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This paper presents a first attempt in an ongoing research study of the policy environments in four UK secondary schools to examine policy enactment, where 'enactment' refers to an understanding that policies are interpreted and 'translated' by diverse policy actors in the school environment, rather than simply implemented. The paper is divided into two parts. The first part presents an audit of the policies encountered in four case study schools in the south-east of England. The second part looks at one current English government policy, namely personal learning and thinking skills, and how this is taken up in two of the case study schools. In this way, the paper not just explores why a policy is adopted but also illustrates the capacity for school-based policy elaboration, where schools produce their own 'take' on policy, drawing on aspects of their culture or ethos, as well as on the situated necessities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper raises questions regarding the ability of new qualifications frameworks and assessment systems to promote innovation and social inclusion. Of interest in this paper is the centrality of tacit skill in promoting innovation. Tacit skill is central to innovation, although its positional character is not well understood by policy-makers. It is argued that the relationship between tacit skill and innovation throws doubt on the relationship between assessment led change, and on the social and economic objectives of New Labour (in the UK) and the Labour-led Coalition (in New Zealand). This paper also reviews recent changes in the funding of higher education in New Zealand and in the UK, and explores the impact of economic change on the competition for advancement through education. This paper concludes by arguing that innovation and social inclusion are not compatible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins by noting the centrality of the issue of working-class school failure within the sociology of education in Britain. It argues that recent government policies have taken insufficient account of sociological work on the impact of social class on educational success and failure. It also suggests that sociologists should pay more attention to middle-class education. The importance of this is illustrated through reference to research on the trajectories of pupils receiving different forms of secondary education. The paper then argues that social inclusion policies need to address a variety of forms of middle-class self-exclusion from mainstream public provision as well as working-class social exclusion. It concludes that education policy needs to be located within a broader social policy framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While it is generally acknowledged that being ‘historically informed’ lies at the heart of critical accounts of education policy-making, the use of historically focused retrospective research methods within the field is rare. This paper makes the case for retrospective research at a time when some of the most significant episodes of post-war educational policy-making are fast passing into the realms of not-so-recent history. In particular, it is argued that current policy scholars now have an opportunity to revisit the issues and concerns regarding the formation of the ‘New Right’ education policy reforms 30 years ago. Drawing on the experiences of a recently completed study of educational policy-making during the 1979–1983 Thatcher administration, it is argued that retrospective methods offer a surprisingly rich opportunity to collect primary data from the policy elites of the 1980s. It is concluded that the time is right for the production of a useful addendum to the founding studies of educational policy sociology that were conducted at the time. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Social exclusion is a key policy theme for the New Labour government, and has been closely associated with education policy. The emphasis is on the need to combat social exclusion by creating a globally competitive economy through the education system, and through responsible individual attitudes. However, this dominant discourse is interpreted differently at various levels of policy making that provide alternative conceptualizations of the problem, and suggest different roles for education. This paper draws upon a research project that explored the links between education governance and social exclusion, and seeks to illustrate different approaches to social exclusion and education, as these are articulated by politicians and civil servants involved in policy making, or policy implementation in England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1980s, state schools in England have been required to ensure transparency and accountability through the use of indicators and templates derived from the private sector and, more recently, globally circulating discourses of ‘good governance’ (an appeal to professional standards, technical expertise, and performance evaluation as mechanisms for improving public service delivery). The rise of academies and free schools (‘state-funded independent schools’) has increased demand for good governance, notably as a means by which to discipline schools,in particular school governors– those tasked with the legal responsibility of holding senior leadership to account for the financial and educational performance of schools. A condition and effect of school autonomy, therefore, is increased monitoring and surveillance of all school governing bodies. In this paper, I demonstrate how these twin processes combine to produce a new modality of state power and intervention; a dominant or organizing principle by which government steer the performance of governors through disciplinary tools of professionalization and inspection, with the aim of achieving the ‘control of control’. To explain these trends, I explore how various established and emerging school governing bodies are (re)constituting themselves to meet demands for good governance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The task of social scientists is to find ways of investigating and understanding the social, political and economic world, in order to offer insights into everyday and public life in the past, present and future. Bourdieu’s tool kit offers a particular way of theorizing the rules, narratives and self‐held truths of social phenomena and of educational policy as a specific object of analysis. In this article I develop a series of propositions about the ways in which field theory might be applied to explain the abrupt public policy shift effected by the Thatcher government and the adjustments made to it by the Blair government. I suggest that a Bourdieuian approach shows policy working as a means of codification, as a doxa of misrecognition and as currency exchange within and across fields. I conclude with some thoughts about the difficulties of explicating interactions between fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]