Search

Shena Simon (1883–1972), a leading English socialist and educationist, actively called for the reform of secondary education in the 1930s and 1940s in order to bring the ideal of ‘equality of opportunity’ into the English educational system. This paper explores the continuity and changes in Simon’s proposed reforms in relation to her ideals of social democracy from the appearance of the Spens Report (1938) to the publication of her book,Three Schools or One?(1948). In addition, Simon’s transnational visits to the Soviet Union, the USA and Scotland, as well as the impact of her international and comparative perspectives on different educational systems on her policy agenda, are also examined. It concludes that as many policy issues shown in the current paper continue to be debated, Simon’s democratic ideals and discourses are still relevant in the present and suggest implications for the future of secondary education in England. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

‘System leadership’, as applied to the running of schools, refers to a form of leadership that extends beyond a single institution, where headteachers work with establishments other than their own. This approach is predicated on certain beliefs about the role and purpose of collaborative school leadership and management in a marketised system of state schooling and the benefits of a distributed and networked approach to school improvement. But what are the potential benefits and limitations of school system leadership? What normative interpretations of the system are best suited for purpose? This paper explores these issues with reference to the English school system, where system leadership is actively promoted by government through education policy and school reform. In order to do this, use is made of Gunter, H., D. Hall, and J. Bragg (2013. “Distributed Leadership: A Study in Knowledge Production.”Education Management, Administration and Leadership41 (4): 555–580.) framework of distributed leadership in schools. The framework identifies functionally normative, functionally descriptive, critical and socially critical positions in the school leadership literature. The paper concludes by putting forward potential alternatives to the largely functional policy narratives and solutions of recent decades, which are based on a broader understanding of ‘the system’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper focuses on the discursive shifts of emphasis of school headship since the 1980s in England, and the ways in which the repositioning of head teachers has gradually transformed professional work and relationships in schools via a discourse of management. Specifically, the paper identifies a ‘trilogy of school headship in England’ to indicate a process by which school headship has been repositioned – from head teacher, to manager, and to leader from the Education Reform Act of 1988 onwards. Drawing primarily on policy texts, the construction, within policy, of a head teacher endowed with power, responsibility and freedom will be detailed. Informed by both Fairclough and Foucault’s conceptions of discourse, this paper concludes that as a policy technology management subjects head teachers to ‘a twin process of autonomization plus responsibilization’ within which they become the linchpin of the delivery chain of policy and play a key role in the formation of ‘performative professionalism’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The three main programmes of the Geneva-registered International Baccalaureate (IB) have grown substantially worldwide over the past decade, although the programmes have found a natural ‘home’ in the United States. This paper charts the growth of the IB in the United Kingdom (UK) revealing that involvement there, mainly in England and mainly with the original pre-university Diploma Programme (IBDP), peaked at about 230 schools in 2010, but since then the IBDP has begun suddenly to decline. Yet, in no other country has there been a fall in IBDP provision. This paper offers some key explanations for this phenomenon, where a lack of funding and continued lack of university recognition in the face of Advanced Level (A-Level) reform and numerous ‘baccalaureate’ developments has led to many state-funded schools in particular dropping the IBDP. Thirdly, this paper discusses a number of implications, both for the IB itself and education in the UK in general. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Vocational qualifications in England are undergoing another round of reform. This paper starts by reviewing the alleged weaknesses of English vocational qualifications, but argues that these do not necessarily establish a case for radical reform. The issue is not so much whether the system needs to be changed as the nature of the change that is needed. The paper argues for a more deliberative and incremental approach and proposes five principles upon which this should be based. These are the following: that the process of change is as important as the content of change; that institutions matter; that the purposes of reform need to be clear, consistent and realistic; that reforms should help to create a more unified qualifications system; and that the interests of the UK’s other home countries should be considered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent changes in the English education system have resulted in the September 2012 Inspection framework. To a far greater extent than its predecessors this schedule looks to create a stronger relationship between the inspection agency Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education), and to extend the agency's already substantial reach and influence into the areas of teacher professional development and pupil attainment. An explicitly far tougher framework, the 2012 schedule places far greater emphasis on teaching and learning and on lesson observation as a means of judging teacher effectiveness and pupil attainment whilst concomitantly aiming to enhance the credibility of both judgements and agency by creating an enhanced professional relationship between inspectors and school staff. Drawing on Clarke's theoretical framework of performance paradoxes in public service inspection, this paper argues that in attempting to address concerns over the agencies' independence, the 2012 Inspection Framework and concomitant re-modelling of the inspection workforce serve rather to compound them. The paper concludes that this combined with profound changes in the English educational landscape presents problems for the agency which may in the longer term prove intractable. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper offers an account of the historic and ongoing international interchange between Britain and Japan in the field of progressive education. Concentrating on the last half-century, it takes two reference points from Roy Lowe’s writings in 1977 and 2006. Eveline Lowe Primary was a newly built model progressive school when documented by him in a seminal work on school architecture, later becoming a key point of interest for Japanese educationists. The British educational policy context against which this exchange of ideas and practices occurred was later documented by Lowe in a major book. Contemporaneous debates and events within Japanese society and government meanwhile provided the impetus for networks of research and transmission of progressive practices. The most recent turn in the narrative presented here demonstrates Japanese support for independent progressive practice continuing in the UK. Responding to an extensive historical research literature on transnational migration of educational ideals and practices this paper constitutes a micro-study that draws on personal memory, oral testimony, records of classroom observation on site and by means of video-conferencing, in addition to more formal documentation of conference proceedings and policy-making. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The separation of examining from teaching, pushed furthest in the ‘examining university’ of which London University, founded in 1836, was the model, was a much-debated principle in nineteenth-century Britain. This separation was generally rejected in Scotland, but only after complex controversies that illustrate how Scots defined their university tradition in comparative terms, and how Scottish developments interacted with those in England and Ireland. Among the issues involved were proposals for a National University or central examining board, and claims that graduates should have a right to give ‘extramural’ teaching in competition with professors. The paper traces this aspect of university reform in Scotland from the 1820s to the 1890s, and argues that the professorial model and the integration of teaching and examining were successfully consolidated and defended. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the contribution of James Bryce as an Assistant Commissioner to the Taunton Commission from 1965 to 1868. It highlights his criticisms of the English middle class and of middle-class education represented in the endowed grammar schools of Lancashire, England. These criticisms were based partly on finely detailed observation of the buildings of these schools in their local and geographical settings. They also drew on acutely developed responses of a sensory and emotive nature relating to a broad sensory register of sight, sound, taste, touch and smell. The paper therefore helps to develop the potential value of sensory history in the history of education well as to provide a detailed examination of middle-class education in England in the 1860s. It also suggests that the realism characteristic of mid-Victorian writing and art may help to shed further light on the nature and experience of schooling in this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Formative assessment has attracted increasing attention from both practitioners and scholars over the last decade. This paper draws on the authors' empirical research conducted over eleven years in educational situations ranging from infant schools to postgraduate education to propose a theorisation of formative assessment. Formative assessment is seen as taking place when teachers and learners seek to respond to student work, making judgements about what is good learning with a view to improving that learning. However, the theorisation emphasises formative assessment as being a discursive social practice, involving dialectical, sometimes conflictual, processes. These bring into play issues of power in which learners' and teachers' identities are implicated and what counts as legitimate knowledge is framed by institutional discourses and summative assessment demands. The paper argues that, rather than only paying attention to the content of learning, an ambition for formative assessment might be to deconstruct these contextual issues, allowing a critical consideration of learning as a wider process of becoming. The article suggests a model that might be useful to teachers and learners in achieving this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The restructuring of teachers' work in Scotland, under the reforms of both the New Right and the New Left, has not exhibited the starkness and radical edge evident in the history of reform in England. This paper argues that the professional context of Scotland's teachers has changed, if perhaps in a Caledonian form, under the action of the same forces that have been altering the educational landscape south of the border and internationally. While comparisons with England tend to place Scotland in a more favourable light in relation to the recasting of the professional context of teachers, there is a danger of overstating the social democratic virtues of policy-making and educational reform under New Labour. Three examples are discussed by way of illustrating the performativity climate within which Scotland's teachers now work: the use of development planning, quality indicators and statistical monitoring; the Standards in Scotland's Schools etc. Act 2000; and the agreement on pay and conditions of employment for teachers following from the McCrone report (McCrone, G. A Teaching Profession for the Twenty First Century (Edinburgh, SEED, 2000)). We conceive the role of the teacher as being essentially malleable: what is expected and desired of teachers is susceptible and sensitive to the historically and politically contingent. The paper argues that the professional context of Scotland's teachers has been restructured by the same reform imperatives manifest internationally across education systems. However, the form and constitution of restructuring in Scotland can only be illuminated in relation to the interaction and compromises of such reform imperatives within the national political climate and policy-making process. The paper concludes that this vernacularization of international trends goes some way towards accounting for a distinctive Caledonian form of 'modernization'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, classroom talk has re-emerged within educational policy as instrumental in delivering standards-based reform in several counties. In England, both the National Numeracy and Literacy Strategies and the National Strategy for Key Stage 3 emphasised the importance of 'interactive whole class teaching' (IWT) where 'pupils are expected to play an active part by answering questions, contributing points to discussions, and explaining and demonstrating their methods and solutions to others in the class' (DfEE, 2001: 26). The aim is to increase the quality of teaching and learning in both the primary and secondary classroom by engaging pupils and demanding active participation. This paper explores the pedagogic value of interactive forms of whole class teaching from a sociocultural standpoint and considers whether policy guidelines (such as those referred to above) incorporate an understanding of teacher-pupil talk which is likely to be effective in terms of promoting children's learning. It also considers the potential conflicts and contradictions that the teachers face in implementing guidelines on effective classroom talk in a climate of performance and testing. The paper concludes that interactive whole class teaching can really become an effective mechanism for learning only if certain assumptions regarding its function as a pedagogic tool are challenged within policy guidelines and in day-to-day teaching practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background This article is concerned with professional learning within multi-agency settings. Since the publication of the government document Every child matters in 2003, professionals involved in working with children and young people have been moving into newly organized services that are required to deliver improved services for vulnerable children and their families. Although new ways of professional working are described in the plethora of government guidance that has followed Every child matters, there has been little examination of how this is being achieved in different teams around the country. Purpose This paper describes a current national research project, ‘Learning in and for Inter-agency Working’, which is investigating new ways of learning that develop, while teams of professionals work together around children and young people who are at risk of social exclusion. Programme description The research project is theoretically based and draws upon sociocultural and activity theory research to understand the practices that develop within the different agencies involved. The paper describes the derivation of the theory and the particular aspects of activity theory that are central to the project. In particular, the use of developmental work research (DWR), as the method of intervention with a number of local education authorities, is described and explained. Sample Some of the early work undertaken within phases 3 and 4 of a five-stage project which began in 2004 and ends in 2007 is described. Five different inter-agency teams of professionals working as part of Children's Services, from different geographical locations in England are the participants in the study. Design and methods The research uses activity theory to structure a series of DWR workshops with members of the multi-agency teams. Ethnographic data, including observations and interviews, are collected and form the subject-matter of the workshops. Results The data gathered are used to facilitate workshops where participants discuss their developing working practices and plan changes. The reporting phase of the project, where the findings across all sites will be analysed and summarized is not until mid-2007. However, early themes emerging from the research are included in the paper. These themes include: issues around co-location and co-working, evolving of professional identities, discussion of divisions of labour and professional expertise. These are described and illustrated using data from the research project. Conclusions As this is still ‘work in progress’ no firm conclusions can be drawn. However, it has become clear that new ways of thinking about professional working with children and families is necessary as old ways of working do not necessarily provide better outcomes for children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reports on an in-depth evaluation of a Single R egeneration Fund Budget funded partnership based on individual and community education as a means of promoting social inclusion. Partnership has become the preeminent mechanism for furthering the UK Government's social inclusion agenda. The paper focuses on the dynamics of partnership itself at management level. Bourdieu's concept of habitus is drawn upon in thinking about some of the processes facilitating or hindering partnership working. In particular, the paper draws attention to gender dynamics in partnership working and the ways in which these interact with organizational and professional practices. The article postulates that connections established prior to the formal partnership constituted cultural capital, which was transferred to the partnership. In particular, it was found that gender networks and practices constitute an important source of skills and dispositions. This way of viewing partnership working contributes to debates about sustainability, since it suggests that personal qualities that are essential to project success are a transferable resource and that there is a pool of cultural capital based on previously existing social networks that may transcend organizational and professional boundaries. The paper suggests that practices and networks on the ground may survive changes in both the language of public policy and models of implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

R.H. Tawney (1880–1962), a leading English economic historian and prominent socialist, was vigorously involved in educational reconstruction during the Second World War. For Tawney, the war was a war for social democracy. His ideals of social democracy formed a basis for his case for Public (independent) School reform and free secondary education for all. Despite this, the connection between Tawney’s ideals and his perspectives on educational issues has not been addressed fully by historians and thus there has been a lack of a proper explanation for his often criticised sympathy for the public schools and his indifference towards the multilateral school. Hence, this paper aims to re-examine the link between them in greater depth. It concludes that, according to Tawney’s ideals of social democracy, the abolition of the public schools was not necessary for the establishment of a democratic educational system. Moreover, Tawney did not launch an attack on the tripartite system proposed by the Norwood Report of 1943 since it was not against his ideal of equality as long as different secondary schools were equal in quality and status. Equality, he believed, must be advanced through the raising of the school leaving age to 16 and the abolition of fees in all secondary schools. Thus, he laid more emphasis on the school leaving age and tuition fees than on the multilateral school. In brief, on various issues pertaining to secondary education, Tawney’s opinions and actions were deeply grounded in his distinctive ideals of social democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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 paper argues that the evolution of further education colleges in England is marked by both continuities and change, and provides evidence to show that they retain many of the characteristics and the underlying rationale present at the turn of the twentieth century. A defining characteristic remains the colleges’ need to respond to student demand in a continued climate of voluntarism and lack of policy commitment to the education of young people beyond school-leaving age. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since coming to power in 2010, the UK Coalition government in power has implemented a range of reforms in relation to assessment at all stages of education in England. This paper focuses on two assessment reforms relating to children aged five and six years old, and considers their evolution from manifesto commitments to practice in classrooms. These reforms are the introduction of the Phonics Screening Check at age six, and the revised Early Years Foundation Stage Profile at age five. The main focus is on the coherence of these policies, both over time and as part of an overall government strategy on assessment in early years and primary education. It is argued that, despite claims of reducing bureaucracy, these assessment policies are driven by an agenda of increasing accountability in the first years of primary school. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Mathematics education is rarely out of the policy spotlight in England. Over the last 10 years, considerable attention has been given to improving 14–19 mathematics curriculum pathways. In this paper we consider some of the challenges of enacting curriculum change by drawing upon evidence from our evaluation of the Mathematics Pathways Project (MPP). From 2004 to 2010 this project, which was directed by England's Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, aimed to improve the engagement, attainment and participation rates of 14- to 19-year-old learners of mathematics. Our particular focus is upon the temporal problems of piloting new curriculum and assessment and we draw on Lemke's discussion of timescales, heterochrony and the adiabatic principle to consider the interlocking and interference of various change processes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Over the past decade higher education policy in England has gradually switched from a stance of ‘government as purchaser’ to ‘government as informer’. During 2012 this policy stance has been intensified through new requirements for the advice provided by schools and the introduction of ‘Key Information Sets’ which are intended to ‘drive up quality’ through informed choice. This paper documents this policy shift and subjects it to critical scrutiny. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The swift nature of school reform enacted by the new Conservative-led coalition government has sparked debate over the future of state education in Britain. While the government rhetoric suggests a decisive break with past policies, there is evidence to suggest that these reforms constitute the next stage of a long revolution in education reform, centred around neoliberal market discourse. In the following paper, I examine the current government’s education policy discourse and, by employing techniques of post-structuralist discourse analysis, reveal the government’s attempts to rearticulate education around the logics of market, responsibilisation and self-esteem, which act to shift responsibility for social problems from the state to the individual. Furthermore, I shall argue that such rearticulation has been coupled with an ideological fantasy of ‘empowerment’, which conceals the subordination of actors to these neoliberal logics by constituting the parent and, more recently, the teacher as powerful actors who have been freed from legal and bureaucratic constraints forced upon them by central government. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the connections between the school building programme in England and the raising of the school leaving age (ROSLA) from 14 to 15 in 1947 and then to 16 in 1972. These two major developments were intended to help to ensure the realisation of ‘secondary education for all’ in the postwar period. The combination led in practice to severe strains in the education system as a whole, with lasting consequences for educational planning and central control. ROSLA was a key issue for the school building programme in terms of both finance and design. School building was also a significant constraint for ROSLA, which was marred by temporary expedients in building accommodation both in the 1940s with ‘HORSA huts’ and in the 1970s with ‘ROSLA blocks’, as well as by the cheap construction of new schools that soon became unfit for purpose. Together, school building needs and ROSLA helped to stimulate pressures towards centralisation of planning that were ultimately to undermine postwar partnerships in education, from the establishment of the Ministry of Education’s Architects and Building (A&B) Branch in 1948, through the Crowther Report of 1959 and the Newsom Report of 1963, to the assertion of central state control by the 1970s. The pressures arising from such investment and growth in education again became a key issue in the early twenty-first century with the Labour Government’s support for raising the participation age to 18 combined with an ambitious ‘Building Schools for the Future’ programme. The historical and contemporary significance of these developments has tended to be neglected but is pivotal to an understanding of medium-term educational change in its broader policy and political contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The publication of the detailed proposals of the Social Work Reform Board in England represents an important milestone in the development of social work education. They address many of the recommendations spelled out in the earlier report of the Social Work Task Force. However, in the changed financial context for public services across the UK, the proposals do not contain sufficient detail of how they are to be implemented in an era of austerity. Indeed, some of them-particularly relating to practice learning-would have proved impossible to implement even if the financial climate had not worsened. This paper addresses a number of the key contextual issues that will significantly affect the education of UK social workers in the future, arguing that a failure to resolve the financial problems will inevitably change the dynamics that affect the delivery of social work education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Labour and New Labour alike have been the enemies of education. Consider the brutalism of Charles Clarke--'history for display purposes only'; statistics of achievement based on the soft marking of soft subjects to achieve soviet pig-iron statistics; fat inspection and thin curriculum; compulsory lesson plans and paper plagues; foreign languages as too difficult. Before all that, remember Anthony Crosland 'destroying their schools if it's the last fucking thing I do' and the consequent rise of the public schools as bought excellence. What to do : Follow Housman's dictum, 'Knowledge is happiness'; rescue good minds in bad places with state places in boarding schools; utilise the quiz nationally the as a pop method to stimulate the study habit; get back to French and German; take the educationalism out of education especially in training colleges; thin inspection down from terror to weather-eye mentoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the extent to which contemporary concerns over the recruitment, training and retention of scientists have persisted among science education policy-makers. Drawing upon key government reports that have been commissioned in order to review the position of science education and training over the last 90 years, we consider the historical context of contemporary “moral panics” about the position of science education in schools. Three themes emerge: the nature and purpose of the school science curriculum, the recruitment of science undergraduates, and the teaching of science in schools. The review suggests that many of the concerns which pre-occupy us today, such as the perceived “quality” of the science teaching workforce, are the very same that existed when science was first introduced as a school subject. This raises issues about the role of policy in influencing educational change more generally but also questions whether there ever was a “golden age” for science education in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on recent work by John Clarke and Janet Newman and their colleagues to analyse a relatively coherent governmental project, spanning the decades of Conservative and New Labour government in England since 1979, that has sought to render teachers increasingly subservient to the state and agencies of the state. Under New Labour this has involved discourse and policies aimed at transforming teaching into a ‘modernised profession’. It is suggested that this appropriation of both the concept and substance of professionalism involves an attempt to silence debate about competing conceptions of what it might be to be a professional or to act professionally. The overall process is thus arguably one of de-professionalisation in the guise of re-professionalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research literature on students as researchers demonstrates a spectrum of constructive ways in which students are being actively engaged in school and classroom action inquiries. Any identified tensions lie in the degree to which students themselves are genuinely engaged as action researchers. Increasingly, externally driven agendas for change and improvement are appropriating action research as means to facilitate teachers in developing new skills and tailor-making national initiatives. According students appropriately democratic roles in such research processes are a lot less evident. This paper illustrates and discusses some of the difficulties, tensions and positive outcomes of engaging with students as co-researchers at Key Stage 3 within a nationally funded project that intersects an action research policy framework supporting the introduction of Assessment for Learning throughout Northern Ireland. Issues discussed include student research advisory groups, students as data gatherers and students acting as co-interpreters of video-taped and image-based classroom data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines recent empirical work on the lived experience of learners in post‐compulsory education. The starting point is a brief examination of the socio‐economic context of the sector. Despite the sophistication of analyses of learning cultures, a more radical approach is needed. Failure to do so renders these analyses amenable to appropriation by ‘new labour’ modernisers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]