right and Marxism.
Families and Households: This includes debate and analysis of key family and society issues, including reasons for the changing attitudes towards alternative family types, how families differ in other countries, rising trends in divorce rates and different sociological views of society.
Research Methods: This will enable students to see how sociologists conduct research by analysing different methods, such as using official statistics to study crime rates or undercover observations to investigate anti-school subcultures in education.
The course is assessment by 2 external written papers at the end of year 11. Each paper is worth 50% of the final grade and each paper is 1 hour 45 minutes. There will be multiple choice questions followed by a range of short and extended responses.