Value consensus is a general agreement about the norms and values within a society, with set rules that the large majority of people within that society willingly follows without the need for supervision or enforcement. Sociologists and theorists all have a different perspective as to what the main function of education is e.g. feminists believe that to maintain value consensus, patriarchy needs to be abolished in order to do this. However, functionalists would argue that society already has a value consensus and that everyone has their roles within society, and that the role is important in maintaining the value consensus.

Functionalist Durkheim identifies the two main roles of education to be to create social solidarity and to teach specialist skills that are needed for life and work after education. He argues that society needs solidarity so that we can all function properly and so that people don’t always go for their own selfish desires – one of the roles of education is to help create this social solidarity. Schools act as ‘society in miniature’ because it prepares us for life in a wider society as we have to co-operate with people who aren’t family or friends, and interact with people according to a set of impersonal rules; Durkheim says that school is the only place that can teach these skills as they can’t be taught by family or friends outside of the school settings. He also says that schools create a social solidarity by transmitting society’s culture, and norms and values, from one generation to the next e.g. teaching the country’s history instils a sense of shared heritage among children. Durkheim also argues that education teaches the necessary specialist skills and knowledge to be able to perform their roles, especially in the modern industrial economies, which can only be done by teaching a range of subjects that require different skill sets one