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This paper is an exploration of the debates surrounding the publication of a new National Curriculum for history in England. The draft curriculum was published in February 2013 and was withdrawn just 6 months later in the face of considerable opposition. This paper offers a tentative explanation for this example of a rare phenomenon: effective resistance to curriculum change. Using a socio-cognitive approach to discourse analysis, the paper explores the context models of the two antagonists in the contestation: new right traditionalism and social realism. While both context models are viewed as coherent, it is suggested that critics of the draft prevailed because they more fully comprehended the context model of their opponents and were prepared to adapt their strategy accordingly. The paper takes an analytical narrative approach to the contestation. Resistance to the draft is presented in two phases: an initial phase in which criticism was diffuse, instinctive and political; and a more effective ...

This article discusses the historical relationship between educational studies and British teacher education. Following a brief introduction it provides an overview of initial teacher training (ITT) developments since 1952, the launch date of the BJES, before tracing the rise of educational studies and its so-called ‘foundation disciplines’. The fourth section discusses a range of criticisms levelled against the teach-ing of educational studies within ITT programmes. Examples of discon-tent voiced by student teachers, higher education personnel and the New Right are considered in the light of changing attitudes and policies towards British ITT. It is argued that the attack upon the theoretical aspects of educational studies has been more sustained - and has had more impact - in England than in other parts of the UK. The article draws conclusions in respect of education as an academic subject, the current state of the foundation disciplines, the place of educational studies within teacher education program...

This paper seeks to analyse the proposals and assumptions in the Consultation Paper: Teachers Meeting the Challenge of Change (DfEE, 1998a). Although the Consultation Paper claims to be about the modernising of the teaching profession, it is argued here that it is a deeply conservative paper written with the economic and employment legacy of the New Right. The proposals are considered in relation to the tradition of teacher criticism and blame. The conceptual framework of post-fordism and neo-fordism is used to explore the form of modernisation proposed for teachers' work and conditions.

In its proposals for a Performance Related Pay (PRP) scheme for teachers the Labour Government has presented appraisal as having a dual role. It is to be used to determine the pay of teachers making reference to quantitative targets; and to facilitate teachers'professional development. This article examines the tensions between these two functions of appraisal.

This paper, which is a response to a previous one by Charles Batteson (1997) published in the Journal, challenges the view that James Callaghan's personal intervention in the politics of education in 1976 in making the Ruskin Speech was pivotal in shaping the subsequent direction of Labour' policies for school reform. The paper also queries the idea that the Ruskin Speech was the immediate harbinger of New Right education policies. Instead, it is suggested, the historical record points up that such policies gained ascendancy only some ten years later, the intervening period being dominated more by an acceptance of the educational consensus constructed by the Labour leadership in 1976–77.

James Callaghan’s 1976 Ruskin Speech is often presented as denoting the end of consensual policy-making in education and a profigurement of Thatcherite educational policies. This paper considers the validity of visualising 1976 as a foothill of New Right thinking about education and expresses some skepticism about interpretations which neglect subterranean politics.

This paper examines the extent to which parents have absorbed New Right ideas about education and acted accordingly. What emerges is that their commitment to the rhetoric of school choice is strong. However, concepts such as the market and competition are viewed less favourably. An important theme here is the avoidance by parents of any collective agenda in discussing education policy, a factor that may thwart those who attempt to predict their responses to government policy for schools.

This paper explores the manner in which educational and political conservatives attempted to control the content and purposes of the history curriculum in English schools during the period 1987–1994. It focuses upon this particular coalition because, since the late 1970s, it has set the agenda for the debate and dominated the race to produce a history curriculum designed to help produce a particular kind of society. The paper argues that the New Right's claim to be engaging in an educational debate is spurious. Rather, its concern is primarily ideological and only educational in terms of its use of history education as a vehicle through which to disseminate a specific set of values and beliefs.

This paper offers a commentary on the contemporary situation of the teacher in western societies. The impact of some aspects of Post Modernism and of New Right political projects is considered and the teacher urged to ground his or her conduct in a belief in the enduring validity of the liberal‐rationalist tradition.

This paper explores the apparently forgotten area of community education. It examines the dominant modes of community education practice, dubbed the status reform model, and concludes that one of the key explanations of its failure to change practice was its reluctance to tackle professional domination of existing power structures in education. The article also examines New Right definitions of appropriate parental roles, of citizenship, and of community. The article concludes by identifying some possible strategies to expand and enhance the roles offered by the education system to lay actors.

From 1944 to 1988, education, citizenship and democracy, Stewart Ranson the New Right and the National Curriculum - State control or Market Forces?, Geoff Whitty national assessment proposals - analyzing the debate, Roger Murphy opting for an uncertain future - grant maintained schools, Michael Flude and Meril Hammer from local financial management to local management of school, Hywel Thomas legislating for choice, Andrew Stillman neither rhyme nor reason - primary schooling and the National Curriculum, Kevin Brehony TVEI vocationalism and the crisis of liberal education, Robert Moore and Mike Hickox the reform of governing bodies - the power of the consumer over the producer?, Rosemary Deem race, schooling and the 1988 Education Reform Act, Jan Hardy and Chris Vieler-Porter girls' education in the balance - the ERA and inequality, Sheila Miles and Chris Middleton the Education Reform Act and special educational needs, Philippa Russel the Act and local authorities, R.Wallace learning to live under water - the Act and its implications for further and adult education, Lorna Unwin higher education, Gareth Williams.

Secondary education since the Second World War, Roy Lowe the reorganization of secondary education in Leicestershire, 1947-1984, Donald K.Jones the politics of local reorganization, Edward Fearn the schools council and curriculum - developments in secondary education, Peter Gordon the impact of comprehensive reforms, John Gray and David Jesson the new right and English secondary education, Clive Griggs "deep within their respective cultures" - teacher racism and the construction of black underachievement, Ian Grosvenor male order - the issue of gender in the secondary school, Patricia Cox the practical implications of the TVEI initiatives, David Cattell problems of the urban comprehensive today, Ian Brown managing secondary schools after the Act - participation and partnership?, Peter Ribbins who will control the secondary school in the 1990s?, Hywel Thomas.

That was the view of Mark Carlisle, the Minister responsible for implementing the Assisted Places Scheme (interviewed by us, February 1982). Yet that Scheme, the Thatcher government's first major policy initiative in education, is now often seen as part of a broader process of privatizing the education sygtem.2 However, we have argued elsewhere that its genealogy did not lie in the market ideology of the 'New Right', and that it was primarily the resurrection of a 'scholarship ladder' to selective secondary education and therefore deliberately limited in scope.3 It is certainly not immediately obvious that a Scheme which uses public money to help a relatively small number of individuals to purchase places in schools which would otherwise be filled almost entirely by full feepayers is a privatization measure in the commonsense meaning of the term. But this may be to take rather too narrow a view of the nature of privatization, and of its relationship to other elements of Conservative ideology such as the fostering of parental choice. In this paper, we therefore explore the Assisted Places Scheme in terms of the various policy strands that might be considered as components in the privatising of educational provision. Heald has identified four major elements of privatization:4