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This paper argues that in making sense of events leading up to and following the Taylor Report which recommended changes in school management in England and Wales, a number of principles should be borne in mind First, that instances of policy-change such as this can not be fully understood except in the context of contemporary economic events and social circumstances. Secondly, that it is useful to view policy-change as the outcome of ideological struggle entered into by classes and class fractions in relative accord with one another Thirdly, that the effects of changes in education policy are not pre-given, but depend upon the intentions and practices of those associated with their implementation [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The paper plots some shifts in educational policy between 1988 and 2009 in England that launched the rhetoric of a ‘gender gap’ as a key political and social concern. The rhetoric was fuelled by a rise in the importance of quantification in technologies of accountability and global comparisons of achievement. A focus on boys and attainment emerged, along with new requirements for measuring educational achievement in the context of debates about standards and the growing marketisation of education following the 1988 Educational Reform Act (ERA) in England and Wales. Purpose: Theoretically, the paper explores the effect of ‘gender gap’ rhetoric on pedagogy. The arguments about pedagogy presented here are based on the premise that sex-group is different from gender. Sex-group is a form of labelling and categorising persons as either male or female with reference to a biological classification that focuses on genitalia and reproductive organs. The emergence of ‘gender gap’ rhetoric is investigated within a temporal perspective, through an overview of guidance to teachers about pedagogy published between 1932 and 2007. This temporal lens becomes a heuristic for presenting the main point of the paper, which is that technologies of measurement construct reified representations of the learner. This is used to demonstrate how gender, as a sociocultural and political phenomenon, morphed into sex-group, a biological categorisation, and how this has had unintended effects of pedagogy. Sources of evidence: Analysis of three landmark educational documents focuses on changes in representations of society, the learner and pedagogy. The documents are the Hadow Report (1931), the Plowden Report (1967) and a guidance document for teachers called ‘Confident, Capable and Creative: supporting boys’ achievements’ (Department for Children, Schools and Families 2007,http://www.foundationyears.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Confident_Capable_Boys.pdf). Main argument:Analysis demonstrates the way that technologies of measurement construct reified or ‘ideal’ representations of the learner and how technologies used for measuring sex-group difference have changed across time. Shifts in representations of the learner, from the ‘bone child’ to the ‘gene child’ and eventually to the ‘masculine child’ were detected. These shifts represent a gradual decline in the emphasis on pedagogy as nurture, towards a heightened focus on the supposedly innate characteristics of individuals, in line with neoliberalism. Conclusions:The discussion points to some of the unintended effects on pedagogy and practice that take place when gender becomes sex. If teachers are constantly presented with the message that boys and girls learn differently due to innate genetic make-up, they may assume that whatever pedagogic strategies they employ, these will be ineffective in the face of what some educational consultants tell them are boys’ and girls’ innate genetic features. In effect, teachers are being told that biology controls learning and that social and cultural contexts, and thus their own classroom environments, cannot counter the forces of nature. Some methodological implications of studying gender as opposed to sex-group are discussed. The conclusion advocates a shift back to the study of gender as a historical, sociocultural phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper addresses some recent changes in the landscape of state education in England. In particular, it focuses on the way in which Academies, state-funded independent schools introduced by New Labour and now being drastically extended and taken further by the Coalition government, are contributing to the ongoing and increasing blurring of the welfare state demarcations between state and market, public and private, government and business; and are pointing up the shift in the role of the state from ''directing bureaucracies'' to ''managing networks'' (Smith 1999). Academies have been contracted out to a wide range of sponsors (entrepreneurs, business, charities, faith groups) and removed from local authority control (they are funded directly by central government). They involve a deliberate attempt to promote a new set of values and modes of action in public education, enterprise and competitiveness in particular. The paper will look closely at the case of one multi-academy sponsor, the charity Absolute Return for Kids (ARK), which was founded by a group of hedge fund managers and is rapidly expanding its involvement in state education in England (and in the USA, India and Uganda), taking up positions and roles previously reserved for the state itself and bringing new practices and methods to bear upon education problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One way to manage marking error, in a large-scale educational testing context, is to establish a mechanism through which appeals can be lodged. While, at one level, this seems to offer a straightforward technical solution to the problem of marking error, it can also result in unintended consequences, with political, social or educational ramifications. It is therefore important to monitor the operation of any appeal system, to determine how effectively it meets its objectives. The present paper was based on an evaluation of the system which operates for National Curriculum testing in England. Four underlying objectives were identified: the measurement objective, the political objective, the educational objective and the psychological objective. Although there is reason to believe that such goals can be achieved through appeal systems, there are major threats to achieving them, many of which appear to be inevitable. These threats are examined within the paper and implications for policy and practice are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Editorial. Introduces a series of articles concerning education, published in the August 2004 issue of the periodical "Comparative Education". Potential roles of school systems and how these relate to host society; Cultural politics in schools in China; Comparative study of English and Hungarian teachers; Connection between the growing international preoccupation with raising the level of educational outcomes and its link to market-type processes within school systems; Goals of state education.

The coming of LEAs in 20th-century England presented an administrative challenge and an information explosion as the local state worked to meet both local and national educational policy demands. This paper will analyse the ways in which the organisation of knowledge was enlisted into the service of local education policy-making. It will argue that the collection of data by the local state involved both the construction of knowledge and its ordering. These processes in turn involved the creation of an 'education archive', an archive in which ideas about pupils and communities were embedded and genealogies of identity created. The paper will be illustrated through a case study of Birmingham LEA. In particular, use will be made of the Education Census, 1907-1970. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the reforms made to the quasi-market in school-based education in England that occurred between May 1997 and May 2001. It discusses the changes that have taken place in relation to parental choice, admissions to schools, school diversity, funding and examination 'league tables'. The Labour Government can be seen as having embraced the quasi-market with a similar enthusiasm to that of its Conservative predecessors although it has tended to emphasise social inclusion as opposed to competition. While it has attempted to soften the edges of the quasi-market it has not tackled some of its major deficiencies such as the power that schools that are their own admission authorities have to distort the admissions process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study situates Green’s educational philosophy and practice in the context of his overall approach to philosophy. In Green’s view, education should aim at the realisation of the common good, but what Green means by this term is closely connected to his views on human nature, ethical endeavour and indeed the evolution of human history. These ideas are central to his main philosophical works. For Green the common good is to be found in the achievement of qualities of mind or character which involve the individual making the best of himself/herself. The content of education and particularly the development of reason assist centrally in this process. Access to resources and education are important conditions for achieving the common good, but since they involve scarce resources and competition for them, they are not part of the common good as such. The paper goes on to link these ideas with Green’s account of citizenship and his involvement with school and university education in Oxford. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This paper examines and compares recent citizenship education policy documents from France and England and explores the extent to which they encourage inclusive or exclusive concepts of national identity and citizenship. Current policies are being developed in a context of perceived disillusionment and political apathy amongst the young. Whilst citizenship education has traditionally aimed to prepare young people to take their place in adult society and a national community, today the notion of a single national identity is increasingly questioned. Using framing questions from the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) survey of civic education, we examine programmes of study in each country to determine the extent to which they promote human rights as shared values, make positive references to cultural diversity, and conceptualise minorities. We consider the potential of citizenship education thus defined to contribute towards the development of justice and equality in society and challenge racism and xenophobia. We note the strengths and limitations of each approach to education for citizenship and suggest what each might gain from the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that, whether it is officially accepted in education policy and school curricula or not, where bilingual children are present in classrooms, so are their languages, and those languages are put to use in their learning. The increasingly sophisticated technologies of sound and visual recording have opened up new possibilities in revealing the sub rosa world of pupil interaction, and the part that languages play in the construction of pupil identities in the classroom. A detailed study of children at work in one inner city primary classroom illustrates the way in which pupil identities are jointly constructed through interaction. Children are not passive pawns in the socialisation processes of the school, but active participants, taking up different positions within the alternatives open to them through both pedagogic and peer discursive practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning is high on the political agenda for post-compulsory education and training in England. Official discourses about learning assume a predominantly individualist stance, despite the development of theoretical models that stress the contextual and situated nature of learning. In a study following 50 young people through further education over 4 years, it became apparent that the institutional culture of the colleges had a significant impact upon students’ dispositions towards their learning. In this paper, we explore the nature and significance of this impact in a case-study sixth form college: an under-researched sector of educational provision. This is followed by a brief discussion of the implications of our analysis for issues of access, widening participation and inequality in relation to current proposals to reform age 16–19 educational provision in England. We conclude by identifying some of the questions about the fine-grained nature of that college culture that our data does not permit us to address directly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including challenges in application of policy decisions in education, issues on policy making for educational teaching among academy schools and aspect of education policy and teaching method.

Recent developments in teacher induction in both England and Scotland are bringing long-overdue improvements, but there is a range of issues in need of further exploration if policy is to be developed. Current evaluations have begun to reveal the absence of some important conceptual aspects of induction in the somewhat hasty implementation. Some of these have been well rehearsed in the literature over the years but have generally failed to make any impact hitherto in induction policy. This article picks up and discusses some of the conceptual tensions and weaknesses that have, or are likely to, become practical issues of quality, in both Scottish and English induction policies. These include the use of competence-based descriptions, the non-formal dimension of learning to teach, open narrative and focused approaches to classroom observation and feedback, individualism and a pupil perspective. The array of concepts is organised into a constructive, topical agenda which, it is argued, brings a much-needed formative dimension to research and development in this crucial area of professional learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article practitioner research is contextualised in relation to education policy in England. The Best Practice Research Scholarship scheme is identified as playing an important part in the United Kingdom Government's agenda of promoting the professional development of teachers. However, the type of research encouraged is positivist and the professionalism restricted. The cases examined show the problems that adopting a narrow approach to research cause to questioning practitioners. The article concludes by suggesting that, paradoxically, a scheme designed to create, what are in effect, restricted professionals may inadvertently encourage a more questioning approach to teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a response to an article written by Charles Batteson, which focused on the 1976 Ruskin College Speech, delivered by James Callaghan, which was regarded as the moment of British politics of 1976. Contention that the New Right Speech was instrumental in pivoting the direction of Labour policies for school reform; Origin of the Ruskin Speech; Significance of the Ruskin Speech to New Right education policies.

The article discusses key issues concerning changes in the patterns of educational values, legitimation and accountability in France and England in 1985. Key issues discussed include the emergence of a common legitimating ideology that is used as a basis for educational policy-making and administration, the national policy manifestations of the common economic, political and social pressures being experienced by advanced capitalist societies and the issues' implications for the comparative sociology of education.

An essay is presented on further education (FE) in England and related issues such as socioeconomic factors in educational policy, the state's interest in preparing skilled employees for business needs, and social justice in the FE sector. Policy rhetoric concerning competitiveness in a global economy, the development of a vocational education and training system that is based on market demand, and the failure of a supply-led model for the development of human capital are discussed.

At a time when the public sector and state education (in the United Kingdom) is under threat from the encroaching marketisation policy and private finance initiatives, our research reveals white middle-class parents who in spite of having the financial opportunity to turn their backs on the state system are choosing to assert their commitment to the urban state-run comprehensive school. Our analysis examines the processes of 'thinking and acting otherwise', and demonstrates the nature of the commitment the parents make to the local comprehensive school. However, it also shows the parents' perceptions of the risk involved and their anxieties that these give rise to. The middle-class parents are thus caught in a web of moral ambiguity, dilemmas and ambivalence, trying to perform 'the good/ethical self' while ensuring the 'best' for their children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we describe the background to the recent development of citizenship education in Australia, Canada and England and then, following an account of our methods, discuss issues arising from an analysis of a sample of textbooks from these countries. We suggest that the current policies to introduce versions of citizenship education have emerged in these countries in the context of diverse challenges to the legitimacy of the nation state. We argue, generally, that all three countries tend, in the textbooks we have examined, to emphasize forms of citizenship education that may submerge citizen empowerment under essentially orthodox agendas. We see differences in textbooks between and within the three countries but argue that, despite many exceptions, we are able to characterize textbooks in Ontario, Canada as education in civics (provision of information about formal public institutions), those in England as education for citizenship (a broad‐based promotion of socially useful qualities) and those in Australia as social studies (societal understanding that emerges from the development of critical thinking skills related to existing academic subjects such as history and English). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The William Tyndale Junior School affair marked a turning point in modern educational history. The affair, in which one north London primary school was paralysed by internal arguments over teaching method, is here analysed as a product of the pressures prevalent in Inner London education, and the article assesses the attempts of the Inner London Education Authority to contain those pressures. A necessary deference to the autonomy of teachers led to the adoption in the school of adventurous didactic methods which proved unacceptable to many parents. The unfolding of the affair widened divisions within the authority, between the authority and the teachers, between radical and traditional teachers, between teachers and managers, between teachers and parents, between different groups of parents and between the ILEA and the Borough of Islington. The Tyndale controversy was thus very complex, but its outcome is relatively straightforward: the apparent failure of 'progressive' methods in one London school prompted the adoption nationally of a more interventionist approach to methods and standards by central government and, in the process, a diminution of the autonomy of LEAs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changing relations between the English State and the Roman Catholic Church in the sphere of education policy are examined in two historical periods. Between the 1870s and the 1970s, despite initial anti-Catholic prejudice, the Catholic hierarchy was able to negotiate a favourable educational settlement in which substantial public funding was obtained without serious loss of autonomy and mission integrity for the Catholic schooling system. The existence of a liberal State, a voluntarist tradition in schooling and the relative social and political unity of the Catholic community all contributed towards this settlement. The inauguration of an ideologically 'Strong State' in the 1980s and 1990s, pursuing an interventionist strategy in education driven by New Right market doctrines, threatened the whole basis of this settlement. The Catholic hierarchy had to develop new strategies to respond to this situation, complicated by the fact that the Catholic community was now more socially differentiated and more divided on key education policy questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

States that teaching in England must placed in its international context so that the national moral panic about education and the crisis of teaching may be seen in the more balanced perspective that effective policy-making requires. Crisis in education and teaching; Qustionnaire survey in England; English findings in comparative context; Conclusions.

The article compares the degrees and levels of formalized parent participation in education in France, Wales, England and West Germany. Key issues discussed include the emergence of formal parental involvement in the control and management of schools as a key trend in education in Western Europe, the administrative structures designed to encourage parental participation that are indicative of changes in social relations, the key role of parent associations in school management and the issues' implications for comparative education.