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Internationally, research comparing education systems across countries and jurisdictions is valuable and can elicit nuanced insights into how particular systems operate. This paper's interest lies in considering the scope and content of research comparing education systems across the four UK nations (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales). This study sought to determine the coverage of UK cross-national comparative education research ('home international' research) between 2000 and 2022. We chose this time period as 1999 marks the devolution of education policy to each UK nation. We aimed to investigate what educational issues had been discussed in the literature and identify any gaps in the content covered by the research. An exploratory, high-level review of 'home international' education research was conducted, based on the review of abstracts. We searched several research databases using a variety of keyword combinations to identify relevant literature published since 2000. Our search identified 53 studies that met our selection criteria. Using a meta-synthesis approach, we coded the content of each abstract to build a picture of the range and thematic coverage of research involving comparisons between at least two of the four UK nations. The analysis of abstracts identified that, over the last two decades, UK 'home international' research has tended to include comparisons of all four nations, coverage of multiple educational phases and a focus on national education policy reviews. Furthermore, we pinpointed a number of gaps in coverage that might not have been anticipated (e.g. relatively little cross-national research focusing on assessment). This high-level review uncovers the landscape of recent 'home international' research, allowing us to view issues that are driving the cross-national research agenda in the UK and recognise implications relevant to education systems that may resonate with jurisdictions beyond these four UK nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The UK, like most countries across Europe and other advanced economies, has experienced an alarming rise in the levels of young people (aged between 16 and 24 years) who are detached from both the labour market and the education and training system. In the UK, there are nearly a million 16–24-year-olds who are recorded as being not in education, employment or training (NEET). For governments throughout Europe, the need to address high levels of youth unemployment and social disengagement has become an urgent priority. As a result, policy-makers are faced with the challenge of developing effective interventions to prevent these levels being sustained over the longer term, with potential scarring effects on successive generations, and concomitant economic and social impacts. Purpose: This paper will inform the development of policy and practice targeted at NEET prevention and reintegration of those young people who have become NEET, with suggestions for areas to be addressed and methods and mechanisms which might be incorporated into programme implementation. The paper highlights gaps in our knowledge and understanding of the size, characteristics and geographical distribution of young people in the NEET group in England, and questions the continued relevance of the term ‘NEET’ to capture youth disengagement. Sources of evidence: After drawing on Europe-wide data to present a picture of the scale of youth unemployment throughout the continent, official UK data are used to drill down to specific issues which are the focus of the piece, in particular, the regional disparities in the size of the group whose destination is ‘unknown’. This is discussed in the context of a range of literature relating to the emergence of the term ‘NEET’ and the characteristics of the NEET group. A review of current policy intervention in England to tackle the NEET ‘problem’ is also presented. Main argument: This paper will suggest that the implementation of effective policy interventions to address the ‘NEET’ issue is highly problematic, due to three overriding concerns. These are: (a) a lack of clarity in the definition of this group in England; (b) inadequacies in determining with any precision how many under-18s there are in this group, or where they are located, leading to large numbers whose post-education destination is ‘unknown’; and (c) misguided stereotyping of NEET young people’s behaviour, attitudes and aspirations. These problems have partly been exacerbated by budget cuts and changes to guidance and support services, as well as inadequacies in mapping and tracking systems. Conclusions: The paper concludes with recommendations that policy development must, in the first instance, be underpinned by robust and reliable data about the size and composition of the group, derived from impartial, independent mapping and tracking services. Furthermore, policies designed to reduce the NEET population should include measures which tackle NEET prevention, re-engagement strategies for the hardest to reach groups and active labour market policies for the young unemployed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background: This article reports on a mentoring programme which was implemented in selected Scottish secondary schools with the view to supporting students with school work, transition to further education/higher education, careers, and interpersonal skills. Mentoring students can enhance their academic, social, career and other outcomes. Mentoring relationships, when properly implemented, have been found also to yield positive results for mentors. Purpose: This paper is an investigation into a school-based mentoring programme which was implemented in 6 selected Scottish secondary schools. In so doing, we hope to contribute to an evolving framework for designing and implementing successful school-based mentoring. Sample: The sample for this study included 10 students aged between 16 and 17 years old in the second year of a broader 2-year business/education project, which aimed to promote student uptake of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers after secondary school. There were 11 mentors, who were drawn mainly from the science, health and the education sectors. Design and method: Methodologically, this study was qualitative interpretivist in nature. Data collection involved focus group discussion and individual semi-structured interviews. Results: The findings show mentee and mentor preparation, clarity of expectations, mentee–mentor matching, mentee motivation, appropriateness of meeting spaces and power relations, modes of communication including the use of social media, and the role of schools as essential conditions which influenced the quality of mentoring relationships. Conclusion: The findings suggest that mentoring programmes involving students in school and ‘external’ adult mentors need to consider a range of factors to achieve success when designing and implementing mentoring. This paper raises important issues for example, communication using social media, which have implications for practice in business sector and school partnerships involved in school-based mentoring. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

Background: Although on-demand testing is being increasingly used in many areas of assessment, it has not been adopted in high stakes examinations like the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) and General Certificate of Education Advanced level (GCE A level) offered by awarding organisations (AOs) in the UK. One of the major issues with on-demand testing is that some of the methods used for maintaining the comparability of standards over time in conventional testing are no longer available and the development of new methods is required. Purpose: This paper proposes an item response theory (IRT) framework for implementing on-demand testing and maintaining the comparability of standards over time for general qualifications, including GCSEs and GCE A levels, in the UK and discusses procedures for its practical implementation. Sources of evidence: Sources of evidence include literature from the fields of on-demand testing, the design of computer-based assessment, the development of IRT, and the application of IRT in educational measurement. Main argument: On-demand testing presents many advantages over conventional testing. In view of the nature of general qualifications, including the use of multiple components and multiple question types, the advances made in item response modelling over the past 30 years, and the availability of complex IRT analysis software systems, coupled with increasing IRT expertise in awarding organisations, IRT models could be used to implement on-demand testing in high stakes examinations in the UK. The proposed framework represents a coherent and complete approach to maintaining standards in on-demand testing. The procedures for implementing the framework discussed in the paper could be adapted by people to suit their own needs and circumstances. Conclusions: The use of IRT to implement on-demand testing could prove to be one of the viable approaches to maintaining standards over time or between test sessions for UK general qualifications. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background: ‘Creative learning conversations’, are methodological devices developed in two co-participative qualitative research projects exploring creativity and educational futures at the University of Exeter in England. Sources of evidence: Framed by Critical Theory, the projects, one on dance education partnership, the other on student voice and transformation, sought to open space between creativity and performativity to initiate emancipatory educational change. This was undertaken over the course of five years in English primary and secondary schools, prioritising humanising, wise creativity. Purpose: This paper re-analyses data and methodological processes to characterise and theorise creative learning conversations in terms of social spatiality and dialogue. The characteristics are: partiality, emancipation, working from the ‘bottom up’, participation, debate and difference, openness to action, and embodied and verbalised idea exchange. Main argument: This re-analysis theoretically adapts Bronfenbrenner's ecological model (The ecology of human development; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979) to situate layered engagement. Utilising Lefebvre's conceptualisation of lived space (The production of space; Wiley-Blackwell, 1991) and Bakhtin's work (Problems of Dostoevsky's poetics; ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson; Minneapolis: University of Michigan Press, 1984) on open-ended dialogue, the paper theorises creative learning conversations as producing living dialogic spaces. Conclusions: Creative learning conversations are a way of contributing to change, which moves us towards an education future fit for the twenty-first century. From a living dialogic space perspective, a creative learning conversation is the ongoing process without forced closure of those in the roles of university academic, teachers, artists, students co-participatively researching and developing knowledge of their ‘lived space’ together. Given traditional lethargy in the educational system as a whole commitment to changing education for better futures demands active involvement in living dialogic space, where our humanity both emerges from and guides our shared learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Although there has been considerable research into the reliability of marking for the Key Stage 3 (KS3) National Curriculum tests (NCTs) and public examinations such as the General Certificate of Secondary Education examinations (GCSEs) in England, little is understood about the level of reliability of marking of the Key Stage 2 (KS2) NCTs taken by pupils aged 11, particularly the KS2 English reading and writing tests. Purpose: This study was intended to investigate the reliability of marking of the National Curriculum KS2 English writing tests using a range of statistical methods. Methods: The KS2 English writing test assesses a range of pupils’ writing skills. Pupils’ scripts are marked by human markers. Markers are trained and undergo a marking standardisation process before live marking to ensure marking consistency. The quality of marking is further monitored through the embedding of benchmark scripts in live marking. Data collected from marker standardisation and benchmarking for the KS2 English writing tests administered in 2010 and 2011 were analysed in this study. Results: Considerable variability was found in the marking of the KS2 English writing tests administered in 2010 and 2011 at both question paper level and individual task/marking strand level, reflecting the nature of the tests. The quality of pupils’ work to an extent affected the consistency in marking between markers. There was no substantial variation in marking consistency over time for the markers. Conclusions: The reliability of marking of the KS2 English writing tests investigated is comparable with that of assessments of similar nature and is at the expected level. The present study provided a better understanding of the level of marking reliability of the KS2 English writing tests. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background: Successfully selecting students for undergraduate courses and for teaching is notoriously difficult. Traditionally, in England, A level grades and interviews have been used in conjunction with a variety of other approaches. Purpose: This paper examines the predictive validity of students’ A level grades and of scores from a structured interview on their subsequent degree classification as well as the ratings from their final teaching placements. Sample: A cohort of 71 students who started studying for a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in Primary Education in 2007 and graduated in 2010. Design and methods:  The A level grades and the ratings from structured interviews, carried out prior to the start of the course, were linked to the final degree classification and to the teaching placement grades. Results: A-level scores correlated significantly with degree classification but not with the placement grade whereas the interview grades correlated significantly with both outcome measures. Conclusions: These results are discussed in the light of the restricted range available for A-level grades. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background: The paper compares and contrasts the policy context of teacher training for vocational educators (VETT) in Scotland and England and locates this in its European setting. It explores the wider socio-economic context, one that emphasises lifelong learning, competitiveness and social justice. Purpose: In particular, it addresses the UK Coalition government‘s orientation to vocational teacher education and the way in which this impacts upon VETT in the two home nations. Sources of evidence: It draws on a small-scale illuminative case study of teacher educators in England and Scotland. Main argument: It explores the limits and possibilities for the development of radical and critical practices embedded in VETT policy and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]