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An education reform claimocracy is rule by assertion, and in this article we examine the claims made for the academisation and MATification of the provision of and access to school places in England. We examine the claimocracy at work in regard to the Conservative government white paper, Opportunity for all. Strong schools with great teachers for your child. We explain the knowledge production processes involved through deploying Arendtian scholarship regarding her work on Lying in politics, with specific attention to how concealment operates in the public realm.

Library adaptors are short oligonucleotides that are attached to RNA and DNA samples in preparation for next-generation sequencing (NGS). Adaptors can also include additional functional elements, such as sample indexes and unique molecular identifiers, to improve library analysis. Here, we describe Control Library Adaptors, termed CAPTORs, that measure the accuracy and reliability of NGS. CAPTORs can be integrated within the library preparation of RNA and DNA samples, and their encoded information is retrieved during sequencing. We show how CAPTORs can measure the accuracy of nanopore sequencing, evaluate the quantitative performance of metagenomic and RNA sequencing, and improve normalisation between samples. CAPTORs can also be customised for clinical diagnoses, correcting systematic sequencing errors and improving the diagnosis of pathogenic BRCA1/2 variants in breast cancer. CAPTORs are a simple and effective method to increase the accuracy and reliability of NGS, enabling comparisons between samples, reagents and laboratories, and supporting the use of nanopore sequencing for clinical diagnosis.

The Literacy Policy Project examines the trends in UK government policy interventions into literacy curriculum and pedagogies in schools in England. We undertake a policy scholarship methodology to read policy texts through a conceptual framework that frames policy interventions with functional, realist or socially critical purposes. We identify how successive UK governments have primarily adopted functional policies and research relating to literacy in schools in England. We argue that policy is dictated by, and serves, a growing marketplace for educational solutions, making the case that more prominence should be given to facilitating socially critical approaches to literacy policy.

Much research into structural reform in education has reported on the success or failure of individual projects. Less attention has been paid to how the discourses associated with reform are normalized in teachers’ and head teachers’ thinking, and realized in their actions. In this article, we engage with resistance at the interface of legal policy positioning and position-taking by educational professionals. Drawing on empirical data from an ethnographic study of structural change in a school in England, we deploy the metaphor of ‘the Borg’ to develop new insights into the different stances that educational professionals can take to avoid assimilation into a hive mind.

Educative leaders, leading and leadership are not officially recognised or enabled for or within public educational services in England. The modernisation of education may add ‘educational’ to ‘leadership’ in spoken and written texts, but the change imperative is usually premised on ‘school’, ‘distributed’, ‘instructional’ and ‘transformational’ leaders, leading and leadership as organisational and performance technologies. Thinking and doing otherwise tends to be officially ignored or condemned as rebellious, with those involved being denounced as ‘the enemies of promise’ (Gove, 2013). While recognising these dangers, our commentary sets out to reveal the importance and authenticity of educative leaders, leading and leadership as a relational and activist pedagogy, in which we present a standpoint that is rooted in Economic and Social Research Council-funded primary research and is informed by social science theorising (Courtney, 2017; Gunter, 2012, 2018).

In our inaugural editorial that appeared in Volume 40, Issue 1 (Gunter and Fitzgerald 2008) we set out our agenda for the journal. We articulated our commitment to showcase cutting-edge scholarship...

Women have long been under-represented in organization leader roles within higher education. Research has identified, mapped and examined the data, with recommendations for change. The research reported in this article adds to current knowledge, and raises methodological questions by focusing on senior female leaders in higher education in Bangladesh. Using a narrative approach to the construction of professional biographies, the study seeks to explore and understand the complex situations that Bangladeshi women in leader roles encounter and negotiate in their work and careers. This project makes a contribution to the field through not only adding more evidence, but also providing new insights into the contextual context in which women are aspiring to and securing senior roles. In addition, we help to inform the research design agenda by identifying a lack of information regarding the composition of the higher education workforce in Bangladesh, where the data in the public domain are neither sufficient nor robust.

The research reported in this article contributes new understandings of systemic change by studying the form of system redesign known in England as academisation. The data illuminate tensions within the neoliberal policy complex that are surfaced in a single secondary school. Although several studies have described academy conversions retrospectively, there has been little research that both analyses the complex month-by-month realities of decision-making and investigates the changing views of policy actors. Drawing on data from documents, observations and interviews, we argue for academisation to be understood, not as a policy or a complex of policies, but as system redesign. Academisation is not simply a legal process: a school can be academised without officially becoming an academy. The new knowledge from this research speaks to a global audience, because the political, economic and cultural processes on which it reports are under scrutiny in other systems with experiments in school autonomy as a form of publicly funded but ‘independent’ schooling.

Coloration has been associated with multiple biologically relevant traits that drive adaptation and diversification in many taxa. However, despite the great diversity of colour patterns present in amphibians the underlying molecular basis is largely unknown. Here, we use insight from a highly colour-variable lineage of the European fire salamander (Salamandra salamandra bernardezi) to identify functional associations with striking variation in colour morph and pattern. The three focal colour morphs—ancestral black-yellow striped, fully yellow and fully brown—differed in pattern, visible coloration and cellular composition. From population genomic analyses of up to 4,702 loci, we found no correlations of neutral population genetic structure with colour morph. However, we identified 21 loci with genotype–phenotype associations, several of which relate to known colour genes. Furthermore, we inferred response to selection at up to 142 loci between the colour morphs, again including several that relate to coloration genes. By transcriptomic analysis across all different combinations, we found 196 differentially expressed genes between yellow, brown and black skin, 63 of which are candidate genes involved in animal coloration. The concordance across different statistical approaches and ‘omic data sets provide several lines of evidence for loci linked to functional differences between colour morphs, including TYR, CAMK1 and PMEL. We found little association between colour morph and the metabolomic profile of its toxic compounds from the skin secretions. Our research suggests that current ecological and evolutionary hypotheses for the origins and maintenance of these striking colour morphs may need to be revisited., This research was supported by a Natural Environment Research Council; a Royal Society Research Grant; a Glasgow Natural History Society grant; a Wellcome Trust ISSF Catalyst Grant and a Spanish Ministry of Science Grant.

Education reform under the modernisation agenda both in England and internationally has signified the restoration of the ‘private’ and the decline of ‘public’ education. Deploying Arendtian thinking on assimila- tion and identity, we argue that these ongoing reforms are indeed dark times for education professionals. We examine what ‘new dark times’ mean for those in leader roles in schools and organisations that are contracted to deliver, such as a multi-academy trust (MAT). Based on a year-long research project which focussed on a multi-academy trust in England, the article reports on the position and practice of the CEO, KT Edwards in these new dark times. We conclude that the emerging CEO position is being defined through individual positioning, a repudiation of the past and the assimilation into the private realm of non-education dark times.