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Framed as being in response to terrorist attacks and concerns about religious bias in some English schools, 'British Values' (BV) curriculum policy forms part of the British Government's Counter-Terrorism and Security Act, 2015. This includes a Duty on teachers in England to actively promote British Values to deter students from radicalisation. This paper, first, traces the history of Britishness in the curriculum to reveal a prevalence of nationalistic, colonial values. Next, an ensemble of recent policies and speeches focusing on British Values is analysed, using a psycho-political approach informed by anti-colonial scholarship. Finally, we interrogate two key critiques of the British Values curriculum discourse: the universality of British Values globally, and concerns over the securitisation of education. Findings indicate that the constitution of white British supremacist subjectivities operate through curriculum as a defence mechanism against perceived threats to white privilege, by normalising a racialised state-controlled social order. The focus is on 'British' values, but the analytic framework and findings have wider global significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent worldwide trends in curriculum policy have re-emphasised the role of teachers in school-based curriculum development. Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence is typical of these trends, stressing that teachers are agents of change. This paper draws upon empirical data to explore school-based curriculum development in response to Curriculum for Excellence. We focus on two case studies – secondary schools within a single Scottish local education authority. In the paper we argue that the nature and extent of innovation in schools is dependent upon teachers being able to make sense of often complex and confusing curriculum policy, including the articulation of a clear vision about what such policy means for education within each school. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The use of computers within the school curriculum raises critical pedagogical issues. The Maddux (1991) classification of educational computer applications as Type I or Type II remains apposite. Type I applications simply reinforce existing teacher-learner paradigms, whereas Type II applications of ICT (Information and Communications Technology: the UK acronym for EdTech) transform teaching and learning. This paper examines United Kingdom case studies predicated on the Type II approach. The government has, since 1997, invested considerable resources in educational ICT through the provision of computers, teacher training, and broadband connectivity. Despite this considerable body of best practice, some schools and teachers still find it difficult to change their existing praxis. This paper examines ways in which some schools have changed course. In many ways schools are like supertankers: A change of direction requires a considerable amount of forward planning before it takes effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines the ways in which successive UK governments have regulated and controlled the teaching profession since the 1980s. Key initiatives relating to curriculum, school effectiveness and individual teacher performance are considered in some detail, because these issues have arguably had the greatest impact upon teaching and learning. New developments in government thinking are considered, developments which may create greater autonomy for schools and teachers in the future. The extent to which these will involve any radical change to the current system of accountability and quality assurance is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes an exploratory trial conducted with 14–15 year-old students in English state schools who were studying business start-ups as part of a course in “Business Studies”. The intervention uses a “Story Grammar” strategy to improve students’ reasoning by increasing the frequency and complexity of their use of “connectives” such as “when”, “if” and “because”. The analysis reports positive effects of the intervention on students’ understanding as judged by the use of a standard examination style mark scheme, and the number and complexity of connectives used by students in their extended writing. By reporting effects on immediate target variables we are able to examine the causation with precision. Effects are reported through standardt-tests and effect size. We also discuss the design of the experiment and comment on its practicability as a model for investigating effects of classroom interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The number and range of school types in England is increasing rapidly in response to a neoliberal policy agenda aiming to expand choice of provision as a mechanism for raising educational standards. In this paper, I seek to undertake a mapping of these school types in order to describe and explain what is happening. I capture this busy terrain from different perspectives: legal status; curricular specialism; pupil selection; types of academy; and school groupings. The mapping highlights the intersections between the current reform agenda and the historical diversity within the English school system to show the dialogue between past and present. Borrowing the geological metaphors of faulting and folding, I argue that long-established school types are not buried under sedimentary layers of reform, but are thrust into the present where they are discursively re-imagined through neoliberalism. Finally, I conceptualise the landscape holistically through the lenses of locus of legitimacy and branding, where I argue that current structural diversification policies enable the enactment of interests other than educational through transferring responsibility for education and related assets away from public and towards corporatised or religious actors and institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bernstein (1996) suggests that we need to engage critically with what it would mean to extend democracy in schools through pupil consultation. This paper explores the ways in which pupil consultation can uncover aspects of both pupil peer group cultures and classroom dynamics that work against fairness, collegiality and a sense of community in classrooms. Often it is the disruptive and the underachieving pupils who are the focus of teachers' concerns. However, the findings of this study suggest that consultation can also reveal the detrimental impact that a fractious, competitive peer group riven with power struggles can have on well behaved, high achieving pupils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that key education policy initiatives since the introduction of the National Curriculum in the UK are Government-mediated responses to pressures in the global knowledge economy. Successful implementation of these policies has required a change in the way in which education institutions and professionals are controlled and managed. George Ritzer's ‘McDonaldization’ thesis, a conceptualization of a dominant form of economic and cultural globalization, is outlined and it is then argued that national education policy has led to the ‘McDonaldization’ of the state school education system in England. Benjamin Barber's concept of ‘McWorld’ is used to represent the consumerist world which a narrowed educational vision seeks to serve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Citizenship education has been an ongoing matter of academic and political debate in the UK since the 1970s. This debate culminated in the setting up of the Advisory Group in citizenship education under the chairmanship of Bernard Crick. The publication of the Crick Report, Education for Citizenship and the Teaching of Democracy in Schools (London, QCA, 1998 ), has influenced the development of citizenship education across the UK from primary level to post-16. Citizenship education has now been established as a statutory component of the compulsory school national curriculum in England and a set of proposals for Scotland were launched in 2002. In this paper, with particular reference to the Crick Report, I explore the theories and conceptions of citizenship that are evident in this policy area and consider the opportunities it offers for embedding democratic practices within late modern societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent UK House of Commons report on Science 14-19 identified problems with coursework and argued for a greater emphasis on teaching and assessment of scientific literacy. This paper describes a written test for procedural understanding, given to 15 year olds, that addresses both of these issues. Comparisons are made between the scores on a written test of procedural understanding with both assessments made of subject knowledge and pupil accounts of investigations. The potential advantages of assessing procedural understanding by written tests are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The International Lenin in School in Moscow trained British Communists for leadership positions from 1926 to 1937. This article relates the school and its programmes to their context, the development of Stalinism in Russia and the Russification of the Third International and its affiliates. It explores thc organization and regime of the school, its proposes, pedagogy and curriculum. It provides for the first time a detailed listing of British students and explores their background and experience before entering the school. It proceeds to sketch the subsequent careers of a sample of the graduates. The paper pays particular attention to women students. The conclusion is that the training was far from successful in creating Marxist theorists or leaders. But it had a substantial impact in cementing loyalty to the British party and the Russian regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although health, safety and risk education for school pupils has received growing attention in recent years, for the most part related education programmes and research aimed at assessing those programmes have focused on health education, with relatively little attention paid to the array of immediate safety risks that are confronting pupils within the school context. This article reports on research carried out with teaching staff in seven schools to establish the approaches that teachers adopt when delivering lessons with inherent risks. This research is primarily concerned to investigate how a safety education strategy in a school context is implemented, operationalised, communicated and presented to pupils, and to establish whether approaches depart from the theories and prescriptions advanced by education advisors and other Government bodies or stakeholders. The perceptions of the teachers are used as a basis for a broader discussion about the adequacy of safety education and the potential to enhance and broaden the delivery of a safety education curriculum implemented through state schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]