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In the context of the international problem of 'early school leaving', this paper explores the issue of sustained participation in upper secondary education in England. It focuses in particular on the position of middle attainers, who constitute a large proportion of the cohort and whose progress will be vital in realising the government's goal of 'Raising the Participation Age' to 18 by 2015. The paper draws on evidence from national research undertaken as part of the Nuffield Review of 14-19 Education and Training in England and Wales and analysis of New Labour and Coalition policy between 2000-2012. It uses a three-year local study of 2400 14- and 16-year-olds in an established school/college consortium to illustrate the effects of policy and practice on middle attainers. We argue that this important group of young people was 'half-served' by New Labour, because of its incomplete and contradictory 14-19 reforms, and is now being 'overlooked' by Coalition policy because of its emphasis on high attainers. We conclude by suggesting a range of measures to support the 14+ participation, progression and transition of middle attainers in the English education and training system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine the trajectories of initially higher- and lower-achieving children from lower and higher socio-economic status families from primary school through to university in England for the first time. We also explore what explains these trajectories. This enables us to provide new insights into when and why the performance of children with similar initial achievement diverges on the basis of their socio-economic background. Our results indicate that pupils from poor backgrounds who are higher achievers in primary school fall behind their better-off but lower-achieving peers during secondary school. This suggests that secondary school may be a critical period to intervene to prevent poor children from falling behind their richer peers. Our analysis suggests that there is less divergence in performance between pupils from different socio-economic backgrounds who attend the same schools. This result is particularly strong for children with low initial achievement. While we remain cautious about the implications of these findings, they provide suggestive evidence that schools (or the sorting of pupils into schools) play an important role in explaining why the test scores of richer and poorer children diverge over time. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The notion of ‘competitive excellence’ is an enduring cornerstone of UK educational policy. Most recently, expanding and adapting New Labour’s Academy project with the introduction of free schools, the Coalition’s approach advances and embeds competitive market-based forms of community engagement in education. Responding to this policy paradigm, this paper draws upon history in order to open up the notion of excellence. Through examining alternative practices of achievement and success in histories of community education, I aim to disturb the unquestioned attachment of educational excellence to the ideals of competitive meritocracy. Comparing across two community educational movements – Socialist Sunday Schools (established 1892) and Black Saturday Schools (established 1968) – I explore how achievement and excellence have been mobilised to very different educational aims. In distinct times and circumstances, both of these community initiatives practiced versions of educational achievement that challenged dominant knowledge hierarchies and underlying assumptions of incapability. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent research suggests that Muslim boys have become the ‘New Folk Devils’ of British education, who are characterised by resistance to formal education, especially at secondary level, and under-achievement. Since the 1990s, British Muslim boys would appear to have become increasingly alienated from compulsory schooling, especially in the humanities subjects which lack obvious instrumental value. This mixed-methods study of the performance of 295 secondary school British Muslim boys in their compulsory school history provides evidence which interrupts this narrative of the academic under-achievement and educational dis-engagement of Muslim boys, especially in the humanities subjects. When viewed through the prism of a laminated, non-reductive model of educational success, this indicative sample of British Muslim boys could be considered to have had significant success at a traditional humanities subject such as history intellectually, spiritually, emotionally, instrumentally and civically. This paper therefore proposes that history can provide a vital meaning-making tool to generate the success of Muslim boys in a variety of significant dimensions both in and out of school. It suggests how history can be more fully and effectively harnessed by teachers, parents and policy-planners to encourage internal integration and external social engagement in British Muslim pupils. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Trends in Mathematics and Science Study are two highly respected studies of school pupils' academic achievement. English policy-makers have been disappointed with school children's performance on these tests, particularly in comparison to the strong results of young people from East Asia. In this paper, we provide new insight into the England-East Asia gap in school children's mathematics skills. We do so by considering how cross-national differences in math test scores change between ages 10 and 16. Our results suggest that, although average math test scores are higher in East Asian countries, this achievement gap does not increase between ages 10 and 16. We thus conclude that reforming the secondary school system may not be the most effective way for England to 'catch up' with the East Asian nations in the PISA math rankings. Rather, earlier intervention, during pre-school and primary school, may be needed instead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we report on our use of a participatory research methodology to consult with children in the UK on how to improve pupil well-being in secondary schools, framed within the wider social policy context of healthy schools. We worked with children on the selection of our research methods and sought to voice the views of children to a local education authority to improve the design of school environments. The consultation process ultimately failed not because the children were unforthcoming with their views on either methods or on well-being in schools, but because of difficulties in how their views were received by adults. We show how the socio-economic, cultural and political context in which those difficulties were set might have led to the eventual break down of the consultation process, and we draw out a number of possible implications for consultative and participatory work with children in school settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Societal variations in the organization of educational institutions are thought to affect the distribution of students into levels of educational achievement. This paper analyzes the diverging achievements of British and American cohorts as they pass through secondary and post-secondary education. The ways students' locations in the systems' structures deflect their achievements are charted, and the cumulative effects of those deflections between the ages of 16 and 28 are estimated. Despite the more stratified and standardized organization of the British educational system, and despite its sharper differentiation between academic and vocational credentials, the cumulative deflections during these years are greater in the United States. Explaining this outcome requires an understanding of both organizational and normative differences between the two systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]