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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]

This paper seeks to extend work previously published that points to the importance of rhetorical analysis to policy studies. It argues against the notion that policy can be dismissed as 'spin' and explores further the work of rhetoric within the UK government's policy texts of lifelong learning. For the authors, rhetorical analysis helps to point to the politics of discourse that is at play in policy-making processes. This paper points to some of the conceptual resources upon which one can draw in undertaking rhetorical deconstructions of policy texts and discourses, in this case, of lifelong learning, and one's own role, as analysts and sultans of spin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an attempt to think aloud about the current policy proposals in circulation in England that address pre-service teacher education. Rather than dealing with details of policy and points of specificity in practice, the focus of this paper is with how propositions are justified and the overall ways in which meanings are being managed; a fundamental aspect of policy analysis. [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]

The paper reports on an in-depth evaluation of a Single R egeneration Fund Budget funded partnership based on individual and community education as a means of promoting social inclusion. Partnership has become the preeminent mechanism for furthering the UK Government's social inclusion agenda. The paper focuses on the dynamics of partnership itself at management level. Bourdieu's concept of habitus is drawn upon in thinking about some of the processes facilitating or hindering partnership working. In particular, the paper draws attention to gender dynamics in partnership working and the ways in which these interact with organizational and professional practices. The article postulates that connections established prior to the formal partnership constituted cultural capital, which was transferred to the partnership. In particular, it was found that gender networks and practices constitute an important source of skills and dispositions. This way of viewing partnership working contributes to debates about sustainability, since it suggests that personal qualities that are essential to project success are a transferable resource and that there is a pool of cultural capital based on previously existing social networks that may transcend organizational and professional boundaries. The paper suggests that practices and networks on the ground may survive changes in both the language of public policy and models of implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The swift nature of school reform enacted by the new Conservative-led coalition government has sparked debate over the future of state education in Britain. While the government rhetoric suggests a decisive break with past policies, there is evidence to suggest that these reforms constitute the next stage of a long revolution in education reform, centred around neoliberal market discourse. In the following paper, I examine the current government’s education policy discourse and, by employing techniques of post-structuralist discourse analysis, reveal the government’s attempts to rearticulate education around the logics of market, responsibilisation and self-esteem, which act to shift responsibility for social problems from the state to the individual. Furthermore, I shall argue that such rearticulation has been coupled with an ideological fantasy of ‘empowerment’, which conceals the subordination of actors to these neoliberal logics by constituting the parent and, more recently, the teacher as powerful actors who have been freed from legal and bureaucratic constraints forced upon them by central government. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the UK policy context, skills, education and learning are seen as a universal solution to a vast array of economic and social problems. In challenging this view, this paper argues that those educationalists calling for progressive reforms to the education system need to acknowledge the reality of the contemporary workplace and the institutional context of UK capitalism. When it comes to the question of how the UK might move towards a more inclusive high skills society, no matter where we start to look - be it the economy or a highly class-divided English education system - it all seems to add up badly. In challenging the current policy agenda, educationalists will need to insist that progressive educational reform cannot be separated from the struggle for broader political, social and economic change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite profound changes to the higher education sector in the UK over recent years, which have tended to emphasise the role of prospective students as active choosers within a marketplace and encourage higher education institutions (HEIs) to place more emphasis on student engagement and representation as a means of improving the quality of the learning experience, the role of students’ unions has remained largely unexplored. To start to redress this gap, this paper draws on a UK-wide survey of students’ union officers and a series of focus groups with 86 students and higher education staff in 10 case study institutions. It outlines the ways in which students’ unions are believed, by those closely involved with them, to have changed over recent years, focusing on: the shift towards a much greater emphasis on representation in the role and function of the students’ union; the increasing importance of non-elected officers; and the emergence of more cooperative relationships between the students’ union and senior institutional management. The article then discusses the implications of these findings for both our understanding of the political engagement of students, and theorising student involvement in the governance of HEIs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

New Labour promised to introduce dramatic reforms to the education system when it came to power in 1997 and one of the key strategies it employed in the pursuit of educational improvement was the utilisation of the methods of the private sector. Arguably its most controversial policy was its effective privatisation of the functions of ‘failing’ Local Education Authorities (LEAs). Although criticisms of this policy were widespread, the potency of the arguments against private sector involvement in education waned somewhat following the publication of a comprehensive investigation into outsourcing by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) in 2005. This report, entitled The Business of Education Improvement claimed, on the basis of its analysis of Department for Education and Skills (DfES) data, that the outsourced authorities were comprehensively outperforming those that remained in the state sector. However, the conclusions of the CBI’s report were, in many instances, highly misleading. This paper provides a brief background to Labour’s privatisation programme, followed by a reassessment of the performance of the outsourced LEAs. Contrary to the conclusions reached in the CBI’s report, the analysis here finds no evidence to suggest that the outsourced LEAs performed better than those that remained in the public sector. If anything, on the rather narrow assessment of performance offered by the CBI, LEAs appear to perform better under public sector management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the organizational and management consequences of the changing policy environment facing public sector education in England and Wales over the past 10 years. In particular it considers how far arguments about the replacement of older ‘bureau-professional' forms of organizational order by more ‘managerialist' forms in the public sector in general can be applied to the specific case of education. The paper begins by reviewing the major policy changes that have affected schools and colleges since 1988. Drawing on published studies from these sectors, it then considers a number of themes: changing roles of senior and middle managers; changes in managerial and organizational culture; and changes in specific aspects of management. Emphasizing the tentative nature of the evidence, the paper identifies some common trends which imply a movement towards managerialism in many institutions. However, it also identifies areas where the position is less clear and suggests a number of factors which may explain differences of experience. It emphasizes the importance of not reifying a previous ‘golden age' of collegiality and concludes that what is being experienced is a complex and dynamic process of adjustment between old and new organizational and managerial forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reforming vocational education in the English education and training system has occupied governments for at least the last three decades, the latest development being the introduction of 14 lines of Specialised Diplomas. Using an historical analysis of qualifications reform, we suggest they are unlikely to transform 14-19 education and training. The failure to reform academic qualifications alongside their vocational equivalents is likely to result in 'academic drift', lack of status and a relatively low level of uptake for these new awards, a process compounded by low employer recognition of broad vocational qualifications. In rejecting the Tomlinson Report's central proposal for a unified diploma system covering all 14-19 education and training, we argue that the government may have condemned the Specialised Diplomas to become a middle-track qualification for a minority of 14-19-years-olds, situated between the majority academic pathway and the sparsely populated apprenticeship route. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been argued earlier in this journal that from the formation of the United Kingdom Central Council for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting (UKCC) in 1984, until the initiation in 1989 of NHS reform by the third Thatcher administration, nurse education policy development was dominated by a nursing establishment located largely within the UKCC. During this period, in the context of an educational reform, a non-collective professional project emerged which left around 30% of the nursing workforce marooned in an obsolescent occupational group. Drawing on documents from UKCC archives, this paper analyses that professional project in terms of professionalization theory, and argues that by following a non-collective agenda, UKCC eroded nursing's labour market position in relation to the provision of care in the National Health Service (NHS). It is further argued that this eroded labour market position has subsequently been exacerbated by government-led policy developments concerning vocational education and NHS reform, with a consequent weakening of nursing's influence on important aspects of caring work in the health service. Explanations for these aspects of the professional project are proposed relating to the fact that although wide-ranging in terms of the nature and practice of nursing, Project 2000 was positioned and conducted as an educational reform. While education provided the ‘political space' (i.e. free from the immediate priorities and direct involvement of the NHS) for UKCC to assemble and promote its radical professional project, that project as a consequence was uninformed by cost and workforce planning issues. Late stage engagement between professional aspirations and service needs demonstrated the likelihood of an eroded labour market position for nurses, and high levels of risk for the NHS in terms of the supply of nurses, but by that point UKCC was already committed to the key elements of its original proposals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early years education has received considerable attention in recent years, particularly as a result of longitudinal studies that demonstrate the importance of the first few years in a child’s development and educational experience. In 2004, a new approach to early years education, the Foundation Phase, was introduced in Wales. This is a major flagship policy of the recently devolved Welsh Government, and marks a radical departure from the more assessment-driven competency-based approaches to early childhood education that existed prior to the Foundation Phase. Studying approximately 2000 children in Wales who are part of the UK Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), all born in 2000–2001 we investigate the potential impact of the Foundation Phase pilot on a range of key academic and well-being outcome measures. Compared with other children, those attending a Foundation Phase pilot school tended to have lower scores in a number of academic assessments at age seven and lower subjective well-being, in terms of their attitudes to learning and well-being at school. We consider these surprising, yet concerning, results in the context of the methodological limitations to this analysis and propose how the MCS can be further used to substantiate these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Free school policy claims to partly decentralise to local proposers decisions over who provides a free school, where and for what reasons, within the constraints of a government approval process. This article analyses empirically the people and organisations doing the proposing and their interactions with the approval process. The article begins by locating free schools within Big Society and quasi-market policies. The emerging free school landscape is then mapped and the motivations, aims and demography of a sample of 50 proposers are explored. A key distinction emerges between two analytical clusters. First, proposers able to negotiate the approval process are shown to draw on a range of professional networks, to have strongly academic educational aims and to on average not seek to specifically serve disadvantaged communities. Second, and conversely, the majority of proposers located in highly disadvantaged areas have aims and expertise that do not fit well with what the government is willing to accept. This is not conceived as a simple dualism but highlights the significance of both a lack of critical engagement with inclusion among accepted proposers and the effects of an approval process that has prioritised an unequal distribution of particular forms of professional expertise and experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the increasing internationalisation of higher education, there is a pressing need to think through how demands for educational equality and justice, that currently tend to be framed at the national and sub-national level, should be conceptualised at a global level. This article compares two recent media and policy debates in the UK, over admitting wealthy students off-quota to university and restricting international student visas, in order to demonstrate the contradictions that are created when demands for educational equality stop at the national border. Based on a discussion of these debates, the article calls for the principle of educational equality to be extended outwards, beyond the national border, to apply to domestic and international students alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]