Search

This article, by Jean Ware of Bangor University School of Education, examines policy developments in education in Wales since devolution, and their implications for inclusive and special education. This is set in the context of the demographics of Wales, which, it is argued, have a significant influence on policy and on the nature of educational provision as a whole. The discussion initially focuses on issues related to the Welsh language. The article then discusses four policy initiatives (the Foundation Phase, the Literacy and Numeracy Framework, the Masters in Educational Practice and the proposed reform of initial teacher education and training), intended to respond to Wales's poor performance in the Programme for International Student Assessment, and their potential impact, as well as the White Paper on reforming the special educational needs system in Wales. It is too soon to discuss the impact of these special educational needs-specific reforms, but the differences from the English special educational needs reforms highlight the inherent tensions in special educational needs systems. It is argued that the Tabberer Report's critique of the teacher education system in Wales, which emphasises the need for teacher education to be strongly connected to relevant research, provides an opportunity to improve the quality of education in Wales for all children; but that considerable investment, and a willingness to address the potential tensions between the different initiatives, is necessary to achieve such an outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is based on research undertaken between 2009 and 2012 into the former Labour government's extremely ambitious 'Building Schools for the Future' ( BSF) Programme and its withdrawal by the Coalition government. The project, which utilises analysis of policy documents, case studies in six local authorities ( LA) and semi-structured interviews with national and local policy actors, is being funded by Roehampton's Centre for Educational Research in Equalities, Policy and Pedagogy and the British Academy ( SG100363). The focus of this article is the implications for social justice of BSF and its subsequent withdrawal. The structure of the article comprises an introduction to BSF and a summary of some of the main issues arising from it. We then move on to explore the social justice dimension of BSF as it is expressed in LA documents and in relation to the social policy aspirations of the former Labour government. In July 2010 the Coalition government discontinued the BSF programme and we track events and policy from that time, particularly focussing on the radical shift away from Labour's transformational and communitarian agenda in favour of criteria based on efficiency and value-for-money. We present data from our interviews with local actors on the equality and social justice impacts of this re-orientation of policy. We conclude by arguing against the view that Labour abandoned social justice suggesting that BSF was one of a number of policies through which equality was pursued, albeit by stealth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]