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This paper contributes to the literature on complementary schools as sites of learning and social and cultural identification. We draw on a small-scale multi-method qualitative study conducted in Albanian and Bulgarian community schools in London to explore the agendas of ‘new’ Eastern European complementary schools with respect to learning and heritage and their impact on migrant students’ identities and experiences with education in the UK. Findings demonstrate that different models of complementary schooling and students’ experiences of mainstream education affected students’ views in different ways. The paper explores how the ‘hard’ and ‘boring’ culture of Bulgarian complementary school resulted in students’ expressions of greater liking for learning in mainstream school and valuing of its multiethnic context. It further examines how practices in another complementary school and students’ wider social experiences resulted in a stronger sense of Albanian heritage identity in students, but in more problematic views of UK cultural diversity. In elaborating these themes we seek to draw some implications for policy and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper adds to a growing body of literature which views global citizenship education as part of a broader social and cultural process of subjectivity production. Rather than focus on global citizenship in relation to pedagogy or curriculum content, as much of the previous research literature has done, this paper examines it in relation to the practice of travel. Drawing on data generated in ethnographic fieldwork in two UK schools, the paper explores the way in which the young people in these settings used travel to position themselves as successful, mobile, global citizen subjects. The paper argues that these subjectivities were negotiated as part of a dynamic process: one which took place across multiple spaces, in a myriad of different relationships, and in the deployment of a number of different power relations. The paper concludes with some thoughts about the practice of school travel and how it might effectively be focused upon in future research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper examines the extent to which diversity in the backgrounds of students and diversity in the forms and characteristics of universities combine to produce diversities in learning experiences and outcomes. It draws on a recent major national study in the UK which has been investigating how student learning is mediated by a series of social and organisational factors. Fifteen case studies of student experiences in different universities lay at the heart of the study and provide extensive qualitative and quantitative evidence about the realities of diversity in UK higher education. The paper reports both diversities and commonalities in the student experience and its outcomes, some of which challenge the predominantly hierarchical and reputational conceptions of diversity and differentiation currently dominant in debates about UK higher education. The student 'voice' on these matters as reported here does not fully coincide with current policy priorities and 'voices'. Student perceptions of the ways in which they have changed as a result of the experience of higher education embrace a range of factors within which the social and the personal are at least as important as the academic. Although the focus in this paper is on student learning on undergraduate degrees in the biosciences, business studies and sociology, a model of university learning contexts and settings is presented which may have wider applicability to achieving a better understanding of higher education's increasing diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we analyse the dynamics of adult participation in part-time education and training throughout the 90s and into the 2000s using data from 14 waves (1992-2005) of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS). We study the volume (stocks) of participation and non-participation and the gross flows between states. This analysis provides a longitudinal complement to existing work (e.g. NIACE & Labour Force Surveys) which is largely based on cross-section data and as such can only report net changes in participation at different points in time. In contrast, our dataset, derived from the BHPS, allowed us to follow the same 4325 individuals over time and document the proportion who were persistent non-participants (resistors), persistent participants and those who moved between states frequently and less frequently. Although a third of our sample (34%) remained non-participants throughout the 14-year observation period, it was the relatively large number that moved between states of participation and non-participation which, when considered in the context of the cross-sectional analysis, was more striking. By revealing this hitherto hidden turbulence we were able to identify and begin to characterise not just the participants and non-participants but also the larger group of individuals who moved frequently, moderately and less frequently between states. [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 presents a review of the literature relating to hard-to-reach families which has been published over the last 12 years in the UK, USA, Canada and Australia. The purpose of the review was twofold: to gain insights to understandings of the term ‘hard-to-reach’ within these services – education, health and social – which might be aiming to access such families in order to help them improve their life chances and to explore the ways in which services have been successful in engaging the families. A consistent message to emerge from the review is that complex issues need complex solutions which in turn need time to implement. Additionally, it is clear that services need to develop diversity of support provision in order to meet the varying needs of families and that services need to develop a shared script for working with them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

In England, Free Schools were announced as a dramatic way in which government policy has changed such that it is now possible for groups of parents, organisations or charities to start their own schools. They are seen as an attempt to stimulate to ‘supply side’ of the quasi-market of schools, but they are not the first such initiatives. In the long period of Conservative Government from 1979 to 1987, there were two specific attempts to encourage new schools through City Technology Colleges and sponsored grant-maintained schools. Both of these initiatives stalled at just 15 schools, but it is argued that their significance was far greater than their numerical strength would indicate and that they can be seen as for-runners of the Academies and Free Schools. All of these schools can be seen as examples of increased privatisation and selection, and they thus exhibit their own embedded forms of social (in)justice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Summarizes several articles on education in Great Britain. Analysis of the results of voluntary tests to determine academic achievement; Opposition experienced by comprehensive selective schools from both the Conservative and Labour governments; Support of the Scottish government to comprehensive schools; Investigation on the Education Action Zones established by the Labour government in the late 1990s.

The article addresses the issue of whether student learning style has an impact on use of a learning technology such as a virtual learning environment (VLE). It is based on material from a broader research project at a UK university (Kingston University) on the use of VLEs in teaching and learning and explores the findings from the analysis of qualitative interviews with 43 first-year undergraduate students, drawn from three faculties and four subject areas. It discusses the features of the VLE that are most valued by students (including their evaluation of more flexible modalities of learning); how students integrate the VLE with other learning and studying activities; and the specific ways in which various learning styles and approaches affect VLE use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although issues of inclusion, diversity and achievement have become a powerful agenda for change in teacher education policy in England, bilingual pupils are still conceptualised in policy terms as a problem. This absence of linguistic integration in English teacher education is in tension with the increasing number of school pupils speaking a diversity of languages at home, and contrasts with policy towards bilingual pupils in other parts of the United Kingdom, in Europe and in the United States. The standards for qualified teacher status only require trainee competence to be demonstrated in understanding pupil language backgrounds and in providing support for those learning 'English as an Additional Language' (EAL). The authors' research investigated the way teacher education policy in England ignores the positive attributes of bilingual learners and the resultant lack of debate about the preparedness of trainee teachers to work effectively with bilingual pupils. This article presents key findings from their work with secondary schools in the south of England. They interviewed trainees, teachers and Local Education Authority (LEA) officers, administered a questionnaire to trainees and analysed policy documents. The findings indicate teacher education in England pays bilingualism lip service at best, persisting with a policy discourse emphasising the problem of EAL. The research raises important questions concerning teacher education policy in relation to bilingualism, and highlights the significance of school contexts in relation to effective teacher preparation. The article concludes by arguing for policies to improve teacher confidence and competence in England's increasingly linguistically diverse classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A ‘mapping task’ was used to explore the networks available to head teachers, school coordinators and local authority staff. Beginning from an ego‐centred perspective on networks, we illustrate a number of key analytic categories, including brokerage, formality, and strength and weakness of links with reference to a single UK primary school. We describe how teachers differentiate between the strength of network links and their value, which is characteristically related to their potential impact on classroom practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]