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This conversation grows out of the book by Terry Edwards and Carl Parsons – How to Dismantle the English State Education System in 10 Easy Steps (Zero Books 2019). The book was written as a satire, ostensibly lauding the achievements of academisation whilst revealing the commercialised, scandal-ridden, chaotic and ineffective nature of the academy landscape in England. Continuing in the style of the book, this is a conversation between the (pretend) CEO of a multi-academy trust (P) and a (very real) combative opponent of the academisation project (E), weighing up both sides of the academisation debate as the claim is made in the latest Education White Paper that 100 per cent academisation is the ideal.

George Floyd’s death invigorated the Black Lives Matter movement and stimulated debate and passionate action across the globe. Commitments are set out at every level to address racial inequalities and injustices. However, changing mindsets and instituting changes meets with challenges at multiple levels. Taking the knee, wearing the tee-shirt, removing statues and decolonising the curriculum is not enough. The school curriculum is a major site for the development of understanding about, and the development of attitudes towards, people of other races. Across the spectrum, from challenging selective and biased histories about other peoples to multiple government commissions about ethnic inequalities we have seen limited impact on institutions in their treatment of ethnic minorities. Viewing the effects of policy interventions in England hitherto realistically – and pessimistically – one conclusion is that the challenges to the eradication of racism are too narrowly conceived, symbolic and performative. Indeed, symbolic allyship and multiple government ‘commissionsphere’ reports deceive us into thinking we do enough, whilst experience shows failure. In increasingly neoliberal political and economic environments, individualised, competitive, populist agenda, are forces supporting inequality and subjugation blunting drives for social justice. Sustained, holistic policies enacted with energy and critically monitored are required.

Racisms are plural, taking different forms in different countries, subject to change in focus and intensity over time. Colonialism and slavery influence attitudes and policies in both countries thr...

‘Narrowing the gap’ and addressing low educational achievement of specific social class and ethnic groups has long been an expressed government concern. This paper considers the links between poverty, ethnicity and gender and school attainment and the interrelations of these factors using national data sets and other quantitative data. The limitations of single-theme analyses and their potentially misleading implications are explored. Related to this, the failures of social and educational policies to bring about greater equality are examined. Competing perspectives on low attainment and their positions are critiqued. The paper argues that ethnic and class discrimination stems from the same structural arrangements contrived for the advantage of more affluent sectors of society. Theoretical development is needed to bring together class, race and other discriminatory features and construct more sophisticated causal analyses that relate to the web of economic, status and power regimes and the negative processes of ‘racialisation’.

Attainment data on England’s school pupils are more extensive in coverage, detail, quantity, accessibility and of higher quality than monitoring statistics routinely available in other European countries. These data facilitate investigation of low attainment in England’s schools and its relationship to ethnicity, gender and poverty. This article reviews longitudinal sample studies and extends this with simpler presentations of England’s national attainment statistics for education over 5 years up to 2014. The analyses show recurrent correlations of low attainment with specific ethnic minority groups, with gender and most strongly with low-income sections of society. There is a strong case, from these data and other research, that these inequalities are rooted in social and economic factors outside the school, created and sustained by neoliberal economic practices and elitist structures. It is argued that reducing the proportion of children growing up in poverty will have a bigger impact on raising average attainment levels than focusing on in-school factors.

The deregulated and marketised education system is failing large numbers of the most vulnerable children in society, with system 'gaming' often the motivation behind school exclusions. This article sets out the multiple ways in which students can find themselves outside the formal school system, and identifies several of the systemic pressures that drive the statistics provided.

An education system will function best in serving all pupils without recourse to school exclusions. In England, the outcomes for excluded pupils are poor, and some social and ethnic groups recurrently are over-represented in permanent and fixed-period exclusion statistics: Black Caribbean and Gypsy/Roma children and those living in more deprived circumstances. As well as the formal exclusion procedures, there is a worrying set of other means of removing an ‘unwanted’ pupil. There is a range of alternatives and, under the banner of community-based inclusion, children and young people can be supported and sustained in the school system. Alternatives include diverse, multilevel provision within schools, managed moves, a range of alternative provision, and multi-agency working. There are sites of success and low numbers of exclusion and these may disseminate.

This chapter aims to define quality assurance and its associated terms. It reviews existing quality assurance management systems and frameworks. The chapter examines the origins of, and the responses to, quality assurance demands. It also aims to develop a constructively critical view of quality management, whether partial quality management or total quality management. The aims of assurance management system a quality assurance management system are to prevent non-conformity or customer problems and to achieve customer satisfaction; the objectives are to minimize risk and cost and maximize benefits that can be obtained from achieving the required quality standards. Oystein Ovretveit defines three dimensions of quality which might take the following form: client quality, professional quality, and management quality. This account combines the commercially dominant view of customer satisfaction with acknowledgement of the rights, duties and judgements of professionals and with an acceptance of budget limits and control by government departments, to which public employees must, to a degree, be subject.

The politics and practice of quality quality improvement in action TQM goes to school assessment of attainment at 7 parents in partnership communication and quality in the primary school BS 5750 and beyond in a secondary school preparing a secondary school for OFSTED assessment quality assurance in "A" Level Theatre Studies the listening school - 6th formers as customers investors in people in a college of further education BS 5750 and TQM in a CFE operating beyond BS 5750 in a training centre TQM and in-service professional training quality control in teacher education training health professionals for quality quality improvements at De Montford University Southampton University's departmental self-assessment programme.

Education professionals have always claimed to pay attention to quality. Monitoring quality and policing the work of the membership is inherent in the definition of 'professional' yet is exercised only in medicine and the law, even then rather dubiously. The British Standard for quality management, BS 5750, and its international parallel, ISO 9000 are the standard. The rather liberal developments in self-evaluation and action research that took place in schools years ago under the Schools Council and latterly independently or with LEA guidance were never going to win public confidence because of the professional introversion they exuded. The manual, standardizing procedures, the notions of non-compliances, non-conforming products and corrective action are very helpful. The way forward to Total Quality Management, should it be chosen by the college, seems pretty straightforward from the four principles of The Investors in People—commitment, planning, action and evaluation. The realism of the paymasters, in the accountability-oriented quality assurance systems they produce, is undeniable.

Explaining and responding to inequalities in attainment are significant educational policy challenges in England as elsewhere. Data on four cohorts of Birmingham Local Education Authority (LEA) pupils, each approximately 13,000, were analysed by ethnicity, deprivation, gender and other relevant individual pupil variables. For the four successive cohorts of children, aged five in 1997–2001, analysis shows the attainment trajectory of each ethnic group from Baseline/Foundation Stage Profile (age 5) to GCSE (age 16). The relative constancy over time, the changes from one key stage to the next and the differences within broad ethnic categories argue against simplistic explanations. The ethnicity variable accounts for a relatively small amount of variance in pupil achievement, with the same ethnic subgroups recurrently low attainers. Considering explanatory perspectives on educational inequalities and ethnicity in the light of these data, we conclude that a structuralist perspective offers the best explanation recognising economic exploitation, dominance and oppression at the national and local levels. Notions of institutional racism and Critical Race Theory (CRT) are considered to be inadequate and counter-productive, in part shown by their inability to accommodate the range of attainment levels and educational experience of different ethnic groups. More tellingly, they lack causal explanations relevant to the United Kingdom and deflect attention from the need for sustained effort to reduce poverty and disadvantage as it affects children.

Over the past 10 years, mentoring of children and young people has become an increasingly important feature of social policy in the United Kingdom. This is evidenced in the rapid growth in the number of mentoring schemes operating in a range of educational settings. In 2006 the Mentoring and Befriending Foundation was contracted by the Department for Education and Skills to pilot nationally a formal and sustainable peer mentoring scheme in 180 secondary schools in England, generating 3600 matched pairs. The evaluators, appointed by the Department for Education and Skills, had the overarching aim of supporting the development of evidence‐based peer mentoring and enhancing the capacity of those involved to engage in evaluation practice. This article reports the methodology and main findings of the evaluation of the programme. It was evident that schools engaged positively and productively with the project and with this structured form of mentoring. Qualitative interview evidence, self‐report data from the ‘...

The enquiries into police action in the Stephen Lawrence murder, the Macpherson report and the subsequent race relations legislation have altered the political, professional and wider social climate of debate on equality issues, including inequalities in minority ethnic exclusions. The paper analyses the meanings given to racism and institutional racism, and the contested political territory which shapes and limits the possibilities of responses working towards equity. It considers the evidence on the extent to which the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 (RRAA) has been implemented, reporting particularly on sustained disproportionality in exclusions experienced by some minority ethnic groups. Disproportionalities, in terms of exclusion and attainment, are deemed ‘institutionally racist’ outcomes produced annually as a consequence of organisational practices, limited will and low levels of investment at national, local and school levels. Critical Race Theory and writings about ‘white supremacy’ attempt ...

The number of permanent exclusions from school continues to rise. The number excluded in the 1994–95 school year, the first full year after the implementation of the sections of the 1993 Act, stands at over 12000. Some 84% of permanent exclusions are from secondary schools and over 45% of these are estimated to be in years 10 and 11. Provision for pupils out of school is still unsatisfactory with many receiving part-time education, some very part-time. Responses to exclusion are too limited in scope, underfunded and, in the present competitive climate, will not stem the rise in numbers.

This paper details the impact of New Labour's neo‐liberal social and educational policies on disadvantaged groups in the district of Thanet. It notes that the post‐welfare policy responses to social and educational problems reinforce both the disadvantages of deprived groups and the gradient of popularity among secondary schools within the district. It further argues that the nature of individual consumer choice inherent in the concept of neo‐liberal negative freedom systematically discriminates against deprived groups by overriding wider concepts of equity and social justice. The paper concludes that a fair system of social justice, which recognizes the need for personal liberty, requires properly resourced and justly functioning public services that are equitably and inclusively available to all.

Thanet is the most deprived district in the county of Kent. The district's social topography is reviewed and contextualized within New Labour's education policy, and public service responses to social need in Thanet are considered. Preliminary attempts to integrate public service provision are described, and structural barriers that inhibit access to education services are revealed. Paterson's analysis of New Labour policy is modified and applied to explain the particular circumstances of the district, and a critique of the developing system of extended and full-service schools in the district is suggested. The type of social justice enacted in Thanet is located within a taxonomy of different styles of social justice, and the article shows how the emphasis on neo-liberal policies has embedded a strategic reorientation from equity-driven to competition-driven provision that results in an individualised concept of social justice. The article highlights the difficulty of reconciling choice and social justice and concludes that the social market in Thanet is not structured to deliver equity to the needy.

Social inclusion, multi-agency projects in education in the United Kingdom increasingly seek to work with participation from children, families and communities and through partnerships with other agencies. In this paper, the complexities of such developments are examined. The paper looks at the wider context of preventative and social inclusion projects and highlights the ways in which schools tend to be the dominant locus of communication, delivery and control in the early stages of project implementation. Schools are seen to be valuable conduits into the community, to have the potential to begin capacity-building with isolated individuals and to forge informal networks. This presents significant challenges to project and school managers, working towards genuinely empowering multi-agency preventative work and support. A 'special relationship' embracing schools, projects and community appears the most productive way forward for such projects.

Partnerships are seen as vital to the functioning of many social institutions and the contribution that the private and voluntary not‐for‐profit sector organizations can make to the provision of statutory services is particularly valued. The Church of England Children’s Society Genesis project worked for nearly 5 years in one urban, secondary school with a remit to promote inclusion. Despite much recorded good work, Genesis was not continued after its contract ended. The school had a series of head teachers and was in special measures for part of the period, but key problems centred around the extent of the project’s contribution to the school’s core business and the absence of a positive management of the multi‐professional project by the school. The evaluation examines ways of proceeding which are of relevance to more complex projects. The paper also reviews the place of voluntary and non‐profit making organizations in meeting current challenges to collaborative, multi‐agency working and proposes a more...

Globalisation is present whether recognised in SARS, global terrorism, finance or youth music. With the growth of the health promoting school movement in this context and the increased numbers of countries and schools involved, eight themes are proposed as critical to how the Health Promotion School move forward. They are concerned with: the diverse origins and alliances of forces in the movement; holistic and ecological approach; its status as a global movement; the tension between and empowerment or compliances model; evidence-based and values-based approches; the radical vision; social capital and social inclusion; and sustainability. Reaching the level of acceptance the Health Promotion School has acheived may lead to settling into comfortable official recognition--and assured funding--and losing its militancy. Can the Health Promotion School challenge health inequalities on a national and international scale and can it be a force for social inclusion?

The United Kingdom has introduced a range of measures since 1997 to addressing educational needs in areas of disadvantage. The approach can be seen as inclusionist within a “ third way” political discourse of target setting and delegation. The interventions and projects should be seen within a macro-societal context of poverty, school exclusions and general inequality and specifically educational projects may not be enough. Large scale, time-limited projects funded by central government have a high profile and are reporting positive results. Community schools are developing to provide a full range of services to children and young people and a range of strategies are proposed for individual schools to address difficult behaviour and under-achievement. The power of the school’s role in addressing disadvantage in the United Kingdom is still in question and research evidence is awaited to show the extent to which schools can compensate for the social and economic disadvantages of children., Depuis 1997, le Royaume-Uni a pris un certain nombre de mesures visant à satisfaire les besoins éducatifs dans les zones défavorisées. Cette approche peut être perçue comme un facteur d’intégration sociale dans le cadre d’un discours politique de la ‘ troisième voie’ qui fixe des objectifs et qui délègue. Les interventions et les projets doivent être envisagés dans un contexte macro-sociétal de pauvreté, d’exclusion scolaire et d’inégalité dans tous les domaines ; ainsi, peut-être les projets éducatifs ne suffisent-ils pas. Les projets de grande envergure limités dans le temps et financés par le gouvernement central sont très en vogue et entraînent des résultats positifs. Les écoles de quartier se développent et fournissent une gamme complète de services aux enfants et aux jeunes, et différentes stratégies sont proposées aux écoles afin qu’elles puissent gérer les comportements difficiles et l’échec scolaire. Le pouvoir du rôle de l’école pour résoudre les problèmes liés à la pauvreté est encore en question et on attend des résultats de recherche pour savoir dans quelle mesure les écoles peuvent compenser les handicaps sociaux et économiques des enfants., Parsons Carl, Amigues René, Kherroubi Martine. Enseigner, gérer, survivre dans les zones socialement défavorisées en Angleterre. In: Recherche & Formation, N°44, 2003. Les pratiques de la classe en milieux difficiles. pp. 11-27.

Evaluating the health‐promoting school (HPS) and its effectiveness is crucial to its future development and sustainability. This paper attempts to outline the basis of approaches to evaluation which are sound, relevant, respond to the full array of elements which constitute the HPS, and satisfy the criterion of utility. It examines a range of research methods in order to illustrate pathways towards the evidence base for health promotion, considers the kinds of studies which are both feasible and useful for policy makers and professionals, and proposes approaches deemed most usefully provocative and cost‐effective.

This paper reports a comparative study of youth disaffection with education, from the pupils' perspectives, in the District of Thanet in east Kent and the city of Lille in northern France. It notes that the circumstances of disaffection for such pupils are similar in both regions, and uses a youth sub-cultural framework as a paradigm for understanding some of these similarities. French and English young people are frequently enthusiastic about school when they first enter the education systems, but thereafter a cohort becomes identifiable for whom disaffection peaks around the age of fifteen. The voices of these young people, which otherwise are seldom heard, are reported by this paper, and occasionally give harrowing insights into the difficulties that they face. The paper concludes by suggesting that trans-national social and economic forces reinforce the structural circumstances within the two education systems which help to create and sustain a cohort of disaffected youth.

This article reports and discusses a study which followed up, through case records, 726 children excluded permanently, indefinitely or for fixed–term periods in 1993/4 in 10 LEAs. The outcomes at secondary level in 1998/9 were found to be moderately poor with the problems intensifying for half the sample. Forty six per cent had further primary school exclusions and 36 per cent received exclusions in their secondary education. Looked–after children and those with special educational needs fared worse and achieved less. Case studies showed the kinds of commitment and support that can work even with very difficult cases.

Sound localization relies on the neural processing of monaural and binaural spatial cues that arise from the way sounds interact with the head and external ears. Neurophysiological studies of animals raised with abnormal sensory inputs show that the map of auditory space in the superior colliculus is shaped during development by both auditory and visual experience. An example of this plasticity is provided by monaural occlusion during infancy, which leads to compensatory changes in auditory spatial tuning that tend to preserve the alignment between the neural representations of visual and auditory space. Adaptive changes also take place in sound localization behavior, as demonstrated by the fact that ferrets raised and tested with one ear plugged learn to localize as accurately as control animals. In both cases, these adjustments may involve greater use of monaural spectral cues provided by the other ear. Although plasticity in the auditory space map seems to be restricted to development, adult ferrets show some recovery of sound localization behavior after long-term monaural occlusion. The capacity for behavioral adaptation is, however, task dependent, because auditory spatial acuity and binaural unmasking (a measure of the spatial contribution to the “cocktail party effect”) are permanently impaired by chronically plugging one ear, both in infancy but especially in adulthood. Experience-induced plasticity allows the neural circuitry underlying sound localization to be customized to individual characteristics, such as the size and shape of the head and ears, and to compensate for natural conductive hearing losses, including those associated with middle ear disease in infancy.

We have examined the effects on auditory spatial acuity in the horizontal plane of depriving ferrets of patterned visual cues by binocular eyelid suture in infancy or for a comparable period in adulthood. Minimum audible angles (MAAs) were measured for 500-, 100- and 40-ms broadband noise bursts at the midline and at 45 degrees to one side. A logistic regression analysis revealed no consistent difference between the midline MAAs of normal and infant lid-sutured ferrets. However, the lateral field MAAs of the infant-deprived group were significantly smaller and showed less inter-subject variability than those of normal-sighted ferrets. The animals deprived in adulthood were tested in the lateral field only, firstly 6 months after binocular eyelid suture and again after a further 10 months. For the first test, the MAAs achieved by these animals with 500- and 100-ms noise bursts were significantly smaller than the normal values and no different from those of the infant-deprived group. A significant improvement in performance at the two shortest stimulus durations (100 and 40 ms) was observed when the adult-deprived animals were re-tested. Their second-test MAAs did not differ from those of the infant-deprived group at any of the three stimulus durations used, and both groups achieved significantly better scores than the normal-sighted control animals. These results show that prolonged visual deprivation in both juvenile and adult ferrets can lead to a significant improvement in auditory spatial acuity in the lateral sound field. This is consistent with reports that congenitally blind humans can localize peripheral sounds more accurately than normal controls.

Legislation in England and Wales since 1986 has sanctioned the permanent exclusion from school of pupils deemed disruptive. This punitive step has costs attached, which rise each year as the numbers excluded increase. This paper is mostly devoted to developing and applying a model to estimate the costs to public services of school exclusion in England. It also provides some illustrative cost data on the inclusion of behaviourally challenging pupils, explores policy alternatives to exclusion and argues that cost data provide valuable information in debate about policy options. Based on data gathered for the Commission for Racial Equality, the paper considers the costs to the full range of agencies involved when a child or young person is permanently excluded from school. Costs related to individuals vary hugely, but the average costs to education are high—double normal mainstream education—for less than 10 per cent of a full‐time education in the first year of exclusion. The costs to other agencies, partic...

The written OFSTED report is the most enduring outcome of a school inspection. This paper examines the 'fitness for purpose' of such reports, in that the current inspection system carries the motto of 'improvement through inspection'. The value of converting set scales and numerical grades into prose is closely scrutinised, and the less frequent qualitative statements are analysed as examples of educational discourse. The validity and reliability of judgements presented in the reports, produced within two different frameworks and sets of guidance is scrutinised, with a view to questioning the overall effectiveness of the OFSTED inspection report as an instrument for school improvement.

This paper presents a holistic model of the health promoting school and a panoramic framework for evalution. The framework is board, acknowle dging the range of national settings in which health promoging schools are being developed, and draws attention to the emphasis on context and process rather than outcomes. The conceptual model is applied to the European Network of Health Promoting Schools (ENHPS), where the same forces may be at work in relation to the innovation but operate in different ways and with different degrees of strength. The paper recommends a selective approach to evaluation which will serve specific audiences and decision making needs.

Young people want to learn. They learn from birth onwards and even elderly adults can attest to the new learning that takes place into later life. Schooling is a particular sort of learning and school a very particular place for it to happen. There is also a particular set of materials and methods of learning there and relationships which can take many different forms.

No new beginning is ever new. Certainly, in September 2005, the name was new, a lot of the teachers were new – but just under half of the original staff transferred (TUPEd)14 to the Academy from The Ramsgate School. It was the same building to begin with, but for a few modifications, and the pupils were largely the same, though there was a new Year 7 and the old Year 11s had gone.

Areas have their own special evolved character formed by the people who live there and the resources at their disposal, including income and housing. A school drawing in children from the locality will inevitably have much in common with that area, its ‘educational culture’ and the general levels of affluence and previous educational experience of the people.

The Academy is located at the centre of the concentric circles in Figure 8.1. The close clustering of the home locations of students is evident with some coming also from the more difficult areas of Margate to the north. Thanet as a whole is the parson’s nose out on a limb with sea on three sides with accessibility problems that contributed to unemployment and made teacher recruitment difficult, the more so in challenging schools.

This chapter documents the way the school descended into the bottom category of schools. It reports attainment results, pupil numbers, pupil and staff turnover, national and local press comment, and the views of teachers and local people as The Ramsgate School went through a turbulent time as a school in extremely challenging circumstances 9.