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The article offers a critique of the 'decentred state' and the working of the devolved Scottish Parliament in its legislative and political relations with the UK Parliament. It argues that analysis of relations between the devolved Scottish Parliament and the UK Parliament, requires examination of both the political culture and political narratives surrounding constitutional governance and the future of the domestic UK union. Both play a pivotal role in shaping interparliamentary relations in the devolved UK. The paper draws on empirical research from two projects that used both documentary analysis of parliamentary sources and interviews with 35 parliamentarians and officials as a Commons Academic Fellow 2016–2021 and Scottish Parliament Academic Fellow 2022–2023. Both the political narrative and culture of interparliamentary relations between the UK Parliament and Scottish Parliament have been impacted arguably even more by the outcome of the 2016 UK EU Referendum than by the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nationalism is a key resource for the political work of governing Scotland, and education offers the Scottish National Party (SNP) government a policy space in which political nationalism (self determination) along with social and cultural forms of civic nationalism can be formed and propagated, through referencing ‘inwards’ to established myths and traditions that stress the ‘public’ nature of schooling/education/universities and their role in construction of ‘community’; and referencing ‘outwards’, especially to selected Nordic comparators, but also to major transnational actors such as OECD, to education’s role in economic recovery and progress. The SNP government has been very active in the education policy field, and a significant element of its activity lies in promoting a discourse of collective learning in which a ‘learning government’ is enabled to lead a ‘learning nation’ towards the goal of independence. This paper draws on recent research to explore recent and current developments in SNP government education policy, drawing on discourse analysis to highlight the political work that such policy developments seek to do, against the backdrop of continuing constitutional tensions across the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The period of the Thatcher Government continues to have special significance for politics and governance in Scotland. In the 11 years of the Thatcher Government, landmark legislation and reforms affected key areas of the Scottish society and economy. Education featured prominently in the Thatcherite agenda in Scotland. In Scotland, the education system's association with national identity had particular implications for educational policy making and implementation in Scotland under the Thatcher Government. The distinctiveness of the Scottish education system presented particular problems for a government intent on challenging the social democratic consensus. Opposition to the Thatcher Government, especially its perceived attack on the social democratic underpinnings of the welfare state which included the state schooling system, re-ignited the home rule campaign in Scotland in the late 1980s. The article examines both key legislation, namely the Education (Scotland) Act 1981, the School Board (Scotland) Act 1988 and the Self-Governing Schools etc. (Scotland) Act 1989, and also key non-legislative reforms to curriculum and assessment under the Thatcher Government in the area of public (state) schooling. The article argues that these reforms continue to influence the educational policy debates in Scotland today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper draws on critical discourse analysis to examine and discuss some of the key developments in the governing of education in Scotland since the election of the Scottish National Party (SNP) government in May 2007. It analyses these developments, drawing on a study of key policy texts and suggests that discourse analysis has much to contribute to the understanding of the governing strategy of the minority SNP administration as reflected in its education policy. We suggest that there is a self-conscious strategy of 'crafting the narrative' of government that seeks to discursively re-position 'smarter Scotland' alongside small, social democratic states within the wider context of transnational pressures for conformity with global policy agendas. Thus the paper connects to current debates on the relationship between an emergent global education policy 'field' and the capacity of 'local' contexts to develop and sustain particular, embedded assumptions and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the purposes of citizenship education and the forms it has taken in Scotland in the closing decades of the twentieth century and the start of the twenty-first. Education has played a key role in defining Scottish identity. It is argued that there was, and continues to be in Scotland, a 'Scottish myth' about the purpose of education. The politics surrounding education reform in Scotland shaped the forms and approaches to citizenship education. The important role played by the schooling system in maintaining Scotland's political, cultural and social distinctiveness has shaped the forms of citizenship education and also how it has been implemented. Education for citizenship was seen as a key overarching purpose of the curriculum. Greater professional input into the development of citizenship education, including teachers being able to adopt a flexible approach in interpreting the policy, has resulted in distinctive policy developments in Scotland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers key concerns which have occupied political scientists' analyses of 'participation'. Children have seldom featured in these analyses. 'Participation' in public policy initiatives have been used as a means of (re)building 'trust' and 'renewing democracy'. In recent years we have seen some shift towards viewing children as direct participants in public policy. There are signs that the government in the UK is including children more directly in policies designed to 'renew' democracy and 'civil society' and that such policies are not confined to proposals to lower the voting age. The article draws upon examples from education and the running of schools in particular to reflect upon the relationship between public policy, governance and children's participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study of school governors across the UK has suggested that while school governors and school boards had adopted (modernizing) perspectives of monitoring schools to improve performance they have nevertheless developed conceptions of governance which are independent of ‘the state’ and reflect local cultural traditions of governing education. In this sense governors have become active citizens. Our concluding analysis, however, proposes that school governance in many respects remains significantly unrepresentative of some of its significant parent constituencies. As such citizen participation in school governance has yet to be realized in many communities. The cultural traditions of education across the UK have all tended to reproduce the tradition of the school as a space of professional regulation. This study of school governance and school boards concludes that although participation has developed to strengthen institutions in the official world of the public sphere, it remains incomplete. Arguably, schools will not become effective learning communities until they become truly cosmopolitan learning communities, and they will only realize that vision when democratic governance is strengthened at the level of school and community as well as the local authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Covid-19 pandemic suspended established practices that, in normal times, are seen as central to the functioning of education systems. For example, in England, school closures led to the cancellation of national examinations in 2020, and their attempted replacement with an algorithmic model. Following public outcry about what were seen as the unjust effects of the application of that model, there was a very public policy reversal, and examination grades were awarded on the basis of moderated teacher assessments or Centre Assessed Grades, resulting in substantial grade inflation. This paper draws on research that investigated the actors involved in examinations policy in this period and focuses especially on the sources of expertise and the kinds of knowledge that were mobilised - or not - in the decision to cancel examinations, to develop the algorithm and to revert to Centre Assessed Grades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically examines the dominant neo-liberal strategy for enhancing accountability in education. If professional accountability empowered providers at the expense of the public regarded as passive clients, then market accountability atomised the public as consumers and, paradoxically re-empowered the sectional interests of providers and contractors. A model of 'holding to account' needs to be complemented by practices of dialogue that allow stakeholders and citizens to give and agree accounts about the purpose and process of public services. Such democratic citizenship values voice, deliberation and collective governance and stands in contrast to the dominant tradition that kept parents at a distance from schools. Three studies are described that illustrate parents wanting to enhance their voice, take part in deliberative forums, and participate in the collective governance of schools. The discussion concludes with the next steps to improve practice in parental participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]