Search

Omitted prior achievement bias is pervasive in international assessment studies and precludes causal inference. For example, reported negative associations between student-oriented teaching strategies and student performance are against expectations and might actually reflect omitted prior achievement bias. Namely, that these teaching strategies are negatively correlated with unobserved prior achievement performance, because teachers offer more support to lower performing students, and not that these strategiescauselower performance. This paper examines omitted prior achievement bias in teaching effects with prior achievement data available for students in England participating in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study. Further, it proposes an analytical approach to account for omitted prior achievement bias in international estimates. The paper argues that the bias is not simply a technical artefact, but reflects educational mechanisms unobserved in international assessment studies, which can be captured with matched assessment data-sets or with evidence from previous studies. Estimates of these mechanisms can be used to postulate scenarios of the bias across education systems and thereby adjust international estimates of teaching effects as if prior achievement were observed. Potentials and limitations of this approach for studying educational effectiveness with international assessment data are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The broad aim of this paper is to track the evolution of adult literacy policy in the UK across three decades, highlighting convergences between policy phases and the promotion of democratic learning spaces. It is anchored onto the argument that, although it is generally accepted that democratic learning spaces are perceived as beneficial to adult literacy learners, policy has often deterred its promotion and, therefore, implementation. The paper identifies three block phases of adult literacy development: the seventies to mid-eighties, the mid-eighties to mid-nineties and the mid-nineties to the Moser Committees. The features of each of these phases are highlighted to map out convergences and divergences to the ethos of democratic learning spaces. The paper argues that, with the evolution of policy in adult literacy, the ethos of democratic learning space continuously diminished, such that as policy evolved year on year, the principle of democratic learning space found itself at counterpoint to policy. We draw on two theoretical frameworks, the NLS view of literacy and Bourdieu's capital framework to explain these divergences and conclude that the dominant perception of literacy and the prioritised capital in the context of policy appear to limit the vestiges of democratic learning spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research provides evidence that gender, immigrant background and socio-economic characteristics present multiple disadvantaging characteristics that change their relative importance and configurations over time. When evaluating inequalities researchers tend to focus on one particular aspect and often use composite measures when evaluating socio-economic characteristics. Neither can fully represent the complexity of students’ various disadvantaging characteristics, which have autonomous associations with attainment and with each other. This paper investigates how the relative importance and configurations of different disadvantaging factors have changed over time to form educational inequalities and how these changes differ across countries. Data from five PISA cycles (2000–2012) for France, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom are used and configurations of gender, immigration background, parents’ occupational and educational levels, and the number of books at home evaluated. Results enable us to relate changes (or lack thereof) in configurations of disadvantaging factors to recent reforms targeted at reducing educational inequality after the first PISA results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that direct control of the early years literacy curriculum recently exercised by politicians in England has made the boundaries between research, policy and practice increasingly fragile. It describes how policy came to focus most effort on the use of synthetic phonics programmes in the early years. It examines why the Clackmannanshire phonics intervention became the study most frequently cited to justify government policy and suggests a phonics research agenda that could more usefully inform teaching. It argues that, whilst academics cannot control how their research is eventually used by policy-makers, learned societies can strengthen their ethics policies to set out clearer ground rules for academic researchers working across knowledge domains and with policy-makers. A stronger framework to guide the ethical interpretation of research evidence in complex education investigations would allow more meaningful conversations to take place within and across research communities, and with research users. The paper suggests some features for such a framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The General Certificate of Education (GCE) A* grade was first awarded to students in 2010. It was introduced to assist higher education institutions in differentiating between the highest performing students and to promote and reward greater stretch and challenge. This paper, based on a synthesis of key policy documents, an analysis of quantitative data and a review of existing research, provides an analysis of the GCE A* grade. The paper begins by introducing the historical and political context that led to the introduction of the A* grade, drawing together policy documents and research carried out by the awarding bodies. The paper then presents an analysis of 2011 A-level data, considering the characteristics of students who achieve the grade and addressing concerns around equality and fairness. A further line of evidence concerns public confidence in the new grade, especially in relation to whether it is fulfilling its purposes. The paper concludes by identifying a number of policy lessons for the future of the GCE A* grade. Forthcoming reforms to the A-level will necessitate a reappraisal of the way A* is calculated: this paper will be a useful source of evidence with which to consider the issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses continuing vocational education and training policies in the UK in the period 1979–2010 with a focus on regulation and governance. It reviews Conservative and Labour party policies to ascertain their principal components and explore their evolution through time. More specifically, the paper reviews the paradoxical existence of three seemingly opposed accounts of recent dynamics in the management of continuing vocational training: one that sees it moving inexorably to the political right, one that emphasises the singularity of social-democratic policies and one that focuses on the difficulties of any movement, towards the political left or right. The paper concludes that while there has been a degree of convergence between right and left, differences remained in terms of their favoured institutional decision-making structures. However, Labour played a two-level game, which combined the establishment of new channels for dialogue and coordination with key stakeholders, with a limited scope for meaningful stakeholder input to policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically analyses a nationwide school-building programme in England: Building Schools for the Future (BSF). It is argued that, between 2003 and 2010, the UK Government's policy guidance for BSF represented a (re)turn to utopian discourse in governmental policy-making, mobilised in order to justify a massive programme of new school building in the UK. In doing so, BSF connected with the promise of three further discourses: school(-children), community and architectural practice. It anticipated that new school buildings would instil transformative change-modernising English schooling, combating social exclusion and leaving an architectural 'legacy'. However, it is argued that BSF constituted an allegorical utopia: whilst suggesting a 'radical' vision for schooling and society, its ultimate effect was to preserve a conventional (neo-liberal) model of schooling. The paper highlights the critical role that notions of utopia might have in negotiating-and challenging-promise-laden mega-building policies like BSF. In doing so, it develops recent geographical research on utopia, education and architecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ‘Curriculum for Excellence’ (CfE) guidelines and associated learning experiences and outcomes have been developed following a national debate on the purposes of education in Scotland. The recent development shifts physical education's (PE) role in Scottish education, changing from contributing to the ‘Expressive Arts’ area of the curriculum, to one central to the newly created curriculum area of ‘Health and wellbeing’ in the CfE. This paper provides an analysis of the broader policy context at national and global levels examining the policy developments for PE in Scotland situating them within a globalised discourse emphasising concerns about ill-health and obesity within society. Drawing on the work of Bowe et al., the paper examines the context of production and the context of influence that has contributed to the recent development of ‘Health and wellbeing’ within the CfE. It is argued that the role for PE and the focus on schools promoting daily physical activity within the CfE masks the complexity of addressing the issues of health and well-being. In conclusion it is highlighted that in the interpretation and implementation of policy there will be further issues for PE and as yet unknown consequences for the context of practice and pupils' experiences of PE in Scotland. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Schools’ use of digital technology has so far proved to be a peripheral feature of the Conservative-Liberal education agenda. Through a series of reductions to previously extensive bureaucratic and funding structures, the Coalition administration has presided over a swift but sustained withdrawal of state support for digital technology use in schools. Many commentators have been quick to decry these actions as signalling an ill-informed “absence of ambition” for what could be seen as an integral area of twenty-first century educational provision. However, this paper contends that the Coalition’s apparent technological indifference instead marks a deliberate “ambition of absence”. Thus as well as contributing to immediate reductions in central government spending, the apparent shunning of educational technology policy-making has been driven by the Coalition’s long-term ambitions for localised and largely privatised forms of public sector governance. With this in mind, the paper considers the intended influence of the Coalition’s policy reversals on the future use of digital technology in UK schools. It is suggested that rather than constituting an irreversible crisis, the current withdrawal of state support is perhaps best understood as a continuation of the fluctuating cycle of government (dis)interest in educational technology over the past 30 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

TLRP's generic phase (1999-2009) is believed to have been the largest ever UK investment in educational research. This paper describes the critique from which TLRP emerged, its strategic positioning and the roles of successive directors and their teams in its development. The paper offers an early stock take of TLRP's achievements from the perspective of the last Programme Director. The efficacy of the form of the Programme, once likened to 'a glider made of jelly', is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two key themes of recent UK education policy texts have been a focus on 'quality' in public sector performance, and on 'equality' in the form of New Labour's stated commitment to equality of opportunity as a key policy objective. This twin approach can be seen at its most obvious in the concept of 'excellence for all'. This paper contends that in recent policy texts the vocabularies of quality management discourse and egalitarian discourse have become conflated, serving to mask key issues relating to educational inequality, seen at its most stark in the attainment gap. The paper argues that this has led to a failure to distinguish between the goals of quality management and the ends of egalitarianism. Discursive conflation of this sort risks obscuring the significance of socio-economic context and the limited impact of within-school action. The paper also suggests that the focus on equality in terms of school provision paradoxically risks entrenching social inequalities despite the appearance of egalitarian commitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As spaces of complex layering of multiple relations, each with their own space-time dynamics and reach, policies of urban governance and their tangible outcomes can be materially experienced as conjunctions of multiple meshworks of assemblages with different scopes and different systems of values. This paper investigates a case example of a Private Finance Initiative for the construction of Throckley Middle School in Newcastle upon Tyne. Completed in 2003, Throckley school closed in 2005. A Deleuzean-inspired tracing of several Throckley assemblages is presented and the paper concludes by discussing the challenges of adopting a Deleuzean perspective for analysis of urban governance and infrastructure development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking as its starting point a critique of policy for inclusion which I published 6 years ago after the publication of the Green Paper Excellence for All Children; Meeting Special Educational Needs (DfEE, 1997), the present paper presents a critical analysis of subsequent policy relating to the inclusion of children with Special Educational Needs (SEN) in the mainstream of education which claims to secure for them a genuinely equitable educational experience. The results of this analysis suggest that far from ensuring full participation as a right, the policy for inclusion can be seen to have done little to increase genuine access to the mainstream for these pupils and may well have even increased exclusionary practices therein. The paper focuses particularly on the potential of current government strategy, presented in Removing Barriers to Achievement. The Government's Strategy for SEN (2004), to drive forward and realize the inclusion agenda. This examination reveals that, as in previous policy, there is a failure to recognize the complex and controversial nature of inclusion; no attempt is made to address the exclusiveness of the curriculum, assessment procedures, and practices of mainstream provision and that the strategy is founded on notions of normalization, compensation and deficit approaches to SEN. The paper argues that there is a need to recognize that as long as policy is founded on the idea that inclusion into the mainstream of schooling, as it is currently conceived, and achievement measured against a set of norm related standards is the route to good education children with SEN will continue to be disadvantaged and to receive an inferior educational opportunity [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bringing about school improvement in economically poor urban contexts remains a major challenge. In England the emphasis on competition between schools has further complicated this agenda. At the same time, there is evidence of the emergence of a new policy emphasis that involves support and challenge to school-led improvement efforts through collaboration with other schools. This paper provides an evaluative account of an attempt to use such processes of networking across all secondary schools in one city. The study suggests that schools working together can contribute to the raising of aspirations and attainment in schools that have previously had a record of low achievement, but that this is never a straightforward process--schools are complex organisations, and collaboration between them involves the orchestration of action and purpose at many levels. The paper concludes that the successful use of such approaches involves dealing with a number of challenging dilemmas, and draws out the implications for policy development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ‘independent learner’ is a key construct within discourses of educational policy and practice in the UK. Government policy statements stress the importance of developing learner independence, and higher education pedagogical practices tend to rest on the assumption that students are independent learners. This paper draws on research with undergraduate students in a post-1992 university to offer a critical appraisal of the discourse of the independent learner. The paper examines students’ perceptions of independence in both their first year of undergraduate study, and in the later years of their degree courses. Support for learning and issues related to asking for help are discussed. Whilst students tend to both expect and want to be independent, it is suggested that dominant constructions of the independent learner are gendered and culturally specific, and as such are inappropriate for the majority of students in a mass higher education system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As lifelong learning becomes a greater focus for policy at local, national and supranational levels, a question emerges as to how to engage in policy analysis. This is a debate, which is already taking place in relation to policy analysis in other sectors of education. However, this has had little influence on policy studies in lifelong learning. This paper reviews the wider debates and argues for the productiveness of a discursive approach to policy analysis. In particular, it argues that the notion of metaphor can be deployed in such analysis to good effect. This is illustrated through an initial analysis of the UK government's 1998 Green Paper, The Learning Age: a Renaissance for a New Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conservative and Liberal Democrat policies for higher education funding in the 2010 general election campaign offered voters a stark choice -- with one party willing to consider raising the cap on undergraduate fees, while the other publicly committed to removing any student contribution. It is not surprising therefore that this was an area in which they found it impossible to agree a firm position as part of their coalition agreement (Cabinet Office, 2010). When parliament later voted on higher education funding, the view of the larger party prevailed and the cap on fees almost trebled to £9,000. The Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister took responsibility for launching a National Scholarship Programme (NSP), providing financial support to undergraduates from lower-income backgrounds, to be introduced at the same time as the increase in fees. While this may have offered limited political credibility to his party, the structure of the scheme was criticized from the outset, and it ceased to operate after just three cohorts of students. This paper identifies the political and policy drivers behind the NSP. It explores the need for compromise in the context of the Coalition Government and the drive to embed a dimension of 'fairness' into policy change. From an analysis of the NSP's implementation, evolution, and ultimate closure, we consider the extent to which fairness can, and cannot, successfully be promoted through the design of undergraduate fees and financial support, an objective that was espoused by politicians responsible for the introduction of £1,000, £3,000 and, ultimately, £9,000 fees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores affective dimensions to the positioning of teachers within persistent educational inequalities. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s concept of ‘affective economies’, we argue that inequalities are not maintained through how teachers and student teachers ‘feel about’ ‘different’ students per se. Rather, the very possibility of becoming a particular subject and object of feeling is itself already part of the production of learner differences and inequalities. We examine how affects circulate to shape particular objects (e.g. a teacher’s physical body) and collective attachments to particular signs (e.g. ‘the national teaching body’). We argue that contemporary changes to Irish and European teacher education policy reinforce rather than question educational inequalities. They produce and align ‘shock’ at student underachievement with teachers’ physical and collective bodies, while ‘sympathetically’ responsibilising teachers to professionalise in order to cope with or compensate for persistently ‘different’ and/or underachieving students. To explain how this process is lived and resisted, an analysis of interviews with our own student teachers explores how the affective economy which constitutes teacher education may become contingently directed in socially just or unjust ways. [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 AUTHOR]

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]

A sign bilingual approach to the education of deaf children was first introduced in the UK in 1990. This paper reviews the growth of sign bilingual education in the UK and documents significant milestones in the development of sign bilingual policy and practice since the 1980s. This overview demonstrates how key issues in sign bilingual education have evolved and how priorities have changed over time and enables comparisons with contexts beyond the UK to be drawn. Current issues in sign bilingual education are analysed within our twenty-first century educational context in which both the advancing technology and medical understanding are providing new opportunities for deaf pupils and changing their learning and communication needs. Particular themes addressed include research into early literacy and also the role of sign language for deaf children with cochlear implants. From this analysis, new directions for sign bilingual education are suggested in terms of learning and teaching and a future research agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores some particular aspects of the privatisation of public sector education, mapping and analysing the participation of education businesses in a whole range of public sector education services both in the UK and overseas. It addresses some of the types of privatisation(s) which are taking place 'of', 'in' and 'through' education and education policy, 'in' and 'through' the work of education businesses. This entails a traversal of some of the multi-level and multi-layered fields of policy: institutional, national and international. Such an approach is important in demonstrating the increasing diversity and reach of some of the education businesses and their different kinds of involvements with different institutions and sectors of education. It also makes it possible to set local rhetorics, such as 'partnership', within the context of corporate logics of expansion, diversification, integration and profit. [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]

Traditionally, education in Scotland has been viewed as a national service that is locally administered. This research casts new light on that relationship between the Scottish Executive and local authorities by drawing on evidence from an evaluation of the implementation of the additional support staff element of the Teachers' Agreement which determined not only teachers' pay structure but also established the professional conditions under which they would work. The paper identifies how local authorities and schools spent the grant aid on staff and equipment, how many additional support staff were appointed, and what impact they were reported to be having on teaching and learning. Information was gathered from a postal survey of all 32 Scottish local authorities and a random sample of 267 schools, and also from interviews held in six case study schools. The findings show that: all the grant aid could not be accounted for, the target number of support staff was not achieved, and their deployment and impact varied across local authorities and schools. By way of conclusion it poses the question: 'Was the money well spent?' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper we examine the discourses of Primary school numeracy coordinators responsible for auditing, monitoring and supporting their colleagues in relation to the introduction and embedding of the National Numeracy Strategy (NNS) in the UK. Cultural–Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) focuses our analysis on the contradictory coupling of school, NNS and audit systems with our R&D project through boundary objects and crossers. We achieve this through an analysis of the registers and genres adopted in teachers’ reflective discourses, and their relation to contradictory activities. Their often conflicted narratives indicate contradictions between these systems. We find inquiry hybridised with audit and inflected by its collegial negotiation. We also find dialogical inquiry mediated by the collegial discourse of practice, and our R&D group mediated by a critical discourse of reflexivity. The theoretical articulation of the CHAT approach to discourse through Halliday and Hasan''s conceptions of register and genre is discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In the recent UK Government policies that aim to raise standards at all levels of education, the drive for lifelong, independent learners has diminished in favour of prescription and consistent teaching approaches. Nonetheless, the ideal outcome of learners who understand, and take responsibility for, their own learning persists, and can be observed implicitly in policies and more explicitly in practice. This paper explores the frameworks and processes of independent learning in the current context. Drawing on previous research, it takes the view that independent learning occurs when pupils have a clear understanding of their own learning needs and strategies; when they are able to recognize and overcome problems in their learning and when they are encouraged to make informed decisions about the nature and conduct of their learning. The study is based on semi-structured interviews with 24 pupils before their transition from primary to secondary schools. Pupils were asked to reflect on personal strategies and approaches to study in literacy, numeracy and science. Data were analysed in order to identify: (1) the level of responsibility pupils assume for their own learning at the end of Year 6; (2) the skills and strategies for independent learning identified by the pupils; (3) the educational relationships they had (who supported them and how); and (4) pupils' perceptions of promoters and inhibitors of independent learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores a range of policy frameworks in play in the field of special educational needs and their relationship with procedural fairness and substantive justice. Drawing on analysis of post-1993 English and Scottish policy documents, dominant motifs in special educational needs policy are identified. It is argued that in both England and Scotland, there is a shift away from a policy framework based on professional control. Legal and bureaucratic policy frameworks are of growing importance in both countries, but change has been more rapid in England. Finally, the implications of comparative research for special educational needs policy and wider education policy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate surrounding educational research in the UK has been fuelled by four recent government-funded publications that have thrown doubt on the validity, relevance and applicability of educational research. In this paper, the author offers a critique of these publications and questions their privileged role in informing government policy. She challenges the current trend towards instrumentalism in funded educational research, and explores the ways in which theories, rather than evidence, provide an essential infrastructure to teachers' day-to-day thinking and practice. Finally, she compares the restrictive effect of a narrow focus on 'what works' with the opportunities offered by postmodernism for broadening the scope, purpose and interpretation of the research of the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This paper discusses current trends in government policy for special educational needs. It reviews both the legacy of previous reforms and key elements of current approaches, namely raising educational standards and increasing inclusion. It is suggested that although the incorporation of SEN into mainstream policymaking is to be welcomed, there are a number of features of policy and practice which may undermine intentions to enhance provision and outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on and explores some of the assumptions underpinning an invitation issued to local education authorities in England in January 1998 from the Department for Education and Employment to bid for funds to develop literacy in the first years of secondary schooling. It goes on to describe one authority's successful bid, and explores how the project is being implemented in schools within the authority, in terms of action plans, staff development and classroom practice. Finally, these perspectives are compared with research findings on literacy development, particularly in low-achieving schools. The problems of evaluating literacy interventions are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a research paper on the marketization of the higher education in Great Britain. The study highlights that the recent education policies formulated in the country has shown the trend of a shift towards marketization, which emphasizes the empowerment for consumers. It examines the relevance of this ethos in terms of the real choice within the higher education context. The samples for the research was collected focusing on the families who are engaged in the choosing process in the education. The study demonstrates the differential levels of market based competencies. It also examines the complexities and inequalities produced by the higher education market. It focused on lower sixth students and provides a longitudinal study of pupils who entered lower sixth, in the academic year 1995. The sixth form careers were considered to track the students the ways in which they engaged with the choice processes. The research site was an area around the region of Greater Cardiff, in south-east Wales.

This contribution explores changes in the way that educational researchers engage with policy-makers in England. The traditional relationship between research and policy was linear, with funders supporting the efforts of researchers, who carried out research and then disseminated it to those responsible for shaping and implementing policy. This model of 'knowledge transfer' is fast being supplemented and sometimes replaced by one of 'knowledge exchange' as policy-makers participate in new forms of research. 'Knowledge exchange' consists of collaborative problem-solving between researchers and decision-makers that happens through linkage and exchange. This contribution uses one large-scale English study to illustrate the new relationship between research and policy. The Effective Pre-school and Primary Education (EPPE) project is a longitudinal study of the effects of pre- and primary school on the academic and social development of more than 3,000 children in England. The study's findings have been used as part of the 'evidence base' for UK policy on universal pre-school provision as well as targeted services in disadvantaged communities, for example, Sure Start and Children's Centres. From the earliest days of the study researchers worked in partnership with policy-makers. Although the overall design was agreed at contract-stage, major modifications to sampling, assessments, and analyses were made as the study progressed. The researcher/policy-maker engagement continued throughout the study and consisted of sustained interaction, shared decision-making and mutual respect. Supportive organisational structures allowed two-way exchange and decision-making. Although the researchers were responsible for scientific integrity in all phases, there was shared ownership of the findings with regular and collaborative review and amendment to suit emerging policy needs. The EPPE project was one of the first in the UK to work interactively with Government partners in the shaping of both 'research' and 'policy' outputs. This partnership enabled the research to have a significant impact on UK policy. The contribution concludes with discussion of how the Furlong and Oancea 'quality assessment framework' can be applied to research based on policy partnerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]