Sociology

Examination board: AQA
New Sociology A level first examination June 2017

Sociology is the systematic study of industrial and post-industrial society. The focus of the A level is to introduce students to the essential features of modern British society and to develop their critical and evaluative skills in making sense of developments in 21st-century Britain and Europe.

Sociology is a popular subject choice at university and is an ideal preparation for many other arts, humanities and social sciences degree courses. It can also provide an excellent grounding for careers in social work, the caring professions and local government. Sociology is interested in who within society uses power to their advantage, and also examines the existence of informal power in society: for instance, it weighs class inequalities against gender inequalities in examining power distribution.

Our Sociology course will introduce students to the major themes and theories in Sociology, and the means by which we collect our data on modern British society. In the first year of the A level we will examine the nature of family relationships and their consequences for the distribution of power within the family structure. We will examine whom the winners and losers are in advanced educational systems, asking how meritocratic British society is. In the Upper Sixth the major component of the course is the Sociology of religion. Does religion still have a major part to play in European society or has it largely become irrelevant?