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Whether enough highly qualified STEM workers are being educated and trained in the UK is an important question. The answer has implications not only for educators, employers and policymakers but also for individuals who are currently engaged in, or are considering entering, education or training in this area. Set against a policy backdrop that prioritises students studying more science for longer, this paper considers long-term patterns of participation in STEM education – from school science through to graduate entry into the highly skilled STEM labour market. Using a unique dataset that extends across seven decades and comprises many hundreds of thousands of students, the paper finds that patterns of participation in most STEM subjects have varied little over the period considered; suggesting that efforts to increase the numbers of students studying science in school has had limited impact on the throughput of students who study STEM, including the pure sciences, at university level and, subsequently, on the number of graduates who would be available to undertake highly skilled work in areas for which degree-level skills are a pre-requisite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internationally, research comparing education systems across countries and jurisdictions is valuable and can elicit nuanced insights into how particular systems operate. This paper's interest lies in considering the scope and content of research comparing education systems across the four UK nations (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales). This study sought to determine the coverage of UK cross-national comparative education research ('home international' research) between 2000 and 2022. We chose this time period as 1999 marks the devolution of education policy to each UK nation. We aimed to investigate what educational issues had been discussed in the literature and identify any gaps in the content covered by the research. An exploratory, high-level review of 'home international' education research was conducted, based on the review of abstracts. We searched several research databases using a variety of keyword combinations to identify relevant literature published since 2000. Our search identified 53 studies that met our selection criteria. Using a meta-synthesis approach, we coded the content of each abstract to build a picture of the range and thematic coverage of research involving comparisons between at least two of the four UK nations. The analysis of abstracts identified that, over the last two decades, UK 'home international' research has tended to include comparisons of all four nations, coverage of multiple educational phases and a focus on national education policy reviews. Furthermore, we pinpointed a number of gaps in coverage that might not have been anticipated (e.g. relatively little cross-national research focusing on assessment). This high-level review uncovers the landscape of recent 'home international' research, allowing us to view issues that are driving the cross-national research agenda in the UK and recognise implications relevant to education systems that may resonate with jurisdictions beyond these four UK nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The government's White Paper, Learning to Succeed: a new framework for post-16 learning, is here evaluated. The considerable strengths of the proposals – replacement of the TECs with Learning and Skills Councils, the adoption of social partnership in the membership of the new Councils, the substantial increase in resource and a large number of specific measures – are briefly welcomed. A number of serious reservations are then discussed in detail – for example, the absence of a model of change, the over-riding concern to meet the skill needs of business, the overreliance on human capital theory and the continued dependence on exhortation as a means of increasing employers' investment in training. Findings from The Learning Society Programme are then used to question some of the central assumptions underlying the official model of progress. It is argued that endless technocratic reforms are more likely to foster conformity, compliance and control rather than emancipation, empowerment and the enhancement of learning. Finally, it is concluded that the government is rightly pursuing radical, structural reform but is failing to recognize the potential of lifelong learning as a major lever on such change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critiques recent developments in educational discourse through an analysis of two UK Government White Papers and three specific problems. We argue that the latter herald forms of 'biocreep'. Echoing the analysis of such phenomena in the work of Michel Foucault, this gradual extension of 'biopolitics' into the field of education is a tendency which has accelerated with the Coronavirus pandemic and raises many questions for policy analysis. First, we show how the White Papers' approach to life and its related assumptions embody an attempt to further entrench the techniques of biopolitical population management in secondary and further education settings. Second, our analysis of the two Papers shows not just a deepening discursive shift towards ways of instrumentalising educational processes, but also identifies a triple problem of political assemblage: primo, this shift relies on the assemblage of a 'problematic subject'; secondo, it simultaneously assembles the problem of value extraction; and tertio, it obscures the problem of desire or unruliness of the assemblages created. Just as discursive practices of instrumentation, administration and evacuation try to manage these assemblages, they remain unable to contain the three problems they enshrine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fair access and widening participation currently occupy a prominent position in the UK higher education agenda, but these terms remain ambiguous. In this paper we identify two prominent strands of policy in the government's approach to access and the widening of participation and contrast these with a third, more progressive perspective. The academic strand seeks to attract 'gifted and talented' young people into an unreformed higher education system. The second strand, which we term the utilitarian approach, posits a need for reform. However, this is undertaken largely to meet the requirements of employers and the economy. In contrast, a transformative approach values diversity and focuses on creating a system of higher education that does not place the burden of change upon potential entrants. This framework is used to explore some of the implications of the government's White Paper The future of higher education. First, the purpose of higher education is discussed, with particular reference to the distinction between economic and social objectives. Second, the government's view of the structure of the higher education sector is examined, by scrutinizing the notion of institutional differentiation and the role of the access regulator. We conclude that within a more differentiated higher education sector different aspects of the access discourse will become dominant in different types of institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The private papers of Sir Philip Morris reveal how he prepared himself for the chairmanship of the 1959 Oxford Conference on Commonwealth Education with briefing from the Commonwealth Relations Office, what he brought to the meeting from his own experience, and what he learnt from the chair. British ministers and officials as hosts of the conference were ambivalent about its outcome. They could not disentangle the prospect of educational co-operation across the Commonwealth from all that was being done to set up a system for giving development assistance to the new states created by decolonisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents the summary of a lecture regarding the British government's 2003 education policy. Creation of a three-year financial settlement increasing institutional funding; Utilization of estate and equipment for teaching; Student finance and the introduction of price competition.

Comments on the article discussing the national education research strategy in Great Britain. Definition on the function of strategy in the national education research; Opposition to the proposed Education Priorities Group; Threats to the academic freedom.

Performance assessment is permeating increasingly diverse domains of higher education, even in areas previously perceived to be too complex and idiosyncratic to quantify. The UK's attempts to assess 'research impact' within the Research Excellence Framework (REF) are illustrative of this trend and are being closely monitored by several other countries. A fundamental rationale for employing narrative case studies to assess impact within REF, rather than taking a (less resource intensive) quantified approach, was that this would allow for the variation, complexity and idiosyncrasy inherent in research impact. This paper considers whether this promise of narrative flexibility has been realised, by analysing a combination of REF impact case study reports and interviews and focus group discussions with actors involved in case study production. Informed by this analysis, our central argument is that the very quality which allows narratives to govern is their ability to standardise performance (albeit whilst retaining a degree of flexibility). The paper proposes that REF impact case studies position narratives of impact as technologies of governance in ways that restrict the 'plot line' and belie the far more complex accounts held by those working to achieve research impact. This is partly because, as research impact becomes institutionalised within universities' measurement infrastructures, higher education institutions become impact gatekeepers, filtering out narratives that are deemed overly complex or insufficiently persuasive, while perpetuating particular approaches to recounting tales of impact that are deemed likely to perform well. Crucially, these narratives not only describe impact but actively construct it as an auditable phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of 'class strategies' in policy formation is sometimes unseen as plans are unrealised in practice over long periods of historical time. 'Subterranean class strategies' are an extension of existing work on class to consider 'class work' on policy in the 'long unenacted'. Using the example of emergency feeding in a national crisis, the stark difference in school meal planning for post-World War 2 emergencies when compared to the COVID-19 crisis is discussed. Through an analysis of archival records, it is shown that 'subterranean class strategies' - the devaluation of school catering expertise by the army and the private sector, the lack of co-operation of independent schools, and localisation and privatisation - diminished the role of schools in emergency feeding. The paper concludes by considering how the concept of 'subterranean class strategies' could inform work on educational think tanks, privatisation and subsumption, and intersectional areas such as race. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade, teachers in Poland have observed an increase in the number of primary school children with bi/multilingual and culturally diverse backgrounds. Regardless of their complex experiences, they face many cultural, social, linguistic and educational challenges upon entering primary school. English teachers are often at the forefront, helping them navigate through the intricacy of their seemingly 'dual lives' (Li and Zhu. 2013. "Translanguaging Identities and Ideologies: Creating Transnational Space Through Flexible Multilingual Practices Amongst Chinese University Students in the UK." Applied Linguistics 34 (5): 516–535, 531). The paper presents the results of an interview study among 23 Polish EFL teachers with a view towards investigating Polish EFL teachers' experiences and ways of working with bi/multilingual children directed at child integration and socialization into the new environment. The collected data was coded following the content analysis approach (Krippendorff. 2003. Content Analysis: An Introduction to its Methodology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage) and analysed from the ecological perspective (see Bronfenbrenner. 1979. The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; van Lier. 2004. The Ecology and Semiotics of Language Learning. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers), whereby successful child socialization was observed to be dependent on an intricate network of interrelated factors. The role of the exosystem, i.e. the school system, has been found the least supportive due to the absence of a comprehensive multilingual policy, and lack of teacher support via teacher training, all of which have been concluded to be of urgent need in the emergent multilingual setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current accounts of the British New Right in education during the 1980s generally begin with an observation of the tensions between its neoliberal and neoconservative wings. The subsequent task becomes to explain how they could be reconciled in bringing about the fiercest reform of education in history. This article reverses the interpretive strategy. It first notes that neoliberalism and neoconservatism had hardly been distinguishable in the Black Papers published a decade earlier. Focusing on the doctrines concerning the precondition of marketising education and the meaning of parental choice, it then shows their persistent compatibility to be more an intellectual legacy inherited from the late 1960s and 1970s than a product of practical compromise under Margaret Thatcher's premiership. Therefore, what needs further exploration is instead where, how and why neoliberalism and neoconservatism did eventually diverge. This is clarified by reference to the issue of educational authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shortly after taking power following the May 2010 UK general election, the Conservative/Liberal Democrat government published its education white paper, The Importance of Teaching. In this, certain features for primary school pedagogy can be discerned. Using the lens of the “position call”, this article examines the discourses implicated in the white paper to highlight the position calls offered to the primary profession concerning pedagogy. These are compared to those made by New Labour in its previous 13 years in power. Accordingly, the article proposes that whilst the previous administration offered the position calls for primary education of pedagogy as collective craft and pedagogy as collective performance, continuity and discontinuity can be seen in the recent white paper, namely that the position calls now being made are for pedagogy as individual craft and pedagogy as individual performance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper reviews issues about quality including the United Kingdom government's statements (White Papers of 2011 and 2016) and the development of audits. Institutional educational policies could provide the basis for quality enhancement centred around the White Papers. The development of a 'quality framework' or schema for the production of higher educational policies is presented and explored. Quality provision, of various types, reside in this schema that integrates aspects such as degree structures and educational components in an overall pedagogic framework. Ancillary provision, such as information and computer facilities and learning spaces, are also part of this structure. Academic subject areas are covered by benchmark statements but should be associated with principles for active learning and assessment as the Teaching Excellence Framework is extended in 2020. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the UK, a default retirement age no longer exists and more people choose to 'stay on' in their academic posts. 'Staying on' poses opportunities and threats in the academic labour market. Older academics can make a positive contribution to their institution through their expertise and experience. By continuing to work, paying tax and keeping healthy, they may directly and indirectly reduce social health and welfare costs. Alternatively, in a context where academic jobs may be decreasing, older workers may be positioned as limiting the employment and promotion opportunities for younger colleagues by staying on. Drawing on twelve in-depth semi-structured interviews with academics who have stayed working in university education departments, this paper explores these issues alongside policy-related questions about employment in the sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a critical analysis of the Chartered Institute for Management of Sport and Physical Activity's (CIMSPA) transformative aspirations for UK Higher Education (HE) based Sport and Physical Activity Vocational Education and Training (SPAVET) provision. In doing so, we apply selected elements of Giddens' Structuration theory to offer an analysis of CIMSPA's structural properties (as rules and resources) and dimensions (signification, domination and legitimation). Illustration of CIMSPA's structural properties and dimensions was developed through adopting an institutional analysis strategy alongside a document analysis method. Publicly available strategic documents and web-based resources (N = 18) were selected and analysed using open-coding techniques. Our analysis shows how continued state-sanctioned decentralisation of the UK HE sector has led to CIMSPA becoming an increasingly influential transformative structure; attempting to use its structural dimensions and resources as a medium to gain and exercise power, to promote (signification) – market-orientated discourses, practices and pedagogies in HEI provision, (domination) – in an attempt to significantly influence regulatory control over UK SPAVET provision and (Legitimation) – create partnerships which normalise its position and message within selected UK HEIs. We conclude that whilst the transformative aspirations of CIMSPA offer a number of possibilities for the HE SPAVET sector, they also raise critical questions. The central issue requiring debate is how these aspirations shift dialectical control towards vocationally focused, market-orientated principles and away from the liberal educational, research-led principles of some current UK HE SPAVET provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a reflective and critical review of research relating to widening participation (WP) in higher education (HE). The motivation for undertaking this was the twentieth anniversary of the Dearing Report Higher Education in the Learning Society (1997); a document that ignited a wide range of WP activity and policy. Dearing's report was published in the United Kingdom and represents one of the most significant reviews of higher education in this country since the Robbins' Report of 1963. His vision for HE included a "compact" between local and regional communities and their universities, and emphasised WP and greater student diversity. I draw on my own research in WP since Dearing, compare with other research projects, and compare with my experiences as a practitioner and researcher in various contexts, including most recently in a post-1992 university known for being a WP institution. This paper identifies several core themes that emerged from WP activities over the last 20 years and leads to the development of an added dimension in WP research. It calls for more consideration of the complex and heterogeneous identities of WP students today. It then returns to some of Dearing's original themes and considers how WP is situated in the current neoliberal climate affecting HE; it presents a set of ideas for discussion with respect to the future of WP research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2010, the Department for Education in England decided to reform the vocational qualifications offered in secondary education (i.e., for 14–18 year olds) in order to increase their rigour and status. They set out new criteria that vocational qualifications needed to meet, which changed their nature in fundamental ways (e.g., content, assessment structure, grading and progression requirements). At a time when the reforms to vocational qualifications are settling in, it is important to understand their impact on student engagement in vocational education and, also, how the new categories of vocational qualifications help students progress through education. This research aimed to obtain an up-to-date view of progression from vocational qualifications to post-16 education. Using national data, we investigated whether students with different programmes of study and different vocational qualifications in lower secondary school were equally likely to progress to post-16 education and, if they progressed, what routes and qualifications they took. The research outcomes suggest that, although vocational routes do not close students' options, progression to post-16 education was affected by the proportion of vocational qualifications they took pre-16. More research is needed to find out the reasons behind this association, including whether this may reflect previous experiences with vocational education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy agendas for early childhood education in the UK as in many countries elsewhere are driven by expectations that play will impact positively on a child’s educational attainment, health and well-being. This paper focuses on health knowledge, social class and cultural reproduction within early year education in England, looking specifically at how health discourse is framed by Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) policy imperatives and subsequently by practitioners as they re-contextualise health knowledge through play across three socially and culturally different early years education (EYE) settings within England. Across the three settings, 15 practitioners and 80 children, aged 3-4 years old, participated in the research. Drawing on the theoretical work of Basil Bernstein particularly his concepts, ‘pedagogic device’ and ‘classification’ (c) and ‘framing’ (f), the paper documents how health is designed, defined, constructed and experienced through play pedagogy within each of these EYE settings. The analyses illustrate how the different organisational and curriculum structures, pedagogical interactions and transactions of each setting cultivate distinctive relationships to health knowledge. These relationships, in turn, play their part in the reproduction of social class and cultural inequalities, despite the best intentions of EYE policy to address these matters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Omitted prior achievement bias is pervasive in international assessment studies and precludes causal inference. For example, reported negative associations between student-oriented teaching strategies and student performance are against expectations and might actually reflect omitted prior achievement bias. Namely, that these teaching strategies are negatively correlated with unobserved prior achievement performance, because teachers offer more support to lower performing students, and not that these strategiescauselower performance. This paper examines omitted prior achievement bias in teaching effects with prior achievement data available for students in England participating in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study. Further, it proposes an analytical approach to account for omitted prior achievement bias in international estimates. The paper argues that the bias is not simply a technical artefact, but reflects educational mechanisms unobserved in international assessment studies, which can be captured with matched assessment data-sets or with evidence from previous studies. Estimates of these mechanisms can be used to postulate scenarios of the bias across education systems and thereby adjust international estimates of teaching effects as if prior achievement were observed. Potentials and limitations of this approach for studying educational effectiveness with international assessment data are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article considers questions of ‘employability’, a notion foregrounded in the Green and White Papers on the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). The paper first questions government imperatives concerning employability and suggests a series of mismatches that are evident in the rhetorics in this area. This summary opens up elements of what I am calling the first ‘folly’ in the field. The second section of the paper considers recent research with individual academics engaged in employability activity. This research suggests another series of mismatches in the aims and outcomes of ‘employability initiatives’ and opens up a further series of ‘follies’ in the day-to-day practices of academics and students’ responses to them. The third section of the paper turns to academics’ reports of student behaviour in relation to the outcomes of their degree. This section develops an argument that relates to the final ‘folly’ associated with the current focus on employability. I argue that students’ focus on outcomes (which at face value suggests they have internalized the importance of employment) is contributing to the production of graduates who do not have the dispositions that employers – when interviewed – say that they want. The highly performative culture of higher education, encouraged by the same metrics that will be extended through the TEF, is implicated then innotpreparing students for the workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

At the forefront of many UK universities' current strategies is a commitment to ongoing processes of internationalisation; continued progress in becoming increasingly international also sits alongside adherence to policies and practices relating to widening access and participation for home students, to achieve greater equity in terms of who can experience and participate meaningfully in university education. However, it could be argued that these two areas of focus are somewhat disparate, even at odds, with the former often being somewhat associated with revenue generation, and the latter aiming to meet goals of fairness in society. In this paper, I explore the rationale and scope for UK universities bringing these two seemingly disparate agendas more in line, with a view to achieving greater equity in the access and participation of both local and global cohorts of students in UK universities. A critical evaluation of theoretical and empirical literature exploring these two agendas elucidates the parallels in the ways both international and non-traditional home students encounter the university domain, both from a general perspective, and with a specific focus on linguistic challenges faced by these student groups. Concluding remarks outline possible directions which might better address the wide-reaching aims of addressing and nurturing the widening access/participation-internationalisation nexus. Abbreviations: HE: higher education; IaH: internationalisation at home; HEI: higher education institution; ESL: English as a second language; TESOL: teaching English to speakers of other languages; BME: black and minority ethnic [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is a position paper on inclusive practice in education with respect to students with severe or profound and multiple learning difficulties (sld/pmld). It asks if children and young people with sld/pmld have been excluded from the policy and the practice of inclusive education. A review of the literature found that there is a research gap around inclusive education for learners with sld/pmld, and a review of historical and current practices indicated that this group of learners has indeed been excluded from both the policy and practice of inclusion in the United Kingdom with the use of curricula based on a mainstream linear and academic model reinforcing this exclusion. The study makes a theoretical and practical contribution to the continuing debate about inclusive education and will be of interest to teachers, parents, policy-makers and the learners themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The broad aim of this paper is to track the evolution of adult literacy policy in the UK across three decades, highlighting convergences between policy phases and the promotion of democratic learning spaces. It is anchored onto the argument that, although it is generally accepted that democratic learning spaces are perceived as beneficial to adult literacy learners, policy has often deterred its promotion and, therefore, implementation. The paper identifies three block phases of adult literacy development: the seventies to mid-eighties, the mid-eighties to mid-nineties and the mid-nineties to the Moser Committees. The features of each of these phases are highlighted to map out convergences and divergences to the ethos of democratic learning spaces. The paper argues that, with the evolution of policy in adult literacy, the ethos of democratic learning space continuously diminished, such that as policy evolved year on year, the principle of democratic learning space found itself at counterpoint to policy. We draw on two theoretical frameworks, the NLS view of literacy and Bourdieu's capital framework to explain these divergences and conclude that the dominant perception of literacy and the prioritised capital in the context of policy appear to limit the vestiges of democratic learning spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1998, Byrne and McKeown examined the churches’ roles in Northern Ireland’s (NI) schooling system. NI was then governed by direct-rule from the UK’s Westminster Parliament. The authors concluded that the desire of the Protestant churches to re-establish their influence in schools was ‘unlikely to succeed’. This was contrasted with the ‘success-story’ of Catholic influence in schooling. This article tracks the fortunes of the Protestant churches in NI’s educational policy developments in the last 18 years. Of particular interest are the government’s proposals to establish an Education and Skills Authority (ESA) under a new Education Bill. A careful reading of the Protestant churches’ annual education reports indicates the alarm with which these proposals were met. In the early years of the new millennium it seemed that the conclusions of the 1998 paper were prescient. However, extensive lobbying by the Protestant churches in a changed (devolved) political context secured almost all their demands. This article concludes that the ‘tension’ (claimed in the 1998 paper) between the Protestant churches and the state has largely been resolved. The article evaluates the significance of recent developments for the Protestant churches and their involvement in schooling. More critically, the propriety of these developments is questioned asking if they mark an advance for the Protestant churches and/or schooling in NI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the pupil intakes to Academies in England, and their attainment, based on a re-analysis of figures from the Annual Schools Census 1989–2012, the Department for Education School Performance Tables 2004–2012 and the National Pupil Database. It looks at the national picture, and the situation for Local Education Authorities, and also examines in more detail the trajectories of the three original Academies. It confirms earlier studies in finding no convincing evidence that Academies are any more (or less) effective than the schools they replaced or are in competition with. The prevalence of Academies in any area is strongly associated with local levels of SES segregation, and this is especially true of the more recent Converter Academies. Converter Academies, on average, take far less than their fair share of disadvantaged pupils. Sponsor-led Academies, on the other hand, tend to take more than their fair share. Their profiles are so different that they must no longer be lumped together for analysis as simply ‘Academies’. Academies are not shown to be the cause of local SES segregation. Instead, they are merely more likely to appear in areas that already have inequitable school mixes. This means, of course, that Academies are not helping reduce segregation (as was one of their original purposes) or increase social justice in education, and the paper concludes that homogeneous Maintained schools should be preferred for this purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In an era of neoliberal reforms, academics in UK universities have become increasingly enmeshed in audit. A new Teaching Excellent Framework (TEF) emerged in 2017 with results determined primarily by proxy data of National Student Survey (NSS) scores, retention data and Longitudinal Educational Outcomes data (LEO). The TEF has been rapidly repurposed in order to shape the behaviour and priorities of both students and academics. The discourse of the TEF legislation, bolstered by studies from HEA/HEPI, assumes the source of inequality of outcome is poor teaching requiring corrective action by universities. Further justification for surveillance and quasi-regulation is borne by appeals to 'value for money' and 'competition'. I argue that what seems to be an arbitrary constellation of proxy data points has in fact been a calculated plan to render universities, staff and students as neoliberal subjects. The accident of accessibility, inasmuch as it overlaps with the neoliberal imperative, has determined which data shall function as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and the whole assemblage is cemented by discursive choices which align with neoliberal principles. The Government White Paper Success as a Knowledge Economy, May 2016, forms the text for corpus analysis of keywords, discourses and metaphors. Abbreviation: BIS: HM Government Department of Business, Innovation and Skills; BME: Black and Minority Ethnic; DLHE: Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education; HEI: Higher Education Institution; HERA: Higher Education and Research Act; HESA: Higher Education Statistics Agency; HEA: Higher Education Academy; Hefce: Higher Education Funding Council for England; HEPI: Higher Education Policy Institute; HND: Higher National Diploma; KEF: Knowledge Exchange Framework; KPI: Key Performance Indicator; LEO: Longitudinal Educational Outcomes; NSS: National Student Survey; NUS: national Union of Students; OfS: Office for Students; POLAR: participation of local areas; QAA: Quality Assurance Agency; RAB: Resource Accounting and Budgeting; REF: Research Excellence Framework; ROI: Return on Investment; SDS: Strategically Deployable Shifter; SKE: Success in a Knowledge Economy; TEF: Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework; WP: Widening Participation [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK Government's PREVENT strategy to counter radicalisation and extremism has been the subject of criticism. Concerns arise over clarity of purpose, clarity of terminology used and potential human rights impacts. Where the policy engages with schools, one human right potentially engaged is the right of parents to transfer their religious beliefs to their children. This paper looks at how PREVENT risks negatively impacting on this right. It proposes a way that this risk can be reduced by adopting a proactive approach to the Government's security concerns which is centred on human rights education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evacuation of civilians during Second World War Britain included the relocation not only of school children and teachers but of whole schools and, in some instances, of teacher training colleges. This paper examines the evacuation of Avery Hill College, a leading teacher training college, from London to Huddersfield between 1941 and 1946. Focusing on issues of gender and community, it provides an account of the circumstances of the move, institutional relations and resources, the social milieu of war-time Huddersfield, the challenges arising from evacuation, the responses of staff and trainees, and the broader institutional and teacher education policy transitions that ensued. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines changing policy orientations to widening participation through college-based higher education in England. After more than 30 years of increasing and diversifying participation in higher education (HE) in a wide range of countries, such policy goals are coming under increasing scrutiny in countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom, in an age defined by austerity in public spending. The paper focuses on England, as an example of opening up access in one country, with parallels internationally such as the American Graduation Initiative in the United States. In England such policies have changed the landscape of higher education, with claims that college-based HE plays a distinctive role. The paper reviews the nature of the ‘distinctiveness’ of college-based HE, including what students report about their experience of moving into this form of higher education during the 2000s. The paper highlights the challenges under current conditions, for creating a distinctive and valued college-based higher education pathway that opens up opportunities for underserved and disadvantaged groups. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

‘System leadership’, as applied to the running of schools, refers to a form of leadership that extends beyond a single institution, where headteachers work with establishments other than their own. This approach is predicated on certain beliefs about the role and purpose of collaborative school leadership and management in a marketised system of state schooling and the benefits of a distributed and networked approach to school improvement. But what are the potential benefits and limitations of school system leadership? What normative interpretations of the system are best suited for purpose? This paper explores these issues with reference to the English school system, where system leadership is actively promoted by government through education policy and school reform. In order to do this, use is made of Gunter, H., D. Hall, and J. Bragg (2013. “Distributed Leadership: A Study in Knowledge Production.”Education Management, Administration and Leadership41 (4): 555–580.) framework of distributed leadership in schools. The framework identifies functionally normative, functionally descriptive, critical and socially critical positions in the school leadership literature. The paper concludes by putting forward potential alternatives to the largely functional policy narratives and solutions of recent decades, which are based on a broader understanding of ‘the system’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper offers new insights into the effects of neo-liberal education policies on some Muslim majority schools in Birmingham. It critically reveals how the implementation of neo-liberal education policies, pursued by both Labour and Conservative Governments, has contributed to the failure of some mechanisms of school leadership and governance. The move away from agreed collective public and civil values to individualistic and private values as the guiding principles of public education has produced confusion in role, function and relationships. This is considered within the context in which secular liberal education aims to allow different minorities to flourish and recreate themselves. The paper outlines how the state has entered more fully into the lives of children and families through limitless government regulations and how OFSTED appears open to political interference by government regularly changing the framework for inspectors to suit the latest priority. Accordingly, the judgements of OFSTED have become contestable especially as the framework becomes the means through which every aspect of school life is to be considered, including ‘extremism’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Presented at its launch in 1998 as the quintessential 'third way' welfare policy, the English education action zones (EAZ) experiment was one of a number of area-based initiatives in the UK designed to tackle social exclusion in disadvantaged localities. The policy was premised upon the idea that different bodies--public, private, voluntary, and community--should work together to deliver 'joined-up solutions' to 'joined-up problems'. This paper reports on the findings of an ESRC-funded research project 1 designed to investigate the origins, operation, and impact of the policy by interrogating the claims of its advocates and the counter-claims of its critics. Overall, the research concluded that neither the hopes nor fears surrounding the policy have been realized. The impact of the policy within zones has been limited and patchy. There have been instances of innovation and positive shifts in parents' perceptions, but these have not been matched by consistent improvements in pupil performance or embedded changes in classroom practice. Nor have zones brought about new and more democratic modes of educational governance. However, initiatives take time to embed, and those working in zones experienced difficulty reconciling the need for innovative strategies to tackle disadvantage with the pressure of short-term targets. Moreover, while the impact of the policy in particular localities has been limited, it may have contributed to a reordering of the politics of education, and, in particular, an erosion of some of the 'old' binaries around which allegiances have traditionally been structured. This paper argues that, as might be expected from a 'third way' policy, the policy has blurred the conventional oppositions of 'left' and 'right', 'government' and 'governed', and 'public' and 'private' sectors. Paradoxically, it has also reinforced new binaries--e.g. between 'wreckers' and 'reformers' and 'standards' and 'structures'--and created new boundaries--between zone and non-zone schools and policy 'insiders' and 'outsiders'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments across the world are seeking improvements in school performance. One avenue to improvement that has been widely promulgated is the reform of teaching through the development of evidence-based practice. This paper reports evaluation data from a national programme in England that sought to put teachers at the heart of the search for evidence on which improvements in practice could be based. The analysis indicates that in each stage of the process of generating and using evidence, practices came to be refined or adopted--whether for the individual teacher, peers or schools--only if they connected closely with the situation in which the evidence for improving practice arose. The paper suggests that the concept 'situated generalisation' contributes to our understanding of how teachers generate, validate and use research knowledge to improve professional practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One key finding that has emerged from our study of the impact of market reforms on the school systems in England and Wales is that there has been overall decline in the social stratification of schools. Nevertheless, between-school stratification remains high. There are regional and local variations in the pattern in which stratification has decreased in some areas and increased in others. In this paper we focus on the role of LEA admissions policies and show how these regulate the choice of school afforded to parents and suggest how geographical variation in between-school social stratification is maintained and reproduced. The four case study LEAs discussed in detail here (Cardiff, Brent, Carmarthenshire and Hertfordshire), which offer significantly different market scenarios, are part of a larger study examining the admissions arrangements and impacts on school intakes for all 161 LEAs in England and Wales. In total 23 LEAs were interviewed about their admissions arrangements, each one representing different kinds of LEAs—English to Welsh; metropolitan to county; urban to rural—with contrasting admissions policies and different levels of segregation between schools. The paper reports that post-1998 school admissions policies, put in place to overcome some of the difficulties that arose from open enrolment, including children being denied places at nearby schools, have done little to redress the advantages the grant-maintained and church-affiliated schools previously enjoyed in the recruitment stakes. Nor have they broken the mould of 'selection by mortgage' where residential segregation gives rise to schools with very different socio-economic intakes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent policy makers have sought to increase participation in full-time education beyond 16 and to broaden access among under-represented groups. Commentators on both sides of the border have drawn policy lessons from comparisons of the different UK systems, especially Scotland and England. This paper reviews the evidence on the level and distribution of participation in the four systems of the UK, using official statistics and survey data from the early 1990s. Participation has generally been highest in Northern Ireland and Scotland and lowest in England, but comparisons on a consistent age basis are less favourable to Scotland than those shown in official statistics. The average duration of participation is longest in Northern Ireland, whereas high Scottish participation at 16 is matched by a larger outflow at 17. Participation has risen throughout the UK since the 1980s but it has grown most steadily in Scotland, especially since the early 1990s. More females than males stay on beyond 16: the gender difference is largest in Northern Ireland and smallest in England. Throughout the UK higher attainers and youngsters from socially advantaged backgrounds are most likely to stay on, but these inequalities in participation are greatest in Scotland. School effects on participation are strongest in England and especially in Northern Ireland, where in addition to a selective-school effect there is most variability among schools of the same type. Participation varies locally but differences across the home countries cannot merely be attributed either to the social and educational composition of the age group or to the aggregate effects of local influences. The paper concludes that the benefits attributed to the flexibility of Scottish courses and qualifications need more critical scrutiny. There may be policy lessons from the apparently high participation rates in Northern Ireland, although better data are needed if such lessons are to be drawn with confidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the discursive shifts of emphasis of school headship since the 1980s in England, and the ways in which the repositioning of head teachers has gradually transformed professional work and relationships in schools via a discourse of management. Specifically, the paper identifies a ‘trilogy of school headship in England’ to indicate a process by which school headship has been repositioned – from head teacher, to manager, and to leader from the Education Reform Act of 1988 onwards. Drawing primarily on policy texts, the construction, within policy, of a head teacher endowed with power, responsibility and freedom will be detailed. Informed by both Fairclough and Foucault’s conceptions of discourse, this paper concludes that as a policy technology management subjects head teachers to ‘a twin process of autonomization plus responsibilization’ within which they become the linchpin of the delivery chain of policy and play a key role in the formation of ‘performative professionalism’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Conservative trends across western schooling contexts are signalling an explicit devaluing of social and moral learning within their official curriculum mandates. These mandates are increasingly privileging the ‘academic rigour’ of traditional subject disciplines. This paper draws on interview and observation data from a case study of a large and highly diverse English secondary school to explore this school’s prioritizing of social and moral learning. Such prioritizing is supported at this school by its ‘Academy’ status—which in the English context allows schools a measure of freedom over curriculum as part of broader government moves to increase school autonomy. The paper’s focus is on how these conservative trends are understood and disrupted to support a critical view of existing curriculum and a desire to modify and re-shape it to support more relevant and connected learning for students. The paper describes particular examples of practice at the school in the areas of Citizenship and Religious Education to illustrate this approach. Engaging with social and moral learning along these lines is argued as productive in working within and against the constraints of current conservative curriculum priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The three main programmes of the Geneva-registered International Baccalaureate (IB) have grown substantially worldwide over the past decade, although the programmes have found a natural ‘home’ in the United States. This paper charts the growth of the IB in the United Kingdom (UK) revealing that involvement there, mainly in England and mainly with the original pre-university Diploma Programme (IBDP), peaked at about 230 schools in 2010, but since then the IBDP has begun suddenly to decline. Yet, in no other country has there been a fall in IBDP provision. This paper offers some key explanations for this phenomenon, where a lack of funding and continued lack of university recognition in the face of Advanced Level (A-Level) reform and numerous ‘baccalaureate’ developments has led to many state-funded schools in particular dropping the IBDP. Thirdly, this paper discusses a number of implications, both for the IB itself and education in the UK in general. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents findings from a survey of pre-service teacher training institutions in England with regard to the provision of health and well-being education. It examines factors affecting the inclusion of health and well-being, and explores educational implications in light of the changing landscape of pre-service teacher education in England. Provision of health and well-being education is noticeably variable across institutions, and many course leaders are unclear about the coverage in their partner schools. Course leaders regard health and well-being as an important part of the curriculum, but the focus is usually on generic health-related themes such as child protection and behaviour management, which address Government priorities, rather than on specific topics such as education about diet, drugs, alcohol, smoking, sex and relationships and physical activity. The paper argues that these aspects should be addressed for pre-service teachers to have an increased sense of self-efficacy and become capable health promoters. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Vocational qualifications in England are undergoing another round of reform. This paper starts by reviewing the alleged weaknesses of English vocational qualifications, but argues that these do not necessarily establish a case for radical reform. The issue is not so much whether the system needs to be changed as the nature of the change that is needed. The paper argues for a more deliberative and incremental approach and proposes five principles upon which this should be based. These are the following: that the process of change is as important as the content of change; that institutions matter; that the purposes of reform need to be clear, consistent and realistic; that reforms should help to create a more unified qualifications system; and that the interests of the UK’s other home countries should be considered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper addresses a recurring theme regarding the UK’s Vocational Education and Training policy in which further education (FE) and training are primarily driven by employer demand. It explores the tensions associated with this process on the everyday working practices of FE practitioners and institutions and its impact on FE’s contribution to the wider processes of social and economic inclusion. At a time when Ofsted and employer-led organisations have cast doubt on the contribution of FE, we explore pedagogies of practice that are often unacknowledged by the current audit demands of officialdom. We argue that such practice provides a more enlightened view of the sector and the challenges it faces in addressing wider issues of social justice, employability and civic regeneration. At the same time, the irony of introducing laissez-faire initiatives designed to remove statutory qualifications for FE teachers ignores the progress made over the past decade in raising the professional profile and status of teachers and trainers in the sector. In addressing such issues, the paper explores the limits and possibilities of constructing professional and vocational knowledge from networks and communities of practice, schools, universities, business, employers and local authorities, in which FE already operates. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper draws on data that formed part of a major three-year longitudinal study (2008–2011), which set out to investigate basic skills (BS) provision and needs in the British army and its relationship to operational effectiveness. Using mixed methods, the findings draw on qualitative data from 60 semi-structured interviews with 26 young recruits and interviews and survey data with 1518 recruits, with an average age of 19.6 years. The research also uses testimony from their line managers and trainers. The first part of the paper looks at educational BS provision that the army provides. While the benefits of this provision are discussed, there is a debate about the extent to which BS programmes provide recruits with qualifications rather than enduring and transferable skills, which would make them more operationally effective and useful to the army organisation. The second part deconstructs the concept of what is meant by being ‘operationally effective’ and the role BS play in reaching this ultimate military objective. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the United Kingdom, changes in the policy, funding and commissioning landscape for mental health and well-being are posing opportunities and challenges for adult community learning (ACL). Opportunities include increased recognition of, and funding for, the ‘wider benefits’ of learning, whereas challenges include the risks of ACL provision becoming hijacked by a health and well-being agenda that compromises its primary educational purpose and values. This paper engages with these policy debates through reporting on a study of mental health ACL that employed the capabilities approach along with two other complementary areas of social theory – recognition theories and theories of capitals. Its aim was to explore the means through which ACL impacts mental health and to draw out implications for policy and practice. Findings from focus groups with adult learners and tele-discussions with ACL practitioners revealed three main means through which the provision helped generate interlinked mental health and educational capabilities: providing recognition, generating resources (capitals) and enhancing agency freedom. Elaborating these findings, the paper sets out an argument for interpretation of the mental health and well-being agenda in ACL in terms of a humanistic, liberatory pedagogy that encompasses feminist praxis and draws out policy implications across the areas of ACL and mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In recent years, education and family policy in the UK has sought to incorporate the views of children and young people through an active participation agenda, in the fulfilment of children's rights under the obligations of the UN Convention for the Rights of the Child. Drawing on empirical evidence, this paper suggests that this aspiration is flawed. The inclusion of young people's voices in decision-making is context dependent, and influenced by individual relationships, both positive and negative. It is framed by policies that subjugate children within disciplinary technologies that determine a regime of 'truth' about effective and appropriate participation. Drawing on data gathered as part of a wider study on the relationships between services users and services providers in special educational needs, this paper demonstrates that active inclusion of the voice of the child can be illustrated to be at least variable, and at worst prejudiced. It is suggested that the notion of participation produces tacit forms of 'government' that further classify and divide young people, magnifying their marginalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) are construed by policy-makers as a pressing problem about which something should be done. Such young people’s lack of employment is thought to pose difficulties for wider society in relation to social cohesion and inclusion, and it is feared that they will become a ‘lost generation’. This paper draws upon English research, seeking to historicise the debate whilst acknowledging that these issues have a much wider purchase. The notion of NEETs rests alongside longstanding concerns of the English state and middle classes, addressing unruly male working-class youth as well as the moral turpitude of working class girls. Waged labour and domesticity are seen as a means to integrate such groups into society thereby generating social cohesion. The paper places the debate within it socio-economic context and draws on theorisations of cognitive capitalism, Italian workerism, as well as emerging theories of antiwork to analyse these. It concludes by arguing that ‘radical’ approaches to NEETs that point towards inequities embedded in the social structure and call for social democratic solutions veer towards a form of comfort radicalism. Such approaches leave in place the dominance of capitalist relations as well as productivist orientations that celebrate waged labour. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Education is undergoing various transformations due to new data-driven educational technologies and the management of educational data through data infrastructures. These technologies are frequently promoted to parents and the profession as being ‘revolutionary’ because they represent a new generation of learning. While computer adaptive tests may arguably improve various efficiencies, the argument that they will revolutionise education requires evaluation. In this paper we draw on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari to theorise (a) the desire for data amongst policymakers and (b) the effects of data infrastructures as systems that coordinate educational thought. We argue that, rather than revolutionising learning as promised, datafication in computer-based modes merely offers more intense expressions of longstanding possibilities for learning. We describe three types of events—breaks, cracks and ruptures—and argue that data-events translate cracks (imperceptible changes that constitute learning) into breaks (information), but either cannot generate rupture (difference) or represent rupture as error. However, the intensification of learning through datafication may, we suggest, rupture educational thought more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research provides evidence that gender, immigrant background and socio-economic characteristics present multiple disadvantaging characteristics that change their relative importance and configurations over time. When evaluating inequalities researchers tend to focus on one particular aspect and often use composite measures when evaluating socio-economic characteristics. Neither can fully represent the complexity of students’ various disadvantaging characteristics, which have autonomous associations with attainment and with each other. This paper investigates how the relative importance and configurations of different disadvantaging factors have changed over time to form educational inequalities and how these changes differ across countries. Data from five PISA cycles (2000–2012) for France, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom are used and configurations of gender, immigration background, parents’ occupational and educational levels, and the number of books at home evaluated. Results enable us to relate changes (or lack thereof) in configurations of disadvantaging factors to recent reforms targeted at reducing educational inequality after the first PISA results. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Produced and published by the coalition government, the publication of the 2014 Special Educational Needs and Disability Code of Practice: 0-25 years (2014 SENCoP) sets out to overhaul the management of special educational needs (SEN) provision across England and Wales. This paper employs a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of the 2014 SENCoP to reveal the ideologies and aims that this policy is built upon. Following a Foucauldian framework of governmentality, this article focuses upon the way in which 'a successful transition to adulthood' is constructed within the policy, particularly in relation to the wider Conservative narrative of a 'Big Society.' Developing this analysis, the article draws upon the current political landscape of a Conservative government and the shift towards the creation of a 'shared society' in attempt to locate 'adulthood' within its wider political, economic, and cultural context. This analysis reveals the neoliberal values underpinning the 2014 SENCoP, whereby educational support is reduced to the practice of shaping and sculpting the future generation of citizens. By deconstructing notions of employment, independence, participation, and health, this article reveals the 2014 SENCoP as a tool of government, written to the demands of the economy rather than the unique needs, aspirations, and ambitions of children and young people labelled with SEN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on theBuilding Colleges for the Future(BCF) initiative (2008) which saw a wave of new-build Further Education (FE) colleges spring up across England in the final years of the New Labour government. It draws on qualitative data from a research study focusing on four new-build colleges in the West Midlands of England to theorise the BCF initiative. Using theory derived primarily from Lefebvre, the paper contextualises BCF within a frame of neoliberalisation and discusses the impact of the ‘production of space’ represented by the initiative with a research focus on two areas: pedagogy and ideology. The main findings are that these new-build colleges can be interpreted as spatial expressions of policy-makers and others’ perceptions of teaching and learning; in ideological terms, they also trumpet a ‘new lifestyle’ and a ‘new art of living’ for FE staff and students that is however, in tension with residual pedagogical practices and values. The article concludes that despite being an expression of neoliberal abstract space, these new-builds can still be seen as providing a frame for alternative individual and collective encounters with education which may subvert and outlast the processes of neoliberalisation that they appear to embody. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]